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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Gender differences in emotion perception
and self-reported emotional intelligence: A
test of the emotion sensitivity hypothesis
Agneta H. Fischer
1
*, Mariska E. Kret
2
, Joost Broekens
3
1University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2Leiden University,
Department of Psychology, Leiden, the Netherlands, 3Delft University of Technology, Department of
Intelligent Systems, Delft, the Netherlands
*a.h.fischer@uva.nl
Abstract
Previous meta-analyses and reviews on gender differences in emotion recognition have
shown a small to moderate female advantage. However, inconsistent evidence from recent
studies has raised questions regarding the implications of different methodologies, stimuli,
and samples. In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 par-
ticipants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensi-
tive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous, emotion cues. In addition, we included
a self-report emotional intelligence test in order to examine any discrepancy between self-
perceptions and actual performance for both men and women. We used a wide range of sti-
muli and models, displaying six different emotions at two different intensity levels. In order to
better tap sensitivity for subtle emotion cues, we did not use a forced choice format, but
rather intensity measures of different emotions. We found no support for the emotional sen-
sitivity account, as both genders rated the target emotions as similarly intense at both levels
of stimulus intensity. Men, however, more strongly perceived non-target emotions to be
present than women. In addition, we also found that the lower scores of men in self-reported
EI was not related to their actual perception of target emotions, but it was to the perception
of non-target emotions.
Introduction
The extent to which people are able to correctly perceive emotions on others’ faces has been
regarded as one important ingredient of emotional intelligence [1]. Inferring information
about the other’s thoughts, feelings and intentions is crucial in successful social interactions,
and has for example been related to leadership skills [2,3] and satisfaction with social relation-
ships [4]. Common sense tells us that women have better social skills, and are especially better
at understanding of others’ emotions [5,6,7,8,9]. Indeed, research has shown that women
often score higher on emotional intelligence or empathy tests than men, especially, but not
only [10], if measured through self-reports, such as the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 1 / 19
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OPEN ACCESS
Citation: Fischer AH, Kret ME, Broekens J (2018)
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-
reported emotional intelligence: A test of the
emotion sensitivity hypothesis. PLoS ONE 13(1):
e0190712. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.
pone.0190712
Editor: Gilles van Luijtelaar, Radboud Universiteit,
NETHERLANDS
Received: March 8, 2017
Accepted: December 19, 2017
Published: January 25, 2018
Copyright: ©2018 Fischer et al. This is an open
access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are
available in the paper, its Supporting Information
files, and at OSF (https://osf.io/wt23z/).
Funding: The authors received no funding for this
work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared
that no competing interests exist.
[11]) the Empathy Quotient [12], the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) [13], or emotional
awareness (LEAS)[14,15].
One would expect that these beliefs and scores on self-report tests also reflect actual differ-
ences in emotion recognition performance, but there is debate on the question whether
women outperform men on actual performance tests, for example in the recognition of emo-
tions from the face. Although previous reviews and meta-analyses [16,17,18] have shown a
small to moderate female advantage, recent studies have not always replicated this difference,
leading to discussions about the extent to which and the circumstances in which women
would outperform men, and how this should be explained [19]. Several explanations have
been advanced, such as the idea that women would be particularly better in recognizing emo-
tions from female faces, or that women would be better in recognizing only stereotypical
female emotions [20,21,22]. These have all received minimal support. One alternative expla-
nation that has been advanced for the inconsistencies in previous studies is the nature of the
stimuli: women would be particularly better in recognizing subtle emotions, such as when the
emotion is less intense or prototypical [21]. This implies that women would be more sensitive
to subtle cues of emotional expressions. We refer to this explanation as the emotional sensitivity
hypothesis [23,24]. We argue that this sensitivity can be better tapped with an emotional inten-
sity profile task rather than a categorization task.
The present paper reports a test of the emotional sensitivity hypothesis in a large commu-
nity sample, including six emotions, displayed at different levels of prototypicality and inten-
sity. In addition, we also explore the relation between self-reported emotional intelligence (EI)
and actual emotion perception performance. Although some studies have combined EI and
emotion perception tasks [25], research to date has to our knowledge rarely combined self-per-
ception and actual emotion perception when examining gender differences.
Gender differences in facial emotion recognition
There is an abundance of research on sex differences in emotion recognition. Several meta-
analyses on gender differences in nonverbal decoding have shown that women are superior
in decoding emotions than are men [16,17,18]. Of the studies included in these meta-anal-
yses, 80% show a female advantage, although differences were small to moderate. Different
explanations have been proposed for this female advantage in nonverbal recognition. Many
of these explanations are distal [26,27], referring to the different social roles and accompa-
nying status positions of men and women, or the biological competence of women to
read others’ emotions. Since these early meta-analyses, several new studies have been pub-
lished [19], testing more proximate explanations, related to different modes of emotional
processing in the brain (see e.g [28,29,30]), different error ratings [31], attention to the
eyes [32], the different facial features of male and female faces, and related emotion attribu-
tions [33,34], and the nature, presentation length and intensity of the stimulus materials
[35,23,24].
In the current research, we test what we have referred to as the ‘emotional sensitivity
hypothesis’, focusing on gender differences in the perception of a profile of emotion intensi-
ties. Previous research on gender differences in emotion recognition has mostly used a catego-
rization task, in which participants have to choose the correct emotion on the face. These
measures thus involve an all or none rating and have shown small to moderate effects, support-
ing the general idea that the ability to categorize emotions on others’ faces is a prerequisite for
smooth social interactions [36] for both men and women. However, the fact that women more
often have social-emotional roles or tasks, both with regard to child care, and romantic rela-
tions, as well as in organizations, could imply that they are more focused on and motivated to
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 2 / 19
detect subtle cues of emotions. Therefore, the difference between men and women could be
more pronounced when studying the perception of subtler emotional signals.
