Experiential EIQ includes being able to recognize emotions to compare them to other sensations and their connection to the thought process.
[11] Using these categories, the test analyzes people's ability to perform tasks and solve emotional problems or situations.
[14] A 2010 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by researchers Dana L. Joseph and Daniel A. Newman found that women scored higher than men by around half a deviation, which amounts to 6–7 points difference.
[16] A 2012 review published in the journal Neuropsychologia found that women are better at recognizing facial effects, expression processing and emotions in general.
[4] A 2014 analysis from the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews also found that there are sex differences in empathy from birth,[5] growing larger with age and which remains consistent and stable across lifespan.
Further analysis of brain tools such as event related potentials found that females who viewed human suffering had higher ERP waveforms than males, an indication of greater empathetic response.
Another investigation with similar brain tools such as N400 amplitudes found higher N400 in females in response to social situations which then positively correlated with self-reported empathy.
According to the hypothesis, prehistoric males did not have the same selective pressure as women and this led to sex differences in emotion recognition and empathy.