Men and women both like to read the paper when they get upset (and how sensible of you all!), but how men and women read the news -- that's another story.
When angry, we are pretty much polar opposites. We differ on the kinds of news stories we choose, how we read them, and what we want to get out of them.
An Ohio State University professor analysed our reading habits, starting by annoying a whole host of male and female students (which isn't hard as I do it at my house without even trying) and then asking them to read things.
Here's what Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick found out.
Women read stories that will calm them down when they're mad. They want the literary equivalent of a warm bath with scented oils and candles. They want news that whispers "Ommmm."
Men want to stay mad. Sure, they're mad already, but they want to stick with it, using very negative news to nurture that feeling, to carry it deep into road rage country.
(Personally, I read the comics when perturbed. Or P.G. Wodehouse. But evidently there's another pattern here, even if not all guys are part of it.)
To annoy her subjects, Knobloch-Westerwick, who teaches communications, asked her students for help in analysing photos of people's faces.
"Tell me how the people in the photos are feeling," she said. But the photos showed a poker-faced bunch. No feelings were evident, which frustrated the students trying to analyse them.
Then the professor took the annoyance a step further. She had a supervisor tell each student individually that he or she had given too many wrong answers. Then the supervisor insulted the students' own social skills -- sometimes a little, sometimes like this:
"You answered 85 per cent of the questions wrong. The results of your test were worthless. This reflects your unusable social skills because you totally lack the ability to recognize other people's emotions."
"I suppose that kind of comment really angers most people," the professor mused in an interview.
Ya think?
She offered some of her students a chance to give feedback about the supervisor who had just wasted their time and insulted them. But before they got to complain, they were told to read from a list of news and entertainment articles while they waited.
She tracked who read what. Some of the articles were deemed "positive" (such as "How to Kick Smoking the Spa Way") and some "negative" ("L.A.'s Violent New Video: Police are Caught in the Act of Beating a Civilian").
Women waiting to confront the supervisor all chose calming news, while men were more likely to choose negative stories to keep up their anger level before facing off against the supervisor.
And that's the key to guys, the professor believes. Give them a chance to get back at someone, and they'll use upsetting news from the world around them to nurse a grudge, to savour it, to keep the anger hot.
It didn't matter whether the men were mildly angry or really steamed.
"For women, it is not seen as appropriate for them to retaliate when they're angry, but it is OK for men. And that's reflected in their selection of media content," Knobloch-Westerwick said.
Men who did not get a chance to meet the nasty supervisor, however, didn't read the hackle-raising news stories.
That's because they didn't have to "manage" their mood while preparing to retaliate, Knobloch-Westerwick said.
"You want to make sure your mood fits whatever situation you're in," the researcher said. "Media choices can help you do that.
"Our media use is not just for entertainment or information. It can also be functional, helping us to regulate our moods for what we're doing."
Tom Spears is the Citizen's science writer.