The emotional sensitivity hypothesis states that women are more sensitive to subtle cues,
which implies that they perceive the intended emotion as more intense, but only when the
cues are subtle or low intense. This explanation has received support in previous studies exam-
ining gender differences in emotion recognition, and suggests that men and women may not
differ in recognizing clear, prototypical emotions, but that women are more sensitive to emo-
tional refinements and thus only have an advantage in perceiving less intense, or less prototyp-
ical emotion expressions [23,24]. For example, authors in [23] tested gender differences in
emotional faces with different intensities. In two experiments, they found that there were no
gender differences in the recognition of emotional faces with most extreme intensity, whereas
gender differences were found for lower level intensities. In addition, others [24] provided par-
ticipants with short videos of morphed faces, starting with neutral (0% emotion) and ending
with 100% emotion (including 6 different emotions). Participants had to label the emotion
they perceived (accuracy task) and next, they had to indicate when they started seeing the emo-
tion (sensitivity task). The results showed that women were better both in the accurate label-
ing, particularly of sadness and surprise and they were quicker in detecting anger and disgust.
Whereas both these studies included different intensities of emotion, and thus allowed a
test of emotional sensitivity, they also used categorical recognition with a forced-choice para-
digm. This response format may be less suitable to detect whether men and women differ in
their perception of subtle emotions. Indeed, results in [31] showed participants stimulus faces
(from JACFEE: 56 expressions of 7 emotions) with different presentation length and then
compared intensity ratings of the correct (target) emotion and the incorrect (non-target) emo-
tion, rather than using a categorical response option. Their results showed that women judged
the target emotion as being more present on the face, and the non-target emotion as less pres-
ent than did men. This was the case for disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise. Interestingly,
no gender differences in the ratings of non-target emotions were found. In a second study,
shorter presentation times were used (70ms, 130ms, 200ms), which showed that women were
overall better than men, only when the presence of different emotions could be rated (scalar
ratings), and not when they had to select just one emotion. No interaction between the speed
of presentation and gender was found, thus women performed better than men in all three
presentation times. Again, women more often rated the target emotions as present, and the
non-target emotions as absent, compared to men.
Together, the results of these studies are puzzling and partly contradict each other. Whereas
[23] found that women are better in identifying less intense emotions, this was not replicated
in [31], where different presentation times and intensity ratings were used. This discrepancy
could be due to a ceiling effect, but also to the fact that more fine-grained response options
were used in the latter study. The fact that women more often perceived the target emotion to
be present than men may further suggest that women are better in distinguishing the intended
emotion, among other emotional cues. This difference would become less visible in a forced-
choice categorization task than in an emotion intensity profile task where participants have to
rate the intensity of several different emotions, which allows the detection of more subtle dif-
ferences between men and women. In response to the authors’ call for a replication of their
findings [31], we test the emotional sensitivity hypothesis by including stimuli of different pro-
totypicality (icons, avatars and human faces), and displaying six emotions with two different
intensity levels. We used multiple intensity rating scales, tapping into the perceived intensity
profile of different emotions (emotion intensity profile task), which also allows the examina-
tion of gender differences in the perception of emotion intensity profiles.
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 3 / 19
Relation between self-perception and ability
As noted above, the stereotype that women are the more emotional sex, but also the belief that
women are better in dealing with their own and others’ emotions is a prevalent stereotype in
the Western world [12]. This stereotype also influences self-perceptions, and indeed, most
research on self-reported measures of emotional intelligence (EI), interpersonal sensitivity or
empathy shows that women perceive themselves to be more emotional intelligent, interperson-
ally sensitive and empathic [37]. The question is, whether these perceptions reflect their actual
performance, or whether they are merely based on self-stereotypes, which would suggest that
we should not trust such self-reports.
There are two research lines in EI research, one advocating an ability model [1], and the
other a mixed model, which consider EI as a combination of personality, affect, and a reflec-
tion on one’s skills to deal with emotions. This latter model is often considered as an umbrella
construct, and is generally measured with self-report questionnaires [38]. However, it has been
seriously criticized as flawed and lacking strong empirical support [39]. Despite the fact that
self-reports may not reflect the truth about one’s emotional abilities, we believe that such self-
perceptions are important to study, either when they show a discrepancy or coherence with
actual performance. A previous meta-analysis on the relationship between intelligence and
interpersonal sensitivity [40] for example, has shown a small-to-medium effect between com-
parable constructs. To date, there is no research to our knowledge that has examined gender
difference in self-reported EI, as well as emotion perception performance in one study. The
question is what the sources of such self-perceptions are, and how and when they are influ-
enced by actual abilities. In the present study, we expect that there will be a correlation between
EI and the performance on an emotion perception test, because the ability to perceive and
understand others’ emotions can form the input, as well as the consequence of one’s self-per-
ception of emotional intelligence.
Current research
The current study tests the emotional sensitivity hypothesis of gender differences in emotion
perception in a large community sample. We hypothesize that women are better than men at
perceiving subtle, i.e. less intense and less prototypical emotions, independently of gender of
the target or the type of emotion (Hypothesis 1a). We further hypothesize that women perceive
target emotions (i.e. the intended emotions) as more intense than men, whereas we do not
expect gender difference in perceiving the intensity of non-target emotions (Hypothesis 1b).
In addition, we hypothesize that women believe they are better at dealing with and recognizing
emotions, as reflected in a higher score on a self-reported EI test [3] (Hypothesis 2). Finally, we
hypothesize that self-reported EI, in interaction with gender should predict the perception of
target emotions, but not the perception of non-target emotions (Hypothesis 3).
