New Study Links Emotional Intelligence with Manipulative Behaviour

Rebecca Lewis October 30, 2013

We are all encouraged to cultivate our emotional intelligence – the ability to identify, assess, and control our emotions and that of other people. But even though it is greatly beneficial in establishing social relationships and prosocial behaviours, a new study found that emotional intelligence also has a downside.

In a series of experiments, researchers from Kyoto University examined how emotionally intelligent people would behave in certain situations. In one experiment, students were asked to decide whether they would want to accept a fair offer (which would not harm anyone in the game) or reject a fair offer (to the detriment of everyone in the game, including the person being ostracized).

Researchers found that the more emotionally intelligent a person was and the weaker his or her intention was to retaliate, the more likely he or she was to say that the person should not retaliate and should accept the fair offer. Furthermore, the more emotionally intelligent a person was and the stronger his or her intention to retaliate, the more likely he or she was to say that the person should reject the fair offer.

"Emotional intelligence itself is neither positive nor negative, but it can facilitate interpersonal behaviours for achieving goals," says Yuki Nozaki, the lead author of the study. "The results of this study are consistent with the recent suggestion that emotionally intelligent people can regulate emotions to accomplish their own goals rather than to achieve general prosocial outcomes," the researchers wrote.

"However, previous studies did not directly assess the goals or behaviours for regulating others’ emotions in a given interpersonal situation. Therefore, this is the first laboratory study that empirically reveals that people with high interpersonal EI influence others’ emotions based on their own goals."

Their findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source of this article:

The Dark Side Of Emotional Intelligence