What is it about?

Are women more emotionally intelligent than men? We brought together nearly three decades of research to put this common assumption to the test. Our meta-analysis examined 1,279 articles, comprising 1,428 samples and more than 609,000 participants across 76 countries. On average, women scored higher than men in overall emotional intelligence. But that simple conclusion hides a much more interesting story. Gender differences varied depending on the specific emotional ability being assessed, whether the ability involved one's own emotions or other people's emotions, how emotional intelligence was measured, and the context in which it was studied. In particular, women's advantage was stronger for abilities focused on other people's emotions than for abilities focused on their own. Differences were also substantially larger on performance-based tests than on self- or other-report measures. Overall, our findings suggest that asking simply whether women or men are “more emotionally intelligent” misses important differences in what emotional intelligence means and how it is measured.

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Why is it important?

Our findings suggest that gender differences in emotional intelligence are not simply fixed differences between women and men. Instead, they are consistent with the idea that emotional abilities develop, in part, through socialization and the different expectations and opportunities people encounter. For example, gender differences in general emotional intelligence and emotion recognition were smaller among children and adolescents compared to adults. Gender differences also became smaller in more recent studies, with some of these changes occurring more quickly among children than adults. Together with our finding that women’s advantages are larger for abilities involving other people’s emotions, these patterns are consistent with socialization accounts in which girls and women receive more encouragement and practice in attending to, understanding, and responding to others’ emotions. This matters because it shifts the conversation away from assuming that women and men are simply born with different emotional capabilities. Instead, our findings point toward the importance of understanding how social expectations and contexts may help shape the emotional skills people have opportunities to develop and practice.

Perspectives

Emotional intelligence and abilities are skills that can be trained. So instead of thse findings indicating that women are 'better' at certain emotion abilities, instead, I think this work highlights opportunities for all of us to develop emotional skills we may have had less practice using. Women’s largest advantages tended to involve recognizing, understanding, and managing other people’s emotions. When it came to our own emotions, the differences were much smaller. To me, that suggests we could all benefit from putting a little more attention toward recognizing what we’re feeling, understanding where those feelings are coming from, and getting better at managing them. I was also struck by what we found for emotion regulation. There’s a persistent stereotype that women are more emotional and therefore less able to control their emotions. But when emotion regulation was actually tested through performance measures, women performed better than men on average. When people rated their own abilities, that difference disappeared. This distinction is so important, as it shows that confidence about your own abilities (like emotion regulation) doesn't necessarily translate into competence.

Mary Hausfeld
University of Limerick

On average, women score higher in emotional intelligence—but that headline conceals important nuances. First, measurement matters. Women’s advantage is considerably greater in performance-based tests than in self-ratings, where some differences almost vanish. Do women underestimate their abilities, men overestimate theirs—or both? One conclusion is clear: claiming emotional intelligence is not the same as demonstrating it. In hiring and promotion, don’t confuse confidence with competence: test what candidates can do. Second, women’s advantage is strongest when emotional intelligence is directed towards others—recognising, understanding, and regulating their emotions. When it turns inwards, differences shrink, disappear, or reverse: men hold a small average advantage in regulating their own emotions. Women may therefore be better equipped to notice tension, calm conflict, and carry a team’s emotional weight. But capability should not become obligation. Organisations should develop emotional abilities in everyone—and avoid assigning emotional labour based on gender. Finally, these differences are not fixed. They vary across leadership positions, industries, regions, age groups, measurement methods, and time. Average gender differences therefore tell us remarkably little about any individual’s emotional abilities.

Jochen Menges
Universitat Zurich

What I find most interesting about our findings is the nuanced picture that emerges when we look beyond an overall emotional intelligence score. Women showed an average advantage in emotion recognition and understanding, but almost no overall advantage in emotion regulation. Differences were also generally larger for abilities involving others’ emotions and smaller, absent, or even reversed for abilities concerning one’s own emotions. I believe this insight matters far beyond gender differences. Societies and organizations should stop treating emotional intelligence as one general quality and instead consider which specific emotional abilities people need, whose emotions these abilities target, and how they can be developed for different societal and organizational challenges.

Leon Bach
University of Zürich

What I find particularly interesting is that our findings invite us to think about emotional intelligence itself through a gender lens. The way we conceptualize what it means to be “good with emotions” may not be entirely gender-neutral. Emotional intelligence is not simply about dealing with emotions: recognizing or regulating my own emotions is meaningfully different from recognizing or regulating yours. Yet research has often bundled these abilities together, even though the distinction between one’s own and others’ emotions was part of the original idea of emotional intelligence. Our findings show why recovering this distinction matters: the pattern of gender differences changes depending on whose emotions an ability is directed toward. This does not tell us why these differences exist. But it does suggest that gender is not only relevant when we compare who scores higher on emotional intelligence, it can also help us question how we define and study emotional intelligence in the first place.

Vera Hampel
Universitat Zurich

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Putting assumptions to the test: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in emotional intelligence and specific emotion abilities., Emotion, September 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001733.
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