Men are more emotional than women, despite their protestations to the contrary, a "scientific experiment" of British fathers and mothers has found.
Men experience greater levels of emotion than women when presented with heart-warming material, according to the study for Royal Mail, which has used the findings to produce the "definitive" list of phrases for a successful Father's Day card.
A group of 15 fathers and 15 mothers were presented with images and videos categorised into blissful, funny, exciting and heart-warming scenarios, such as a soldier returning from service and reuniting with his daughter, while their physiological reactions were measured using skin conductance electrodes.
Men demonstrated a marginally higher emotional reaction to the blissful, funny and exciting content compared to the women but responded twice as strongly as women when presented with heart-warming content.
An accompanying questionnaire found that even though the men reported feeling less emotion than the women, their physiological changes showed they felt emotion more strongly.
Mindlab founder and chairman Dr David Lewis said: "This study suggests that men feel emotion just as much as women but are less willing to express these emotions openly."
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