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Research suggests women who push themselves hard at the gym are more likely to have high emotional intelligence.Researchers didn\u2019t find the same association for men.It\u2019s not entirely clear what\u2019s behind this link.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to feel good about yourself when you just laid down an intense workout at the gym. But now, a new survey suggests that women who regularly push themselves to do harder workouts<\/a> are also associated with higher self-reported emotional intelligence scores.<\/p>\n The findings come courtesy of a population-based study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.<\/a> It found a link between vigorous exercise and high emotional intelligence\u2014aka the ability to identify and manage your emotions and tune into the emotional states of others. This particular association was only true in women, not men.<\/p>\n The link might seem a little random, but sports medicine physicians say they\u2019re not shocked. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n Meet the experts: Michael Richardson, MD,<\/a> a family medicine and sports medicine physician in the greater Boston area; and Bert Mandelbaum, MD<\/a>, sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Los Angeles and author of The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit<\/p>\n What did the study find?<\/p>\n For the study, researchers analyzed data from 6,368 adults between the ages of 18 and 64. They had participants complete questionnaires about their daily routines, including exercise habit<\/a>s, and also fill out a test called the Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test<\/a>. (When it comes to the Schutte Self-Report test, higher scores suggest that someone has a higher emotional intelligence.)<\/p>\n Researchers then took that data and grouped participants\u2019 activity based on how hard they exercised (sedentary, light, moderate, and vigorous). After analyzing the data, the researchers found that emotional intelligence scores increased with age in both men and women.<\/p>\n In general, women had higher emotional intelligence scores than men and were more likely to report that they did light-intensity physical activity. But when the researchers stacked emotional intelligence against the different levels of physical activity, they discovered that higher emotional intelligence scores in women were linked to more time spent doing vigorous physical activity and less time being sedentary. This was true regardless of age. (The researchers didn\u2019t find the same association in men.)<\/p>\n Why is there a link?<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say, even for doctors. \u201cIt\u2019s likely multifactorial and nuanced,\u201d says Michael Richardson, MD,<\/a> a family medicine and sports medicine physician in the greater Boston area. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to draw specific conclusions about why emotional intelligence was linked to more vigorous physical activity in women, but less so in men.\u201d<\/p>\n
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