Scientists reveal why nobody notices when women are tired – but do when it’s a man
Men would like to think they are the most stoic of the sexes.
But scientists have now shown that people pay much less attention to women who are tired than when it is a man.
A study by NASA scientists has found that we routinely underestimate how tired women are, while men’s fatigue is significantly overestimated.
Scientists say this is because women put more effort into appearing sociable, even when they are exhausted.
Men, on the other hand, seem more tired because they are less attentive and expressive in conversations.
Researchers say understanding these differences is critical when it comes to monitoring astronauts in space.
It is believed that more than half of all space and aviation accidents are caused by fatigue, meaning that accurately assessing how tired someone is can be life-saving.
Lead author Dr Morgan Stosic, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said: ‘In general, observers underestimated how much fatigue women had self-reported, but they overestimated how much fatigue men had reported.’
Scientists have found that people don’t notice when women are tired, but tend to overestimate how tired men can be (file photo)
On space missions, male and female astronauts work long, tiring days in high-stress environments.
This means that managing fatigue is a constant concern for space agencies like NASA, which need their crews to perform at peak performance.
Dr. Stosic wanted to develop a method for assessing fatigue, based solely on non-verbal signals such as body language.
Male and female volunteers were asked to have a five-minute conversation with a stranger and then rate the level of fatigue they felt at that moment.
Their fatigue was measured on a scale ranging from zero, meaning not tired at all, to 10, meaning as exhausted as they could be.
A separate group of 71 participants then watched the videos of those conversations in muted audio and rated how tired they thought each of the speakers was at that moment.
Although Dr. Stosic didn’t find any connection between nonverbal cues and self-reported fatigue, she did find some major differences between the genders.
Although women reported feeling more tired, observers underestimated how tired women felt by an average of 1.3 points.
NASA scientists wanted to develop a way to assess how tired astronauts were based solely on their body language. With more than half of space and aviation accidents attributed to fatigue, knowing how exhausted crew members are can make a life-saving difference. In the photo: the current crew of the International Space Station
Meanwhile, observers rated men’s fatigue about 0.9 points higher than the men themselves reported.
Dr. Stosic thinks this may have to do with the effort men and women make to be social when they are tired.
By monitoring participants’ body language, the researchers found that women tended to behave in ways that made them appear more attentive, such as making more direct eye contact.
Although this was not a good measure of how tired the participant really was, observers may have mistaken these gestures for real signs of alertness.
Dr. Stosic said The times: ‘Observers used this behavior as a signal to think that women were less tired.’
These findings fit with a growing body of research showing that far less attention is paid to women’s discomfort.
In an earlier study, Dr. Stosic applied a tourniquet to the participants’ upper arms and asked them to do handgrip exercises to induce pain.
Despite their discomfort, observers consistently underestimated the amount of pain women suffered and overestimated the pain men felt.
Observers tended to rate women as significantly less tired than they actually were. Compared to men, women used body language that made them appear awake, even when extremely tired. Pictured: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams (right)
The researchers found that men made less effort to be social when they were tired, leading to the impression that they experienced more fatigue than women. In contrast, female participants were more attentive and made more direct eye contact during conversations, even when tired (file photo)
Other studies have shown that women’s pain is often not taken seriously, even in medical settings.
A study by researchers at the University of Miami found that expectations that women should be more expressive led observers to downplay obvious signs of injury.
Similarly, a study published last year found that female patients were less likely to receive proper treatment in the emergency room because they are considered “hysterical and over-the-top.”
An analysis of more than 21,000 patients found that female patients were less likely to be prescribed pain medication and their symptoms were more likely to be ignored.
Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be prescribed painkillers or antidepressants and more likely to order laboratory tests for possible problems.