Materials and methods
Participants and design
Six thousand hundred and two participants filled out an on-line questionnaire. We first
removed all participants (N = 12) who indicated a 1 or 2 on a 7-point scale measuring self-
reported seriousness in participating in the experiment. In addition, we excluded all partici-
pants who had not finished the tasks (N = 218), resulting in a total of 5872 (31.9% male;
M
age
= 44.76, SD = 14.84, 97.5% had Dutch as their primary language). The study was granted
permission by the Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 4 / 19
The study had a 2 (Gender respondent: male, female) by 2 (Intensity: low, high) by 3
(Abstraction: human face, computer generated face, drawn iconic face) by 2 Cognitive Load
(yes, no) between-subjects design. Thus, participants saw six emotions (happiness, sadness,
anger, surprise, fear, and disgust) at only one intensity level and of one type of abstraction.
Furthermore, each participant saw four pictures of each emotion, i.e. 24 pictures in total (see
Stimuli for a more elaborate description). We do not report the effects of Cognitive Load here,
as this was included for exploratory reasons. This factor did not affect any of the dependent
variables, nor did it interact with any of the other factors. The emotion intensity profile task
task consisted of rating the intensity of different emotions per face.
Procedure
The study was part of a cooperation between Dutch television (NTR and VPRO) and two uni-
versities (University of Amsterdam and Delft University). Participants were recruited through
science programs on television and on the website of the respective broadcasting companies.
On the site the research was referred to as a study on social skills and a short description of the
overall aim of the research was provided. Interested participants were directed to the question-
naire. Participants participated out of free choice. The study used a web-based tool, NetQ, to
present the materials. Participants were first asked to fill in an informed consent form and
some demographics. Then, they were presented with various facial expressions in counterbal-
anced ordering (counterbalance between subjects). Each face was presented as long as the sub-
ject wanted and the subject could then rate the extent to which they thought each of the 6
emotions was present in the face. A 6-point rating scale ranging from 0 (not present) to 5
(strongly present) was used, reflecting a judgement of perceived intensity of each of the emo-
tions. This resulted in six ratings for each of the 24 faces. The study took approximately 20
minutes. Subjects could also click the option ‘no emotion present’.
Materials
We included 6 emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. Each emotion
was shown by 4 different models (2 male, 2 female), and thus each participant rated the inten-
sity of six emotion labels for emotions expressed by 24 models (see S1 Instructions and Ques-
tionnaires). Three different types of stimuli were used as a between-subjects factor, varying in
abstraction. The human faces were stills taken from short clips from a previously validated
database of human facial expressions, the ADFES [41]. The computer generated faces (avatars)
were stills taken from animations from a set of previously validated expressions based on
FACS [42], developed by one of the researchers (JB). The iconic facial expressions were drawn
by one of the researchers in the project, based on general FACS guidelines. Generation of these
three sets of stimuli was independent, i.e., none of the researchers was involved in the genera-
tion of one of the other sets. The different intensity levels were constructed by manipulating
the intensity of the most prototypical action unit for each emotion (AU12, smile for happiness;
AU4, frown for anger; AU1and4, and AU14, mouth corner lowering for sadness; AU9, nose
wrinkles for disgust; AU1, 2 and 5, eye widening and raised eyebrows for surprise). These
action units were either depicted as more intense, as in the case of the icons, or manipulated
stronger, as in the case of the avatars. In the case of the human pictures, we took stills from
short film clips that started with neutral and ended with a full-blown emotion (apex). The low
intensity stills were taken from an earlier frame in the video clip than the high intensity stills
(see S1 Exemplar stimuli). The avatars and icons used different intensities of the prototypical
action units (e.g., a stronger frown in the anger display).
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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In addition to the emotion perception task, we included a self-report Emotional Intelligence
questionnaire developed by [10] in order to explore its relation with actual performance. The
33-item measure has a good internal test-retest reliability and has shown to correlate with
other constructs related to EI, including alexithymia, attention to feelings, clarity of feelings,
mood repair, optimism, impulse control and mental health [25,43].
We added 5 items to this questionnaire that would directly tap into the self-reported ability
to recognize specific emotions, namely ‘I do not always know how others feel’ (reverse coded);
‘I immediately notice when someone is irritated’; ‘I always pay more attention to what people
say than how they look’ (reverse coded); ‘I often see when people have experienced something
sad’; ‘I can tell from someone’s face if he or she is nervous’. We also included the Sense of
Power scale [44], but due to space constraints, we do not report the effects here. Readers who
are interested in this, can contact the author. Finally, we asked participants how seriously they
had been in filling in the questionnaire. In order to control for possible priming effects, the
sequence of questionnaires and face ratings was counterbalanced, with half of the respondents
first filling in the questionnaires and the other half first rating the faces.
Results
We analyzed the data with SPSS, version 22. We first examined whether male and female par-
ticipants were equally serious in their engagement in the task. Female participants were slightly
more serious (M= 6.42, SE = .012) than male participants (M= 6.37; SE = .017), F(1, 5870) =
5.307, p= .021, η
2
= .001. If we only select the condition for the human faces (and exclude the
avatars and icons conditions), the difference becomes non-significant, F(1, 2053) = 2.113,
p= .146.
Intensity ratings of target and non-target emotions at different levels of
abstraction and intensity
We first computed ‘target’ and ‘non-target’ emotion indices for each emotion (e.g., the per-
ceived intensity of sadness for a sad face was calculated as the target emotion intensity, whereas
the average perceived intensity of all non-target emotions—happiness, fear, anger, surprise
and disgust in the case of sadness—was computed as the non-target emotion intensity). So, the
target emotion rating is operationalized as the perceived intensity of the intended emotion dis-
play, and the non-target emotion rating is the average perceived intensity of the non-intended
emotion displays. This was calculated across male and female models.
