Oh, this again. Another attempt to dissect the messy, infuriating intricacies of human interaction. Fine. Don't expect me to hold your hand through it.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence. The ability to, what, navigate the emotional minefield without blowing yourself up? It’s about managing your own internal chaos and pretending to understand the equally pathetic chaos in others. It involves a certain level of social cognition—the subconscious dance of reading faces, body language, and all the other social signals that scream "look at me, I'm a mess." It's about empathy, or at least the convincing performance of it, and the dubious skill of reasoning about the emotions of people who can barely reason about their own. [1]
The literature, in its infinite, tedious wisdom, insists women generally possess higher emotional intelligence ability than men. They trot out scores from tests like the MSCEIT as if they've unearthed the Holy Grail. [2] Physiological measures and behavioral tests are thrown in for good measure, apparently confirming this vast, earth-shattering revelation. [3] [4] [5] [6] As if the universe needed more confirmation of its inherent unfairness.
Emotional Intelligence
So, women score higher. Shocking. But don't get too comfortable. Gender stereotypes are a potent drug, dictating how emotions are supposedly displayed. This supposed difference, however, is often described as small to moderate, a bit inconsistent, and distressingly dependent on whatever mood someone's in or what social pressures they're enduring. [7] Bosson et al., bless their analytical hearts, point out that physiological measures and real-life observations find no consistent sex differences in experiencing emotion. This leads them to the thrilling conclusion that perhaps women just amplify their emotional displays, while men are masters of suppression. Or, you know, maybe people are just people. [7]
Tests
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)
The MSCEIT. The go-to for measuring emotional intelligence IQs (EIQ). [8] It's lauded as the most widely used test for measuring EI ability (AEI), [9] and, of course, it's "well-validated." [10] Much of the evidence for this "ability EI" hinges on the MSCEIT, partly because it was the only game in town for a while. It's also the only omnibus test that claims to measure all four branches of the EI ability model in one fell swoop. [8] You've got your experiential EIQ, which apparently involves recognizing emotions and their connection to thought—as if that's a novel concept. [8] Then there's strategic EIQ, focusing on the meaning behind emotions, their impact on relationships, and how to—brace yourself—manage them. [8] These broad categories break down into four branches: perceiving emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions, and managing emotions. [8] The test purports to analyze your ability to tackle emotional problems. [8] And, naturally, it avoids those pesky self-perceived assessments, opting for an "objective" measure of your emotional problem-solving prowess. [11]
A meta-analysis from 2010, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, claimed women scored higher than men by about half a standard deviation—a difference of 6–7 points. Riveting stuff. [3]
Test of Emotional Intelligence (TIE)
Then there's the TIE. The Polish answer to the MSCEIT, apparently. It aims to measure perception, comprehension, use, and management of emotions. [12]
Sex Differences
Social Cognition
We all engage in social cognition without even realizing it. It's the background hum of our interactions, processing facial expressions, body language, and all those other social cues that tell us—or mislead us—about what's going on. [13]
A review in Neuropsychologia back in 2012 suggested men are more attuned to threats, while women are more adept at expressing themselves and recognizing others' emotional states. [6] Another meta-analysis, this one from 2014 in Cognition and Emotion, reviewed 215 studies and found a "small overall advantage in favour of females on emotion recognition tasks." [4] And in 2015, two reviews in Emotion Review declared adult women to be more emotionally expressive, [14] [15] though they were quick to add that this difference is highly context-dependent. They identified gender-specific norms, social roles, situational constraints, and emotional intensity as key factors influencing the size of this supposed gap. [15]
Empathy
See also: Sex differences in psychology § Empathy, and Empathy § Sex differences
That 2014 meta-analysis in Cognition and Emotion also noted a female advantage in recognizing non-verbal emotional cues. [4]
A 2014 piece in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews claimed sex differences in empathy are present from birth, grow with age, and remain remarkably stable throughout life. [5] Females, on average, supposedly exhibit higher empathy than males at all ages. Children with higher empathy, regardless of gender, apparently maintain that trait. The researchers pointed to brain activity—specifically, higher ERP waveforms in females when viewing human suffering—as evidence of greater empathetic response. [5] Another study using tools like N400 amplitudes found higher N400 in females in response to social situations, which then correlated with self-reported empathy. [5] Structural fMRI studies even suggested larger grey matter volumes in specific brain regions in females, linked to mirror neurons and correlated with empathy. [5] The connection between emotional and cognitive empathy was also found to be stronger in women. [5] To explain these supposed stable sex differences, they invoked the Primary Caretaker Hypothesis, suggesting that prehistoric males didn't face the same selective pressures as women, leading to divergent emotional responses. [5] It’s all very neat, isn't it?