Is dealing with (other people’s) emotions a women’s skill? A meta-analytic investigation of the gendered nature of emotional intelligence

Abstract: Emotional intelligence (EI), defined as the “ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth” (Mayer & Salovey 1997, p. 5), is a critical competency for effective inclusive leaders, but it has been traditionally and colloquially ascribed to women. Practitioner-focused outlets, like Forbes (Andrews, 2019) have explicitly asked the question whether women possess higher EI ability, and many academic papers also consider gender to be associated with differences in EI (e.g., Fernández-Berrocal, Cabello, Castillo & Extremera, 2012). But is the assumption that EI is higher in female employees credible? Although gender has been extensively researched and theorized about in the broader field of emotions (e.g., Shields, 2002), and initial gendered effects have been found on relevant emotion abilities (e.g., Thompson & Voyer, 2014), EI theorists thus far are uncharacteristically united in their silence about possible gender effects. Furthermore, empirical evidence thus far has proven inconsistent. Leaving the assumption that women are more emotionally intelligent unchecked has potential pitfalls. On the one hand, over-emphasizing and simplifying differences of men and women and their abilities runs the risk of widening gender gaps, as perceived differences often benefit men and disadvantage women at work (e.g., Brescoll, 2016). On the other hand, considering gender differences allows us to enrich EI theory through inclusivity. In our case, gender comparisons highlight the need to differentiate the often-disregarded target of emotion abilities. To address questions of gender difference in emotional intelligence, we conducted a large-scale meta-analysis, using a range of search terms based on previous meta-analytic investigations of EI (e.g., Joseph & Newman, 2010; Miao, Humphrey, & Qian, 2017), combing through 5,616 hits to create a final dataset of 716 studies. We conducted random-effects meta-analyses and meta-regression using the metafor R package (Viechtbauer, 2010). Meta-analytic effect size estimates between emotion abilities and gender can be found in Table 1. The results suggest gender effects on general emotional intelligence, as well as more nuanced and at times inconsistent gender effects across specific emotional abilities. Specifically, we found that women performed better in other-focused compared to self-focused emotional abilities (see Table 2), a distinction that has received little attention in emotional intelligence scholarship. A subgroup analysis comparing the gender difference in emotional intelligence of leader vs. non-leader samples is underway. We hope this analysis will shed light on how the work context shapes the expression of gender differences in emotion ability. Overall, these findings suggest that emotional intelligence theory and research need to better distinguish between self-focused and other-focused abilities and that certain types of measurement of emotional intelligence may have covered up gender differences. These findings are particularly relevant within the context of inclusive leadership, as EI is increasingly important for leaders in the future of work (e.g., Jenkins, 2020; Reilly, 2022), it is imperative to critically examine what we know about gender differences in EI and develop a refined and empirically sound understanding of its implications for both women and men at work. The differences in self- compared to other-focused emotion abilities between men and women is of particular importance as it could result in women facing yet another conundrum at work: Even though women may have similar needs as men to train and expand their self-focused EI abilities, women may be confronted with the idea that they “should” possess higher EI compared to their male colleagues, due to consistently higher scores in other-focused abilities as well as popular belief in women’s higher EI ability. Consequently, the belief that women generally possess higher EI abilities may evolve to become another “emotional minefield” (Brescoll, 2016, 420), in which women must navigate incongruent expectations and outperform their male counterparts to keep up. At the same time, as women tend to be more skilled on other-focused emotion abilities, there may be a danger that female employees become double-burdened at work, expected to not only regulate their own emotions, for example, but also the emotions of their colleagues. In a full presentation, we hope to detail our nuanced findings of gender differences in emotional intelligence, including when no differences emerge. Furthermore, we would further explore the relevance of EI for inclusive leadership, and whether our findings suggest an advantage for women.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, gender, meta-analysis