Research articleGender differences in performance for young adults in cognitive tasks under emotional conflict

- A face-word Stroop task was conducted as an emotional conflict intervention.
- Men had better performance in recognizing faces in emotional conflict situation.
- Women performed better in the following memorization task.
- Men memorized fewer incongruent faces while women memorized more incongruent ones.
- Emotional conflict had different effects between genders.

Previous studies have shown that men and women behave differently on diverse cognitive tasks. However, gender differences in recognizing and memorizing faces when in emotional conflict situations are unknown. Therefore, a face-word Stroop task (emotional conflict) and subsequent memory task were used in the present study to examine gender differences among young adults in an emotional conflict situation. Behavioural data showed that men were better able to recognize faces while in emotional conflict, whereas women performed better at the memorization task. Emotional conflict had different effects on memorization performance between men and women. Women memorized more incongruent faces and men more congruent ones. The results confirm the need for further neural study in this area.