Sadness is, undeniably, a universal human emotion. We all experience loss – the death of loved ones, the ending of significant relationships, the loss of prized possessions, as well as the more mundane losses and disappointments of everyday life. The “natural” response to such loss is sadness (Stein, Liwag, & Wade, 1996). But as with all other emotions, while there is a universal, biological component (Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971), culture and context exert a ubiquitous influence on the definition, understanding, interpretation and expression of what it means to be sad (e.g., Lutz & White, 1986; Rosaldo, 1984). In this chapter, we explore the ways in which sadness comes to be understood and expressed differently by females and males. Just as different cultures develop different “emotion scripts” that modulate the understanding of emotional experience, we argue that females and males come to understand and integrate emotional experience into their lives in different ways as a result of participating in gender-differentiated activities and interactions.

Gender differences in sadness are particularly compelling because of the large gender differences in depression. Although many theories have been advanced to account for this disparity, little research has explicitly examined the ways in which females and males understand their sad experiences. As we will argue in this chapter, females may both self-report and be diagnosed with more depressive symptoms because they express sadness in more intense ways than do males. However, it must be emphasized at the outset that, although our focus in this chapter is on gender differences, there is a great deal of variability within each gender group as well as differences between them.