We first conducted an ANOVA with Gender, Abstraction, and Intensity as factors on target
emotion ratings. We found no main effect of Gender, F(1, 5860) = 1.96, p= .161, nor any
interaction effects with Gender (all F’s <2.83). We found a significant effect of Intensity, F(1,
5860) = 636.960, p<.0001, η
2
= .049, and of Abstraction, F(1, 5860) = 302.825, p<.0001,
η
2
= .046. (We also found a significant interaction between Intensity and Abstraction, F(1,
5860) = 58.353, <.0001, η
2
= .009, which is of no further interest for this paper). The means
(see Table 1) show that high intensity faces are rated as more intense, and that human faces are
rated as more intense than icons, which are rated as more intense than avatars. We also con-
ducted an ANOVA with Gender, Abstraction, and Intensity as factors on non-target emotion
ratings. We found a significant main effect of Gender, F(1, 5860) = 75.512, p<.0001, η
2
=
.011, an interaction with Abstraction, F(1, 5860) = 3.952, p= .019, η
2
= .001, but not the
expected interaction with intensity, F(1, 5860) = .000, p= .996. We further found a main effect
of Intensity, F(1, 5860) = 53.587, p<.0001, η
2
= .008, and a main effect of Abstraction, F(1,
5860) = 182.984, p<.0001, η
2
= .057. We did not find an interaction between Intensity and
Abstraction, F(1, 5860) = .479, p= .62. Post-hoc tests show that men rate the non-target
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 6 / 19
emotions as more intense than women in human faces, F(1, 2054) = 76.271, p<.0001, η
2
=
.031, in avatars F(1, 1893) = 17.785, p<.0001, η
2
= .009, and in icons, F(1, 1919) = 9.919, p=
.002, η
2
= .005 (see Table 1 for the means).
Different intensity ratings per emotion for human faces
Because the largest gender differences were found for human stimuli, and because previous
research is largely based on human faces, we further focus on human faces for the subsequent
analyses (N= 2055).
An ANOVA with Gender and Intensity on target ratings, showed no effect of Gender,
F(1, 2051) = 1.967, p= 1.61, and no significant interaction, F(1, 2051) = 1.641, p= .200, but
an effect of Intensity, F(1, 2051) = 545.252, p<.0001, η
2
= .209. A similar ANOVA on the
non-target ratings showed a main effect of Gender, F(1, 2051) = 66.597, p<.0001, η
2
= .031,
an effect of Intensity, F(1, 2051) = 20.619, p<.0001, η
2
= .010, and again no significant inter-
action, F(1, 2051) = .424, p= .515. In other words, the absence of interactions between inten-
sity and gender implies that gender differences in perceiving target emotions were not larger
for less intense emotions.
Target emotions. In order to examine whether the intensity rating of target and non-tar-
get emotions is different for the type of emotion, we first examined whether male and female
models were differently perceived, by performing a repeated measure ANOVA on the target
emotions displayed by male versus female models. There was a significant difference, F(1,
2053) = 106.681, p<.0001, η
p2
= .049, with female models (M= 3.644, SE = .027, whose
expressions were rated as more intense than those of male models M= 3.505, SE = .028, how-
ever, this was not qualified by a difference between male and female participants, F(1, 2053) =
.000, p= .995.
We then conducted a MANOVA with Gender and Intensity on the six target emotions. We
found a main effect of Gender, F(6, 2042) = 2.71, p= .013, η
p2
= .008. The univariate analyses
(see Table 2) show that the Gender effect is only significant for disgust and fear, with women
rating both emotions as more intense than men (see Table 3 for the Means and Standard
Errors). We further found an effect for Intensity, F(6, 2042) = 319.849, p<.0001, η
p2
= .484,
showing that all high intense emotion displays were more often perceived as target emotions
than all low intense emotion displays (anger: F(1, 2051) = 165.444, p<.0001, η
p2
= .075,
fear: F(1, 2051) = 196.742, p<.0001, η
p2
= .088; disgust: F(1, 2051) = 20.368, p<.0001, η
p2
=
.010; happiness: F(1, 2051) = 1388.481, p<.0001, η
p2
= .404; sadness: F(1, 2051) = 46.186,
Table 1. Mean (and standard error) of the perceived intensity of target and non-target emotions.
Target Non-Target
Abstraction Men Women Men Women
N = 1873 N = 3999 N = 1873 N = 3999
Human (N = 2055)
High intense (N = 1071) 3.90 (.039) 3.99 (.026) .47 (.019) .33 (.013)
Low intense (N = 984) 3.16 (.039) 3.16 (.028) .54 (.020) .41 (.014)
Avatar (N = 1894)
High intense (N = 968) 3.22 (.040) 3.22 (.028) .46 (.028) .38 (.020)
Low intense (N = 926) 2.80 (.041) 2.73 (.028) .56 (.029) .50 (.020)
Icon (N = 1923)
High intense (N = 981) 3.56 (.041) 3.63 (.027) .50 (.029) .42 (.019)
Low intense (N = 942) 3.29 (.041) 3.36 (.028) .50 (.029) .39 (.020)
Total (N = 5872) 3.32 (.016) 3.35 (.011) .47 (.012) .36 (.008)
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t001
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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p<.0001, η
p2
= .022; surprise: F(1, 2051) = 581.378, p<.0001, η
p2
= .221), but no interaction
between Gender and Intensity was found, F(6, 2042) = 1.046, p= .393.
