Women build emotional intelligence through lifelong practice

Women are better than men at recognising, understanding and supporting other people’s feelings, but the advantage appears to come from practice rather than an inborn trait, a study reported by ERR has found.

Researchers analysed test results from more than 600,000 people, collected over nearly 30 years across 76 countries. The difference was specific to understanding and responding to other people’s emotions. Men and women performed equally in recognising and managing their own feelings.

The gap between girls and boys was much smaller than between adult women and men, and the difference between the sexes has steadily narrowed over the past 30 years, the analysis found.

The researchers said upbringing and social habits may help explain the pattern. Parents tend to use a richer vocabulary for emotions with girls and encourage them to share their feelings and notice other people’s moods. Boys, by contrast, are more often taught to suppress their feelings.

As a result, girls may get more opportunities from an early age to practise reading other people’s emotions. The researchers stressed that anyone can develop emotional intelligence, and that men can learn these skills just as successfully as women.

If women’s social skills are treated as an innate trait, the researchers warned, the work they do in families and workplaces can go unnoticed and unpaid instead of being recognised as a valuable skill. Their findings were published by the American Psychological Association.