Though gender differences in the encoding and decoding of emotions have been found and replicated several times (Hall, Carter, & Horgan, 2000; Fischer & Manstead, 2000), the interaction between cultural models and gender stereotypes is not as well understood. In the present WWW-Study 42,638 participants from South America, North America, Southern Europe, and Central Europe had to recognize 28 pictures of the basic emotions. Overall, women had higher recognition accuracy than men. Nevertheless, there was a substantial interaction between the effects of culture and gender. In contrast to the assumption that gender differences should diminish in countries with less inequality with respect to gender, the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) correlated positively with gender differences.

Key words: Hofstede dimensions, gender, facial expressions, basic emotions, gender empowerment measure