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Psychology is not an ancient science, but intelligence research is precisely what triggered its start as a robust scientific activity. However it wasn’t until the late 90s that breakthrough research appeared regarding the fascinating concept of “emotional intelligence” (also called “EQ”). In a few years, its popularity exploded, and for good reason.
The impact of emotional intelligence is huge in relationships, friendships and work. And a fascinating widely held belief is being subject to greater scrutiny. Do we men and women have different emotional intelligence skills? Or do we share similar average EQs (the equivalent of IQ in the emotional world). Well, unfortunately for us men, this is a case where experience and science fit well together. Because research is proving that women have better EQ skills. But it is not so easy.
But wait, what is Emotional Intelligence?
Before we dive in, it is critical to understand what emotional intelligence really is. You can explore it deeply in our in-depth article about the concept. Anyways, a very good definition is the one made in 2004 by the pioneers in this field, Mayo & Salovey, according to which emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions (own and others’), to understand those emotions, and to be able to successfully manage and use them adaptively.
It gets more complicated than that because in truth there are two aspects of emotional intelligence, which can be measured but in different ways. On the one hand we have objective performance driven EQ (like understanding emotions, which could be evaluated measuring skill level in understanding emotions in faces for example), and on the other personality and orientation EQ (also called trait EQ), like optimism, which is more similar to a personality trait.
Female and male
Once we are ready with this understanding, we can safely get into the latest discoveries. Fascinating research is going deep right now into the architecture of emotional intelligence. And differences between male and female are becoming more and more replicated and clearer than ever. One simple conclusion has become clear, nearly all studies are finding that women have slightly higher emotional intelligence than men. The difference is indeed small, but increasingly undisputable.
If we remember the definition that we talked about in the beginning, emotional intelligence is not just one specific skill but actually it is made of different emotional sub-abilities, like understanding emotions and perceiving them. The differences between men and women are not equal across those sub-abilities. Recent studies have found that in general, women are better than men at perceiving the emotions of others, while being more equal in the rest. We could say then that they possess more interpersonal intelligence.
Developing emotional intelligence
Besides the general rule that women have a slightly faster development during childhood, this difference is also visible at that stage. And it is an important one to keep in mind to prevent potential problems. In general, research is finding that girls have a more prosocial attitude, have a stronger tendency to help others and care more about building good relationships and repairing them.
It is unclear how much of this must be attributed to our upbringing and society expectations, and how much lies in our genes. It is still debated, and probably both are partial causes. Men, evolutionarily, had to compete and be more aggressive in past societies.
Whatever the case, boys have a higher risk of becoming bullies. This is related to the fact that boys, on average, will have slightly lower skills in recognizing other’s emotions (as we have said previously), and having low emotion recognition is a relevant precondition in most cases to becoming a bully (among many other).
On the other hand, having a low control of emotions is a relevant risk factor for becoming a victim. Girls who have poor emotional control skills, coupled with a less aggressive and more prosocial attitude, then have a higher risk of becoming victims of bullies (Rueda-Gallego et al., 2022). Taking into account the enormous impact that bullying can have long-term in people’s lives and that nearly 30% of children seem to be involved either as bullies, victims or passive observers, it becomes critical to empower our children through training with great emotional skills to overcome these risks.
At work
Organizations have become acutely aware of the importance of emotional intelligence in their employees if they want to become great teams and be successful. It is actually a very good predictor of performance and success. So if you are going to hire someone do not forget this aspect! However, because emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence have a good probability to go hand in hand, studies have found that the true impact of EQ can be specially seen in jobs that are of an emotional nature (like customer service).
We can easily reach the conclusion that women then have a certain advantage in those jobs to perform better. But we should not forget that the differences we are talking about here are global averages, every specific person is its own world.
A really important thing to keep in mind is that EQ can be trained and improved. The longer the training the more lasting the impact usually is. As with memory, it is better to space between and repeat learning. Results are moderate (Hodzic et al., 2018), not gigantic. However sometimes a moderate improvement in EQ in a whole team can make a heck of a difference. So no matter if you are a man or a woman, EQ training can definitely be helpful.
Lastly, we could not be done without talking about a dark result that researchers have found in work settings. It seems there are more men, who are on average more competitive, willing to use their emotional intelligence maliciously to advance in their careers. It is true that the difference that researchers have found is small, but it is there.
On the contrary, they also found that the more emotionally intelligent a woman was, the more likely she was to use indirect forms of manipulation (like being disingenuous through false flattery).
In any case, more research is needed. But I do think it makes a lot of sense that women are more prone to using indirect forms of manipulation and aggression to advance their goals, while men are more willing to use direct and aggressive manipulation tactics if necessary as well as indirect forms. But as said before, this speaks not of the story of any specific individual, but of averages.
Conclusion
As we have seen, women tend to have slightly better emotional intelligence skills, especially around perceiving other people’s emotions. Taking into account its importance, training them long-term is a wonderful way to ensure that our kids and future adults achieve the maximum potential in this area.
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