Non-target emotions. We conducted a similar analysis for all non-target emotions. We
again found a significant main effect for Gender, F(6, 2046) = 165.446, p<.0001, η
p2
= .039,
and an effect for Intensity, F(6, 2042) = 42.598, p<.0001, η
p2
= .111, but no interaction
between Gender and Intensity, F(6, 2042) = 1.006, p= .420. The univariate analyses (Table 2)
show that both the Gender and Intensity main effects were significant for all emotions (see
Table 3 for the means and SE): Low intense emotion displays were more often perceived as
non-target emotions, and men overall perceived non-target emotions as more intense than did
women. Table 4 further reports the ‘confusions’, which in this case implies perceiving traces of
other emotions on a face. For example, people also see some anger in disgust faces and vice
versa, and they see some fear in surprise faces and vice versa. In addition, the intensity of emo-
tions that are perceived on a face is clearly valence based: we generally do not perceive a lot of
happiness in faces displaying negative emotions, nor the other way around.
In order to further analyze whether specific non-target emotions were rated as more intense
by men than women, we conducted six separate MANOVAs with Gender and Intensity as fac-
tors and all non-target emotions per emotion display as dependent measure. Here we will
report only the main effects of Gender and its interaction with Intensity (univariate effects
are reported in Table 5 and other statistics in Table 6). For the anger displays, we found a
Table 2. Univariate statistics for target and non-target emotions.
Factor Emotion Univariate F p η
p2
Target Emotions
Gender anger 2.452 .118 .001
disgust 5.469 .019 .003
Fear 3.844 .050 .002
happiness .312 .577 .000
sadness .550 .458 .000
surprise .096 .757 .000
Intensity anger 165.446 .000 .075
disgust 20.368 .000 .010
fear 196.742 .000 .088
happiness 1388.481 .000 .404
sadness 46.186 .000 .022
surprise 581.378 .000 .221
Non-Target Emotions
Gender anger 59.670 .000 .028
disgust 78.359 .000 .037
fear 35.502 .000 .017
happiness 29.548 .000 .014
sadness 40.142 .000 .019
surprise 35.759 .000 .017
Intensity anger 36.087 .000 .017
disgust 23.599 .000 .011
fear 5.197 .023 .003
happiness 91.602 .000 .043
sadness 3.759 .053 .002
surprise 32.411 .000 .016
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t002
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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Table 3. Means. SE and CI of intensity ratings of target emotions and non-target emotions split by emotion display and gender.
Emotion Display Gender Mean SE 95% Confidence Interval
Lower Bound Upper Bound
Target Emotions
Anger male 3.912 .038 3.839 3.986
female 3.990 .026 3.939 4.041
Disgust male 3.461 .044 3.376 3.547
female 3.589 .030 3.530 3.647
Fear male 2.477 .052 2.375 2.580
female 2.610 .036 2.539 2.681
Happiness male 3.727 .045 3.639 3.816
female 3.771 .031 3.710 3.832
Sadness male 3.892 .039 3.815 3.968
female 3.864 .027 3.811 3.917
Surprise male 3.736 .047 3.643 3.828
female 3.736 .033 3.672 3.800
Non-Target Emotions
Anger male .410 .017 .376 .444
female .248 .012 .224 .271
Disgust male .585 .018 .549 .621
female .388 .013 .364 .413
Fear male 1.018 .021 .977 1.059
female .866 .014 .837 .894
Happiness male .146 .009 .128 .164
female .086 .006 .074 .098
Sadness male .481 .018 .445 .517
female .339 .013 .314 .364
Surprise male .396 .015 .366 .426
female .285 .010 .265 .306
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t003
Table 4. Confusion matrix: Means and standard errors for all emotion displays (lines) and intensity ratings (columns).
Intensity ratings
Anger Disgust Fear Happy Sad Surprise
Displays M F M F M F M F M F M F
Anger .605
.032
.380
.022
.371
.023
.219
.016
.071
.010
.053
.007
.562
.028
.359
.019
.449
.027
.246
.019
Disgust 1.530
.047
1.115
.032
.370
.023
.232
.016
.044
.007
.031
.005
.570
.027
.361
.019
.418
.024
.218
.017
Fear 1.949
.031
1.914
.021
1.002
.043
0.795
.029
.076
.009
.036
.006
2.099
.056
2.173
.037
2.393
.057
2.216
.038
Happy .067
.009
.041
.006
.080
.009
.036
.006
.144
.013
.098
.009
.201
.015
.148
.010
.245
.017
.119
.012
Sad .704
.034
.559
.023
.424
.023
.207
.016
.799
.036
.651
.025
.041
.007
.021
.005
.432
.026
.254
.018
Surprise .181
.015
.118
.010
.212
.015
.111
.011
.829
.035
.688
.024
.482
.026
.356
.018
.285
.018
.165
.013
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t004
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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Table 5. Univariate effects for all non-target emotions per emotion display.
