Jacqueline Fanchini (Reporter)WOMEN are more emotionally intelligent than men according to research based on conversations between Spanish parents and their children.
Psychologists from the University of Surrey say this is due to the emotive language mothers use with their daughters leading to higher emotional fluency in girls aged between four and six than boys.
Leading the study, Dr Harriet Tenenbaum, said: “Our study suggests that parent-child conversations are gendered, with mothers talking more expressively to their daughters than sons.
“This inevitably leads to girls growing up more attuned to their emotions than boys.”
Conversations between 65 families were recorded during two tasks, playing a game and when speaking of a past event.
Fathers used fewer emotive words while mothers used more of them particularly with their daughters and less with their sons who in turn were less emotionally fluent than girls.
Tenebaum and co-author Dr Ana Aznar concluded that this division of language according to gender may unfortunately lead to children learning it is more appropriate for females to discuss emotions which could have a severe impact on children’s later life.
