Harvard scientist reveals a surprising split in psychological well-being between the sexes

A new analysis of global data reveals that while men score higher on a majority of specific wellbeing metrics, women tend to report higher overall life satisfaction. The findings suggest that females often fare better on social relationship indicators, which appear to carry significant weight in subjective assessments of a good life. These results were published in The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Societal debates regarding how men and women fare relative to one another are common. However, existing scientific literature on this topic often suffers from specific limitations. Many studies rely on narrow definitions of wellbeing that focus heavily on mental or physical health diagnoses rather than a holistic view of human flourishing.

Additionally, much of the psychological research is conducted on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. This geographic bias limits the ability of scientists to make universal claims about human experience across different cultures.

Tim Lomas, a psychology research scientist at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, aimed to address these gaps by applying a broad conceptual framework to a truly international dataset.

“For wellbeing researchers, any sociodemographic differences—such as between males and females in the present paper—are inherently interesting and valuable in terms of furthering our understanding of the topic,” Lomas explained. “More importantly, though, one would ideally hope that such research can actually help improve people’s lives in the world. So, if we have a better sense of the ways in which males and females might respectively be particularly struggling, then that ideally helps people (e.g., policy makers) address these issues more effectively.”

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Lomas utilized data collected by the Gallup World Poll, which relies on nationally representative, probability-based samples of adults aged 15 and older. The methodology typically involves surveying approximately 1,000 individuals per country to ensure the data accurately reflects the broader population.

The analysis spanned three years of data collection from 2020 through 2022, a period that necessitated a mix of telephone and face-to-face interviews depending on local pandemic restrictions. The final aggregated sample included exactly 391,656 individual participants across 142 countries.

Lomas selected 31 specific items from the poll to assess wellbeing comprehensively. These items were categorized into three main areas: life evaluation, daily emotions and experiences, and quality of life factors. Life evaluation was measured using Cantril’s Ladder, a tool where participants rate their current and future lives on a scale from zero to ten.

Daily experiences were assessed by asking if participants felt specific emotions or had specific experiences “yesterday.” These included positive states like feeling well-rested, being treated with respect, smiling or laughing, and learning something interesting. They also included negative states such as physical pain, worry, sadness, stress, and anger.

Quality of life measures examined broader factors beyond immediate emotional states. These included satisfaction with standard of living, feelings of safety while walking alone, and satisfaction with the freedom to choose what work to do. The survey also asked about objective hardships, such as not having enough money for food or shelter.

The statistical analysis revealed that males scored more favorably than females on 21 of the 31 variables. Men were more likely to report feeling well-rested, learning something new, and experiencing enjoyment. They also reported lower levels of negative emotions like pain, worry, sadness, stress, and anger compared to women.

Men also scored higher on measures of personal safety and autonomy. For instance, men were more likely to feel safe walking alone at night. They were also more likely to report being satisfied with their freedom to make life choices.

Despite scoring lower on a greater number of individual metrics, females reported higher scores on overall life evaluation. This finding presents a paradox where men appear to have more advantages in daily experiences and safety, yet women rate their lives more positively overall.

“Curiously and significantly…females have higher life evaluation (both present, future, and combined) on Cantril’s (1965) ‘ladder’ item. The ‘curiosity’ aspect of that sentence is that life evaluation is often regarded and used as the single best summary measure of a person’s subjective wellbeing,” Lomas wrote in the study. “…while females would seem to have greater wellbeing if just based on the life evaluation metrics alone, when structuring wellbeing into different components, males appear to do better, at least numerically. It is possible however that even though males place higher on more items, the third of items on which females excel may be more important for wellbeing.”

The data indicates that women tended to fare better on outcomes related to social connection. Females were more likely to report being treated with respect and having friends or relatives they could count on in times of trouble. They also scored higher on measures of “outer harmony,” which relates to getting along with others. Lomas suggests that because social relationships are often the strongest predictors of subjective wellbeing, strength in this area might outweigh deficits in other domains for women.

“Overall, the differences between males and females on most outcomes are not especially large, and on the whole their levels of wellbeing are fairly comparable,” he told PsyPost. “But the differences, such as they are, are still interesting and moreover actionable (e.g., with policy implications).”

These patterns were not uniform across the globe. Cultural context appeared to play a role in how sex differences manifested. South Asia was the region where males fared best relative to females.

In contrast, East Asia was the region where females fared best relative to males. This geographic variation provides evidence that sex differences in wellbeing are not purely biological but are heavily influenced by societal structures. Lomas also compared Iceland and Afghanistan to illustrate the impact of societal gender equality.

In Afghanistan, males scored higher than females on every single wellbeing metric measured. This reflects the severe restrictions and hardships faced by women in that nation. In Iceland, which is ranked highly for gender equality, females often outperformed males even on metrics where men typically lead globally.

Demographic factors such as age and education also influenced the results. The data showed that getting older tended to favor males more than females regarding wellbeing outcomes. As age increased, the gap between men and women often widened in favor of men on various metrics.

However, higher levels of education and income appeared to benefit females slightly more than males. When comparing the most educated participants to the least educated, the relative position of women improved on 16 variables. A similar pattern emerged when comparing the richest quintile of participants to the poorest.

“Wellbeing is multifaceted, and people—from the individual up to whole societies—can be doing well in some ways and less well in others,” Lomas said. “This applies to comparisons between males and females, where overall both groups seem to experience advantages and disadvantages in relation to wellbeing.”

The study has some limitations that provide context for the findings. Lomas notes that the analysis relies on a specific set of 31 items available in the Gallup World Poll. It is possible that a different selection of questions could yield different results.

For example, if the survey included more nuanced questions about relationship quality, women might have outperformed men on even more metrics. The study is also cross-sectional, meaning it captures a snapshot in time rather than tracking individuals over years. This design makes it difficult to determine causal directions for the observed differences.

“Although it’s obvious to most people, I’d emphasize that the results in the paper involve averages, and there will always be exceptions and counterexamples,” Lomas noted. “This applies both at an individual level (e.g., even if males generally tend to struggle on a particular outcome, a minority will excel on it), but also at a societal level (i.e., the findings in the paper are averaged across all the countries in the World Poll, but one can usually find exceptions where countries go against the general trend).”

For future research, Lomas intends to expand this line of inquiry by conducting longitudinal analyses. “Firstly, it would be good to explore trends over time using the Gallup World Poll, which goes back to 2006,” he explained. “Additionally, we plan to use panel data from the Global Flourishing Study (for which I’m the project manager) for the same purpose, and although it has fewer years of data (its first wave was in 2023), it is a genuine panel study (unlike the World Poll, which is cross sectional), so we may get some better insights into causal dynamics.”

The study, “Global sex-based wellbeing differences in the Gallup World Poll: males do better on more metrics, but females generally do better on those that may matter most,” was authored by Tim Lomas.