Women Score Higher On Emotional Intelligence, But Only Slightly

Women’s Emotional Intelligence Lead Is Real but Small

Few beliefs about emotions feel as settled as the idea that women are better at them. A review of 1,279 earlier papers covering more than 600,000 people finds the belief has some truth, but far less than the stereotype claims. Women scored higher in emotional intelligence on average, yet the gap was small, and in a few areas it nearly vanished or tipped slightly toward men.

Researchers at the University of Limerick in Ireland and the University of Zurich in Switzerland went looking for answers because the evidence had never been tidy. Popular outlets such as Psychology Today and Forbes have featured articles claiming women have higher emotional intelligence, meaning the ability to read, understand, and manage feelings. Past studies disagreed, though: some found women ahead, some found men ahead, and some found no difference. Published in the journal Emotion, the new analysis was built to test that claim against all of the data.

Emotional skill has been linked to better job performance, stress coping, and conflict management, so a wrong assumption about who has it can have real costs. The authors say the modest size of most effects cautions against the “of course women are better at emotions” mindset.

609,278-Person Review Finds Small Gender Gap in Emotional Intelligence

No volunteers were recruited. Instead, the researchers ran what is known as a meta-analysis, a study of studies. They gathered earlier research that measured emotional intelligence in both women and men, published and unpublished, through the end of 2023, then combined the numbers. The pool came to 1,428 groups of participants, 609,278 people in all, from 76 countries. They ranged from children to working adults, and people with clinical diagnoses were left out, so the results describe the general population.

Because studies measure emotional intelligence in different ways, the team sorted results by skill and by method. The three skills were recognizing emotions, understanding them, and handling them. The two methods were performance tests, in which people complete tasks that test their actual skill, and self-reports, which amount to people grading themselves.

Among the three skills, the gap was biggest in understanding emotions, smaller in recognizing them, and barely detectable in handling them, a skill where the researchers had predicted no gap at all. Small gaps still matter, the authors say: “Small effects, however, are not trivial,” because slight differences can add up through everyday decisions about who gets promoted or named a leader.

Women’s Emotional Intelligence Gap Is Larger for Others’ Feelings and on Performance Tests

Whose feelings are involved was the sharpest twist. A small group of studies separated skills used on oneself from skills used on others, and women’s lead in overall emotional intelligence was far larger for skills used on other people. The same held for recognizing and handling emotions, but not for understanding them. Handling emotions showed the widest split: women scored higher at managing other people’s emotions, while men scored slightly higher at managing their own.

Measurement method mattered too. On performance tests, the overall lead was nearly four times larger than on self-ratings. For handling emotions, self-ratings showed no gap at all, while performance tests showed women clearly ahead. Self-grades work like drivers rating their own driving: they reveal confidence as much as skill. One possible reason, according to the authors, is that women underestimate their abilities or men overestimate theirs, perhaps because of social pressure around self-promotion.

Gender Differences in Emotional Intelligence Vary by Leadership, Region, and Time

Where and when people were studied also shifted the gap. Women’s lead looked larger among leaders such as executives, managers, and directors. It was clearly larger for recognizing emotions, and for overall emotional intelligence it appeared nearly twice as large, though that difference fell just short of the usual standard for confidence. Studies from North America and Europe showed a bigger gap than studies from the rest of the world, and newer studies showed smaller gaps, especially among children. Male-dominated industries had smaller gaps in recognizing and handling emotions, the opposite of what the researchers predicted.

Why remains unanswered. The authors point to upbringing, since girls are often encouraged to attend to feelings while boys are steered toward emotional restraint, and the shrinking gap in newer studies could reflect looser gender roles. Biology could also play a part.

Women’s Emotional Skills Toward Others May Leave Them Double-Burdened at Work

Those patterns could matter at work, according to the authors. Because women tend to score higher on skills directed at other people, they may be expected to soothe stressed coworkers while their own need for emotional training goes unnoticed, which could leave them “double-burdened at work.” The paper’s example is a stressed male coworker whose female colleague is expected to manage her own reaction and his agitation too. Leaning on self-rated tests in hiring, the paper adds, could steer opportunities toward men even when women’s measured ability is higher.

Stereotypes about women and emotions hold only in part: the difference is small and shows up mostly with other people’s feelings. Treating emotional intelligence as a blanket trait of women goes further than the evidence does.

---

Disclaimer: This article reports research findings for general information. Group averages do not predict any individual’s emotional abilities.

---