http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=625327

By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs Correspondent
01 April 2005


The social stereotype of "Grumpy Old Men" is a myth, with women more prone
to explosions of Victor Meldrew-style rage in later life, researchers have
found.

While men mellow as they get older, women stay as angry as ever, falling out
with their friends, getting irritated by strangers in the street and left
frustrated by the vagaries of modern technology.

The findings were presented at the annual conference of the British
Psychological Society in Manchester yesterday. Researchers from Middlesex
University questioned 101 women and 52 men aged between 18 and 60 about
their responses and feelings of anger in three hypothetical situations.

The first, "interpersonal" scenario asked both groups to imagine that their
best friend was refusing to listen to them when they urgently needed to
talk. The second "environmental" scenario involved a stranger being rude to
them in the street, while the third "unattainable goal" incident involved
buying a video player to watch a favourite film and on getting home finding
that it did not work.

The men and women were then split into three age groups: 18 to 25-year-olds;
26 to 40-year-olds; and 41 to 60-year-olds.

In the youngest age groups, average anger levels were the same, with men
more likely to be irritated by the environmental situation and women by the
interpersonal scenario. But, by the second age group, angry responses among
the men had rapidly declined, while the women's remained the same. Among the
41 to 60-year-olds, men's anger had fallen and then levelled off, while
women's remained the same at retirement as it had when they were 18.

Jane Barnett, the project's lead researcher, said: "The traditional belief
has been that men feel more comfortable about expressing their anger while
women suppress it because they have been taught that it is not feminine or
ladylike and they should not be showing that kind of emotion.

"But this research shows that women do seem to feel comfortable about
expressing anger, perhaps because even as they get older they see it as
being assertive and as a positive rather than negative emotion.

"Men on the other hand may feel that as they get older they do not need to
live up to masculine stereotypes and may just think 'oh sod it'."

The success of the BBC television series Grumpy Old Men was followed by
Grumpy Old Women featuring, among others, Germaine Greer and Janet
Street-Porter.

Miss Barnett now plans to design an anger-management course that takes into
account the differences between men and women. She said: "Women may feel
anger in the same way as men but they tend to express it in different ways."

Miss Barnett said that after generations of being told to control their
anger, women may be finally getting their own back on Grumpy Old Men.


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