Displays Factors Non-target Emotion F p η
p2
Anger Gender fear 30.993 .000 .015
happiness 2.206 .138 .001
surprise 38.402 .000 .018
sadness 36.945 .000 .018
disgust 33.126 .000 .016
Intensity fear 14.094 .000 .007
happiness 1.529 .216 .001
surprise 54.621 .000 .026
sadness 44.384 .000 .021
disgust 3.189 .074 .002
Fear Gender anger 30.317 .000 .015
happiness 13.428 .000 .007
surprise 17.296 .000 .008
sad 17.337 .000 .008
disgust 9.712 .002 .005
Intensity anger 77.487 .000 .036
happiness 19.867 .000 .010
surprise 60.514 .000 .029
sad .050 .822 .000
disgust 93.203 .000 .043
Sadness Gender anger 12.418 .000 .006
fear 11.140 .001 .005
surprise 32.216 .000 .015
happiness 5.793 .016 .003
disgust 62.206 .000 .029
Intensity_ anger .420 .517 .000
fear 18.018 .000 .009
surprise .485 .486 .000
happiness 4.861 .028 .002
disgust 3.616 .057 .002
Happiness Gender anger 5.951 .015 .003
fear 9.413 .002 .005
surprise 37.159 .000 .018
sad 8.445 .004 .004
disgust 17.647 .000 .009
Intensity anger 39.374 .000 .019
fear 42.532 .000 .020
surprise 12.475 .000 .006
sad 126.837 .000 .058
disgust 53.364 .000 .025
(Continued)
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 10 / 19
significant main effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) = 12.55, p<.0001, η
p2
= .008, and of Intensity, F
(5, 2042) = 18.79, p<.0001, η
p2
= .484, but no interaction between Gender and Intensity, F(5,
2042) = 0.498, p= .778. Men rated all negative non-target emotions as more intense than
women. For the disgust displays, we found a significant main effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) =
17.96, p<.0001, η
p2
= .042, and of Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 25.61, p<.0001, η
p2
= .059, and an
interaction between Gender and Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 2.71, p= .019, η
p2
= .007. Men rated
all negative non-target emotions as more intense than women. For the fear displays, we found
a significant main effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) = 9.15, p<.0001, η
p2
= .143, and of Intensity, F
(5, 2042) = 70.02, p<.0001, η
p2
= .146, but again no interaction between Gender and Inten-
sity, F(5, 2042) = 1.64, p= .147. Men rated all non-target emotions as more intense than
women. For the happy displays, we found a significant main effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) =
8.95, p<.0001, η
p2
= .021, and of Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 27.92, p<.0001, η
p2
= .064, and no
interaction between Gender and Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 1.76, p= .118. Men rated all non-tar-
get emotions as more intense than women. For the sad displays, we found a significant main
effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) = 13.39, p<.0001, η
p2
= .032, and of Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 6.54,
p<.0001, η
p2
= .016, but no interaction between Gender and Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 1.88, p=
.094. Men rated all non-target emotions as more intense than women. Finally, for the surprise
displays, we found a significant main effect of Gender, F(5, 2047) = 8.96, p<.0001, η
p2
= .021,
and of Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 28.15, p<.0001, η
p2
= .064, and again no interaction between
Table 5. (Continued)
Displays Factors Non-target Emotion F p η
p2
Disgust Gender fear 24.422 .000 .012
happiness 2.222 .136 .001
surprise 46.228 .000 .022
sad 39.346 .000 .019
Anger 53.793 .000 .026
Intensity fear .615 .433 .000
happiness .230 .632 .000
surprise 9.812 .002 .005
sad 25.532 .000 .012
anger 73.651 .000 .035
Gender Intensity fear 2.099 .148 .001
happiness 2.151 .143 .001
surprise 7.389 .007 .004
sad .547 .460 .000
anger .631 .427 .000
Surprise Gender anger 12.305 .000 .006
fear 10.840 .001 .005
sad 29.674 .000 .014
happiness 16.093 .000 .008
disgust 29.261 .000 .014
Intensity anger 22.668 .000 .011
fear 67.661 .000 .032
sad 55.250 .000 .026
happiness 11.415 .001 .006
disgust 2.407 .121 .001
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t005
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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Table 6. Means, standard errors, and CI for all non-target emotions per emotion display, split by gender.
Anger Displays 95% Confidence Interval
Gender Mean SE Lower Bound Upper Bound
Fear male .371 .023 .327 .416
female .219 .016 .189 .250
Happiness male .071 .010 .052 .090
female .053 .007 .040 .067
Surprise male .449 .027 .396 .502
female .246 .019 .209 .282
Sadness male .562 .028 .508 .616
female .359 .019 .322 .396
Disgust male .605 .032 .542 .668
female .380 .022 .337 .423
Disgust Displays
Anger male 1.530 .047 1.439 1.621
female 1.115 .032 1.052 1.178
Fear male .370 .023 .325 .415
female .232 .016 .201 .263
Happiness male .044 .007 .030 .059
female .031 .005 .021 .041
Sadness male .570 .027 .516 .624
female .361 .019 .324 .398
Surprise male .418 .024 .371 .466
female .218 .017 .186 .251
Fear Displays
Anger male 1.006 .035 .938 1.074
female .775 .024 .729 .822
Happiness male .085 .008 .068 .101
female .047 .006 .036 .059
Surprise male 2.893 .051 2.792 2.994
female 2.633 .035 2.564 2.702
Sadness male .621 .029 .563 .678
female .471 .020 .432 .511
Disgust male .928 .039 .853 1.004
female .782 .027 .730 .834
Sadness Displays
Anger male .704 .034 .638 .771
female .559 .023 .513 .605
Fear male .799 .036 .727 .870
female .651 .025 .602 .700
Surprise male .432 .026 .381 .483
female .254 .018 .219 .288
Happiness male .041 .007 .028 .055
female .021 .005 .012 .030
Disgust male .424 .023 .379 .468
female .207 .016 .177 .238
Happiness Displays
Anger Male .067 .009 .050 .084
Female .041 .006 .030 .053
(Continued)
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 12 / 19
Gender and Intensity, F(5, 2042) = 2.11, p= .062. Men rated all non-target emotions as more
intense than women.
No emotion ratings. We also conducted an ANOVA on the frequency with which male
and female participants had marked the ‘no emotion’ option. We found a main effect of Gen-
der, F(1, 2051) = 11.071, p= .001, η
2
= .006, and of Intensity, F(1, 2051) = 27.52, p<.0001,
η
2
= .013, and no interaction. F(1, 2051) = 2.148, p= .143. The means show that men (M=
.878, SE = .046) more often think there is no emotion to be perceived than do women (M=
.686, SE = .032). In addition, low intensity displays more often are perceived as showing no
emotion (M= .930, SE = .040) than high intensity displays (M= .635, SE = .039).
