Sex Differences in Psychological Abilities / Sex Differences in Emotion Judgments:

>Girls and women were more accurate than boys and men when judging emotion cues on the basis of facial expressions, body posture, and vocal intonation (Rosenthal et al., 1979); These sex differences were found in all nations in which three or more samples were obtained - Australia, Canada, the United States, Israel and New Guinea - and were of the same general magnitude in all of these nations (J.A. Hall, 1984). J.A. Hall concluded that the advantage of girls and women in the decoding of nonverbal messages "is most pronounced for facial cues, less pronounced for body cues, and least pronounced for vocal cues". When all nonverbal cues were provided - offering a more accurate assessment of nonverbal decoding skills in the real world - about 17 out of 20 girls and women were more accurate at decoding the emotion cues of another individual than was the average same-age boy or man (J.A. Hall, 1978).< [This is roughly the effect size of the sex difference on the people-things dimension.]

David C. Geary; Male, Female - The Evolution of Human Sex Differences; 2010