An investigation into the relationships between sex, gender identity, emotional intelligence and stress: Emotional skills protect feminine women from stress more than feminine men

Research has demonstrated that biological sex is associated with the experience of stress, such that females generally experience higher levels of stress than males across a range of contexts. However little research has sought to examine why sex is related to stress, or what factors impact the relationship between these constructs. This study sought to explore, 1) whether the relationship between sex and stress could be explained by known trait correlates of sex, and 2) whether trait-based predictors of stress and coping were different for men and women. Participants were 206 white-collar workers who completed a range of questionnaires measuring agency, communion, trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) and experiential stress. Results revealed that, as predicted, females experienced greater levels of stress than males, and that this relationship was completely explained by agency and trait EI. More interestingly, results also revealed the presence of a moderated-mediated effect, demonstrating demonstrated that women high in communion (femininity) and emotional competencies tended to be protected from high levels of stress, whereas men with the same sets of competencies were actually more prone to stress. This moderated-mediated effect is the focus of the discussion, which attempts to explain why men high in communion experience fewer benefits from emotional skills compared to their female counterparts