Bayesian statistics. In order to test whether the null hypothesis, indicating an absence of
gender differences in perception of target, non-target and no-emotions would be more likely
than the alternative hypothesis, we conducted Bayesian t-tests. In contrast with frequentist
approaches where a hypothesis is rejected on the basis of the p-value, Bayesian testing provides
the ratio of likelihoods, given the null hypothesis versus the alternative hypothesis. In other
words, this approach gives answer to the question how likely it is that there are no gender dif-
ferences versus there are. The so-called Bayes factors represent this likelihood. Here, the Bayes
factors were respectively BF
01
= 4.307 (target emotions), BF
01
= 369.726 (non-target emotions),
and BF
01
= 195.5 (no-emotions), all indicating substantial evidence for the null hypothesis, in
this case, the absence of a gender difference [45].
Emotional intelligence as predictor of emotion perception
For the respondents who only rated the human faces, we first calculated the reliability of the EI
scale with (Cronbach’s α= .912) and without the additional 5 items (Cronbach’s α= .866).
Because there were no differences between the analyses with the extended EI test and the
original one, we used the original test in the subsequent analyses. (An ANOVA with Gender
on the extended EI test also showed that women had small, but significantly, higher EI scores
(M= 5.16, SE = .017) than men (M= 4.82; SE = .025), F(1, 2026) = 123.46, p<.0001). An
ANOVA with Gender showed that women had significantly higher EI scores (M= 4.91, SE =
.016) than men (M= 4.64; SE = .023), F(1, 2049) = 90.26, p<.0001, η
2
= .04. Applying Bayes-
ian statistics in order to test the reliability of the null hypothesis, shows a Bayes factor of BF
01
=
1.161, implying only anecdotal evidence for the null hypothesis.
We then conducted a multiple regression analysis with EI, Gender and the Interaction term
as predictors of the total of target ratings across emotions as the dependent variable. Assump-
tions of multicollinearity and homoscedasticity were met. The results show that the model is
significant (F(3, 2047) = 12.791, p<.0001, adjusted R
2
= .017). None of the predictors were
significant (Gender: unstandardized β= -.220; SE = .284; t= -.776, p= .438; EI: unstandardized
β= .088; SE = .096; t= .918, p= .358; Interaction: unstandardized β= .047; SE = .057; t= .833,
Table 6. (Continued)
Disgust Male .080 .009 .063 .097
Female .036 .006 .025 .48
Fear Male .144 .013 .120 .169
Female .098 .009 .081 .115
Sadness Male .201 .015 .171 .230
Female .148 .010 .127 .168
Surprise Male .245 .017 .211 .278
Female .119 .012 .096 .124
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712.t006
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
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p= .405). We also conducted a similar regression with the non-target ratings as the dependent
measure. Here, the assumption of homoscedasticity was not met, which makes the analysis
unreliable. The results show that the model is significant (F(3, 2047) = 23.721, p<.0001,
adjusted R
2
= .032). Here, EI is a significant predictor (unstandardized β= .087; SE = .042;
t= 2.057, p= .040), as well as its interaction with Gender, unstandardized β= -.053; SE = .025;
t= -2.111, p= .035, whereas Gender is not (unstandardized β= -.123 (SE = .125); t= .988,
p= .323). These findings indicate that none of the factors predicts the perception of target
emotions intensity, whereas the perception of non-target emotions is predicted by both EI and
its interaction with gender. However, we should note that the residuals in this regression equa-
tion are not equally distributed.
Discussion
The present study tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis in a large communal sample.
This hypothesis poses that women are not generally better in the detection of emotions on the
face, but would be especially better in the perception of target emotions in low intensity and
less prototypical emotion displays, whereas no or fewer gender differences would be found for
highly intense and prototypical emotion displays. In addition, we tested whether participants’
self-perceived emotional intelligence could explain their emotion perception ratings. The sti-
muli included a variety of human and non-human faces, displaying six different emotions,
with two levels of intensity and posed by both male and female models. These features enabled
us to reach reliable conclusions regarding gender differences in emotion perception, a long-
standing issue of interest and debate in emotion research. More specifically, we did not use a
categorization task, but an emotion intensity profile task (see also [46]), focusing on the per-
ceived intensity of several different emotions.
We did not find any empirical support for gender differences in the perceived intensity of
the target emotion displays, either on human faces, avatars or icons, nor in interaction with
the intensity of the emotion display. Both men and women generally perceived low intense
emotions to be less intense than highly intense emotions, and this applied to the stimuli at
all abstraction levels (humans, avatars, icons). Thus, the emotional sensitivity hypothesis was
not supported. This applied to the perception of target as well as non-target emotions (e.g.,
perceived intensity of anger on a sad face). In addition, neither self-perceived emotional intelli-
gence, nor its interaction with gender significantly predicted the perception of target emotions.
Men did score lower on self-perceived EI, which suggests that they think of themselves as less
confident in perceiving, understanding and regulating emotions than did women. However,
this did not affect the intensity ratings of target emotions. In other words, men and women’s
self-perceived emotional intelligence is not a reliable predictor of rating the intensity of the
intended emotion displays on the face (see also [25]).
