Are women more Emotionally Intelligent than Men?

Question

From wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence - much more than I have posted if you are interested,

"The first published attempt toward a definition was made by Salovey and Mayer (1990) who defined EI as “the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions”"

There is a fun free test you can take here, though you will need to create an account to do so:

http://web.tickle.com/tests/eiq/

So what do you reckon? Are women more Emotionally Intelligent than Men?

Answer 1

I have no idea, since it's a stereotype that women are more "in tune" with others emotions, but who knows if that's the result of gender or social conditioning? In the past, I think women were socially pressured to please others more than men were, and part of pleasing others, is knowing how others feel, and being able to use this information to make others feel better. Men have been pressured to not show emotion, and have been more pressured to ignore the feelings of others, but that doesn't mean they were unaware of other's feelings.

So until both men and women are encouraged to pay attention to other people's feelings and act on the knowledge, it will be difficult to know if either one is more emotionally intelligent than the other.

btw: I got 131 on the EI test, with an emphasis in empathy...

Answer 2

If you use 'emotionally intelligent' as the ability to ascertain a situation based on emotions, understand what emotions another person is feeling/expressing, have more compassion and/or empathy then I think it is probably an individual thing, not a gender thing. Sometimes women are just more vocal.

I think putting the two words together is kind of dangerous however, because most life decisions should not be made based on emotions, even deciding whom to marry. You would think it should be based on love, but one also has to set feelings aside and consider how compatible you are, if you share the same value system, if you have similar goals and desires out of life...and the list goes on.

Like another answerer said, many stupid and dangerous decisions are made in the name of 'emotions.'

Answer 3

I don't know if we can quantify emotional intelligence but I am also not sure I can quantify an IQ. I came in at 124 and now that I know Katiana is emotionally smarter than me I will never talk to her again. ;) As a rule, women are more in touch with their emotions but knowing when to act on them and when not to is a different question. Overall I would say women get an A and men get an A-

Answer 4

More emotionally nurtured, bordering into emotional natural intelligence. The fact is that contemporary men and women are almost like the original preistorical cavemen, civilization influenced our way of life, not our primal teaching. And in the past men were nurtured to hunt, fight and wander, women were nurtured to stay home, care for childrens and keep the tribe united. They just needed to speak, and to read emotions, and to cool down conflicts.
Then humanity evolved a bit. Men were required to get jobs able to give them riches to support their families, women were required to be pretty and get a rich men. They still needed to enrich their ability to empathy, they were left alone with other women for lots of time, and if in public women were encouraged into being mute companions, in private they were the ones entitled to "social chattings" with other women, and to understand and nurture the responsibility of social conversation. Think at the "balls": today a young girl has lot of occasions to get friends, and eventually find a boy of her linking, in the past occasions were restricted to peculiar occasion in which the prettiest, fairest girl had to be able to show her mind with a few well placed words.
More recently, since someone was still convinced that the parental care were a "female thing", women were encouraged into being teachers and babysitters, so, encouraged to learn how understand and monitor emotions.

The very same achievements could be hit by men, if only we cared more about empathy. But since we keep forcing it on women...

Answer 5

Maybe the majority of us are more emotionally intelligent, not because of innate ability, but because from birth we are socialized or trained to be more emotionally aware and adept. Men have this ability too, but in large part men are discouraged from developing their emotional intelligence. Many men are even bullied out of it--called *******, sissies, and the like if they show any emotion or compassion. So men are often emotionally blocked. But this difference between men and women, where it exists, is more due to nurture than nature.

Answer 6

Possibly.

Being frequently more emotionally expressive and less inhibited in expression than men, they have the opportunity to become more familiar, adept and knowledgeable.
Hence Emotionally Intelligent.

As part of the differing -- but complimentary -- skill sets of the genders, men's in-communicative abilities lay elsewhere ("Situational Intelligence?") for the survival of the species.

As neither genders attributes are any more or less valued than the others overall (except in individual circumstances), does it much matter?

Answer 7

No.

Men's emotional perceptions are not stunted versions of women's emotional perceptions. However, the findings of men's emotional perceptions are often trampled under the hooves of cruder concerns as unimportant matters. E.g., I really don't care about the internal turmoil of that running back I'm trying to tackle, though I see clearly that he's hurting, not merely from the bruise on his thigh, but also because of the recent death of his favorite aunt's husband.

Men see, but (because of the way men are shaped by the world about them) they claim blindness.

Don't be fooled; he knows how you feel. He doesn't feel that way himself, and wouldn't, if the situation were reversed. Therefore he does what seems right to him.



Addendum: 128 on that EQ silliness. I was surprised to see NO two-digit scores among the few hundred posted comments there that I scanned. Smells fishy to me.

Answer 8

I think this is an individual thing that is exclusive of sex. Here is my score.


Phillip, your Emotional IQ is 131.
This number is the result of a formula based on how many questions you answered correctly on Tickle's Emotional IQ test. But your Emotional IQ score is much more than just a number: it's an indicator of success.

Research has shown that people with high emotional intelligence scores — not necessarily those with the highest IQ scores — tend to be the most valued and productive employees and have the longest and happiest romantic relationships.

So, where are you most emotionally smart? Your test results show that your strongest suit is perception — your ability to pick up on what others are feeling.

Because of this, you are unusually good at reading people's verbal and non-verbal cues. You're especially aware of the subtleties of people's actions, and can feel out the vibe of a situation better than many. That gives you and edge many wish they had. People with high perception skills like yours, however, tend to rely on them to the exclusion of others. As a result, they sometimes have underdeveloped abilities in other realms of critical emotional intelligence like managing emotions, empathy, and being expressive.

To truly excel in life and know how to relate to different people, you need to balance out the different kinds of emotional intelligence.

Research indicates that if people who are strong in perception can work to increase their overall emotional IQ score, they can prepare themselves to handle any interpersonal exchange with amazing skill — especially by learning to be empathetic and by being able to express what it is they are feeling or trying to say.

And the good news is that people who try to improve their emotional IQ have far greater success than people who try to improve their IQ.

Answer 9

I don't think so. Perhaps slightly more emotional in their majority, yes, but not necessarily emotionally intelligent, I think that is developed with experience and the choices one makes, so it can apply to both genders.

According to the test, my emotional IQ is 130. Also stated:
"Your test results show that your strongest suit is emotional management — how much you let your emotions affect the world around you..."
I don't disagree, but also think that I control my emotions more often than I should, can be overly rational sometimes, so as in my post for your question on attraction, I am also working on balancing between emotions and logic.

Enjoyed the test, thanks. :-)

Answer 10

Some of us are and I won't allow any emotion to guide me into thinking about going to extremes with this question. There are ALOT of emotionally unstable people in the world.