We’ve all heard the cliché: when it comes to emotional smarts, women naturally hold the crown while men are deemed more logical.
But as it turns out, human emotions are a whole lot more complicated than a simple men-versus-women scorecard.
A major new study published in the journal Emotion by the American Psychological Association challenges the stereotype.
Co-authored by researchers from the Cambridge Judge Business School, the University of Limerick, and the University of Zurich, the review delves into differences between sexes and how factors such as age, geography and jobs can change dynamics.
To figure this out, scientists analysed 1,279 academic articles spanning nearly three decades, covering a whopping 609,278 participants across 76 countries.
Confidence vs Competence
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The research revealed that women and girls score higher on average in emotion recognition and emotion understanding.
But, interestingly, women’s advantage is substantially larger on performance-based tests, whereas it nearly disappears on subjective self-report assessments.
When people are asked to rate themselves on surveys, men tend to overestimate their own emotional intelligence and abilities, while women may underestimate theirs, the study says.
Co-author Professor Jochen Menges of Cambridge Judge Business School notes: ‘Women are emotionally intelligent. Men think they are.’
He explains: ‘The gap between performance and perception is fascinating. Men may overestimate their emotional abilities, women may underestimate theirs, or both may be happening at once.
‘Our data cannot tell which explanation is correct. Either way, confidence and competence are not the same thing — and organisations should not confuse them.’
However, while women may score higher than men for emotion recognition and emotion understanding, the pattern shifts for self-focused emotion regulation, where men and boys score modestly higher.
Professor Jochen explains that the ‘distinction matters because being expected to carry other people emotionally is not the same as being better equipped to manage your own emotions.’
Age and geography
Because the study looked at nearly 30 years of data, researchers were able to spot a trend: the emotional intelligence gap between men and women has actually been shrinking over time.
This means children are growing up with fewer differences between boys and girls when it comes to understanding and handling feelings.
Professor Jochen says this is ‘consistent with changing socialisation and gender norms,’ but stresses that it ‘does not definitively establish the cause.’
Researchers also noticed that gender gaps favouring women tend to grow slightly wider with age, meaning as people get older, the differences in emotional intelligence become slightly larger over time compared to when people are younger.
Geography also factors in, with North and Central America and Europe showing ‘substantially larger gender differences favouring women and girls’ compared to the rest of the world.
Why this matters in the workplace
Persistent assumptions that women naturally possess greater emotional intelligence create two risks the study explains, which can have negative implications in the workplace.
First, genuine strengths can be obscured, and second, women can be assigned a disproportionate share of emotional and social responsibilities at work.
‘Organisations should stop treating emotional intelligence as a feminine trait and start treating it as a set of skills,’ urges Professor Jochen.
‘Develop these abilities in everyone, and do not let other-focused emotional work quietly become women’s responsibility.’
In other words, your male colleagues might need some emotional intelligence training.
Need for change
The study’s authors conclude that treating emotional intelligence as a single, blanket score misses the mark entirely and ‘call for differentiation of emotion abilities,’ to ensure a ‘more nuanced and accurate representation of gender differences in EI.’
As Professor Jochen sums it up: ‘The question of whether women or men are more emotionally intelligent is too simple.
‘The better questions are: which emotional ability, measured how, directed towards whom and observed in what context?’
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