Unexpectedly, we found significant gender differences in the perception of non-target emo-
tions, as well as in the perception of an absence of emotions in the face, such that men rated
non-target emotions as more intense than did women, and even when there was no emotion
at all (neutral faces). This applied to all emotions, but it should be noted that the effect sizes for
these differences were very small. These findings are in contradiction with [31], who also used
rating scales for several target and non-target emotions presented at different exposure times,
and found that women tend to give higher ratings on target emotions, whereas no differences
were found for non-target emotions. The findings from this study as well as our own study
may suggest that in both studies men seem more inaccurate than women, because they either
score lower on target emotions, or higher on non-target emotions. There are several interpre-
tations of this gender difference. One is that men are simply less competent in emotion
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 14 / 19
perception, but our findings partly contradict this, because men did perceive the target emo-
tions to be present as much as women did. An alternative explanation could be that men are
more focused on subtle facial expressions, and thus perceive more complex emotion profiles
on the face. This would suggest that men are better in perceiving emotional complexity. Still
another interpretation could be that men are more uncertain about their emotion perception,
and get more easily confused when asked to rate the intensity of several emotions (see also
[47]). This may have resulted in perceiving trails of the presence of other emotions as well. The
latter explanation is would be in line with the result that EI and its interaction with gender sig-
nificantly predicted the perception of non-target emotions, suggesting that men’s lower scores
on EI accounted for their perception of more intense non-target emotions. However, on the
basis of the present data we cannot draw strong conclusions on the validity of these different
explanations, because we did not explicitly test them against each other. This could be an inter-
esting venue for future research.
The results of this study that there are no gender differences in the perception of target
emotions diverge from various earlier reviews and meta-analyses on gender differences in
emotion accuracy [16,17,18,19,48] and therefore demand an explanation. One explanation
is that the studies in which no differences were reported were not included in these meta-anal-
yses, leading to an overestimation of gender differences. All though this could be seen as a file
drawer effect, this is not necessarily the case, because not all reported research aims to study
gender differences, and therefore do not report them. A second explanation may refer to the
stimuli used in our study, which may have been not subtle enough to show differences. The
low intensity stimuli of human faces, however, were very subtle, as they also resulted in the
perception of non-target emotions, and thus we do not believe that these stimuli were too easy
to perceive [49]. Further, we included different types of stimuli, and these stimuli therefore
seem to be fairly representative and generalizable, in contrast with studies in which only one
set of faces has been used.
A third explanation relates to the use of intensity ratings rather than forced choice accuracy
scores, which were used in most previous studies. An inspection of the means of target and
non-target emotions, however, shows that the target emotion ratings are much higher than the
non-target emotions, such that the first set of ratings can easily be interpreted as the recogni-
tion of the ‘correct’ emotions. The expected advantage was that such ratings would enable us
to detect subtler differences in what men and women perceive in others’ faces (see also [31]).
Rather than scoring a hit or miss, we were able to examine whether men and women differed
in the perception of a range of emotions on a face. Thus, we do not think that intensity ratings
have obscured gender differences. On the contrary, one would expect more rather than fewer
differences with this emotion intensity profile task.
A fourth explanation concerns the sample. Of course, our sample is not completely repre-
sentative, as participants voluntarily participated in this research through advertisements on a
website and on television. However, we think this sample is less biased than in many previous
studies, which used student samples. The current sample is a communal sample with partici-
pants of various age groups and educational background. We would even expect more gender
differences in a non-student sample, because of age and differences in background. We tested
this explanation (not reported here), but did not find any significant interaction between gen-
der and age or gender and education level. It could also be that this Dutch sample is different
from the US samples used in a majority of the studies. There is no reason to expect that there
are huge cross-cultural differences in gender differences in emotion perception, between
the Netherlands and the US. Obviously, this assumption should be tested in cross-cultural
research, using the same task and stimuli. Another, fifth, explanation of our lack of gender dif-
ferences may relate to our between-subjects design. Participants only saw low or high intense
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 15 / 19
displays (and only humans, avatars, or icons), and thus no comparison could be made between
different ratings of stimuli for the same participants. We do not think that this type of design
has led to an absence of differences, however, because this disadvantage only applies when
there is huge individual variability in the measures. This was not the case in the present study.
Still one limitation of the present study may have been that we used an online question-
naire, and therefore people may not have paid sufficient attention to the task. In judgments of
the seriousness in which they had engaged in the study, however, no significant differences
were found between men and women, so this rules out a lack of engagement explanation of
why we did not find significant differences. It is clear that the study attracted more female than
male participants, which is the case with most research participation, but the high number of
participants in the present study makes the data more reliable and representative than in a
small student sample.
In sum, on the basis of this study, which includes a large community sample, we have rea-
son to doubt that there are robust gender differences in whether and to what extent they per-
ceive specific emotions to be present in the face. Men do have less confidence in their own
emotional intelligence, including their own ability to perceive emotions on a face, than do
women. However, this lower score does not predict their perception of target emotions, but it
is associated with their stronger perception of trails of emotions that were not intended, or
even not present. We should keep in mind, however, that the differences that we found were
small, and therefore we cannot yet speculate on social implications of these findings. More
research is needed on how men and women exactly differ in their perception of subtle emotion
cues. We think it is very important to gain more insight in this process, because in most daily
life situations emotional cues are not so clear and straightforward as in experimental research.
Supporting information
S1 Instructions and Questionnaires.
(DOCX)
S1 Exemplar Stimuli.
(DOCX)
Acknowledgments
We thank Valentijn Visch for drawing the icons and the discussion of research ideas. We
thank the VPRO and NTR. and especially Eef Grob. for the possibility to conduct these large
scale data.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Agneta H. Fischer, Joost Broekens.
Data curation: Agneta H. Fischer, Joost Broekens.
Formal analysis: Agneta H. Fischer, Mariska E. Kret, Joost Broekens.
Funding acquisition: Joost Broekens.
Investigation: Agneta H. Fischer, Joost Broekens.
Methodology: Agneta H. Fischer, Mariska E. Kret, Joost Broekens.
Project administration: Agneta H. Fischer, Joost Broekens.
Supervision: Agneta H. Fischer.
Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190712 January 25, 2018 16 / 19
Validation: Agneta H. Fischer, Mariska E. Kret.
Writing – original draft: Agneta H. Fischer, Joost Broekens.
Writing – review & editing: Agneta H. Fischer, Mariska E. Kret, Joost Broekens.
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