Why taking the Pill may make empathy harder

BEING on the Pill may make it harder for women to read other people’s emotions, a study has found.

Taking the contraceptive leaves them less able to interpret facial expressions, which can cause problems with friends and family, researchers warn.

They studied a group of women and found those on the Pill were around 10 per cent less able to read complicated emotions, such as pride, contempt and unease, in people’s faces.

This could end up causing arguments and confusion if they struggle to understand how others are feeling.

The study points to oestrogen levels in women’s bodies, which are reduced by the Pill and thought to be important for controlling the part of the brain which processes the emotions of others.

Senior author Dr Alexander Lischke said: ‘If women have an impairment in understanding emotions, this could lead to misunderstandings and difficulties in their personal life.’

Researchers at the universities of Greifswald and Rostock in Germany presented a series of black-and-white pictures to 42 women who were taking the Pill and 53 who were not.

They were shown 36 pictures of facial expressions displaying only the eyes and nose, then asked to pick the right emotion from four options. For easily recognisable expressions, such as hostility and playfulness, women got around four out of five right regardless of whether they were on the Pill or not.

But when it came to 18 subtle expressions, such as unease and lack of interest, women on the Pill did far worse. Their average score was 56 per cent compared to 64 per cent for the other women, reported the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

It is well known that taking the hormonal contraceptive can slightly increase the risk of breast and cervical cancer, blood clots and high blood pressure.

However Dr Lischke added: ‘More than 100million women worldwide use oral contraceptives but remarkably little is known about their effects on emotion, cognition and behaviour.’