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Emotional intelligence, affect intensity, and social adjustment
Personality and Individual Differences 37 (2004) 533–542 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Emotional intelligence, affect intensity, and social adjustment q €berg Elisabeth Engelberg *, Lennart Sjo Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm 113 83, Sweden Received 2 December 2002; received in revised form 5 September 2003; accepted 29 September 2003 Available online 19 November 2003
Abstract The present paper deals with the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) for the main purpose of investigating the claim that it involves emotion perception. Emotion perception was operationalized as accuracy in the judgment of othersÕ acute and habitual feeling states. An accurate perception of othersÕ emotions should be related to, on the one hand, heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli and, on the other hand, social adjustment. EI, as measured by both performance and selfreport measures, was therefore investigated in relation to these concepts. The analysis was based on 282 respondents and showed that emotion perception was related to a greater accuracy in the assessment of mood as experienced by others. Results further suggest that EI may be construed, in part, as including emotional reactivity. Another finding was that successful social adjustment was related to a more accurate perception of variations in othersÕ mood, which strengthens the hypothesis that emotion perception is essential for adaptation on a social level. Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Emotional intelligence; Emotion knowledge; Affect intensity; Social adjustment
1. Introduction The concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI), introduced by Salovey and Mayer (1990), has emerged along with a new emphasis on the inter-personal characteristics of emotion (e.g., Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989; Ekman, 1992; Frijda & Mesquita, 1994). According to a social-functional view, emotions signal socially relevant information that is of potential use for understanding how to engage successfully in interactions with others (Keltner & Kring, 1998). q
This study was supported by a grant from the Stockholm School of Economics. Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-8-736-90-00; fax: +46-8-31-81-86. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Engelberg).
*
0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2003.09.024
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Since EI is defined as the ability to identify, process and manage emotions of oneÕs own and in others (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000), this ability should be involved in the processes underlying the perception of emotional signals and the adaptation to different situations of an emotional and social nature. The present paper deals with EI and has the main purpose of investigating the claim that it involves emotion perception. Other aims of the present study were to examine EI in relation to, on the one hand, heightened reactivity to emotional stimuli and, on the other hand, social adjustment. Emotion perception should be related to both reactivity and social adjustment. We posit that the ability to accurately perceive information of an emotional character should be related to a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli, although the definition of EI by Mayer et al. (2000) does not include such an aspect. Their definition nonetheless implies a disposition of this kind in the postulation that EI involves registering and attending to emotional cues in order to extract information inherent to such stimuli. We therefore tested the hypothesis that EI is related to a disposition to experience more intense affect in response to emotional stimuli and employed, for this purpose, the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM: Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1986). The ability to accurately read othersÕ emotions should further contribute toward potential opportunities for interaction and the maintenance of social relationships. In our previous studies, we have found that people high in EI reported experiencing less loneliness (Sj€ oberg & Engelberg, submitted for publication) and a better balance between work and family/leisure (Sj€ oberg, 2001a). Prior studies thus lead us to the expectation that an accurate perception of othersÕ emotional states is related to a greater degree of social adjustment. The kind of emotional competence associated with EI should hence have implications for the ability to attain a richer and more varied social life. In order to test the claim that high EI entails a more accurate ability to read othersÕ emotions, various types of data were collected. Mood measures were obtained to assess the rapport with the mood of fellow participants in a concurrent situation. A measure of the accuracy of emotion perception was obtained by examining how accurate assessments of othersÕ feelings were in relation to actual ratings of those being judged. This is a measure of performance with regard to emotion perception. In their studies, Mayer and Salovey made use of performance measures derived from the judgment of emotions experienced by people as described in short narratives or as shown in photographs. These kinds of judgments are assessed according to the principle of consensus scoring which means that ratings are assessed in reference to the most common answer in the sample as a whole. In the present study, we utilized the same kind of performance measure as originally developed by Salovey and Mayer. Respondents were presented with the task to judge the extent to which each of the characters in descriptions of social problem episodes experienced different emotions. Thus, the performance task was a measure of emotion knowledge, or the ability to judge emotions on the basis of beliefs about reactions that are likely to be elicited under given circumstances. This type of performance samples knowledge about generally held beliefs, in oneÕs culture, about emotional reactions in social problem episodes. Another common approach to measure EI draws heavily on self-report instruments assessing personality variables and dispositions (e.g., Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995; Petrides & Furnham, 2001; Schutte et al., 1998). One such instrument is the scale designed by Schutte et al. (1998) which
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was, in accordance with the investigation by Petrides and Furnham (2000), included as a reasonably valid measure of EI. Other instruments were chosen on the basis of their more specific relevance for emotion perception associated with EI, viz. alexithymia, empathy, and emotional stability. These are concepts very close to the definition of EI and we shall refer to them as facets of EI. The inclusion of alexithymia was based on the rationale that the ability for emotion perception should preclude difficulties with processing and describing feelings. In the formulation by Taylor, Bagby, and Parker (1997), alexithymia is assumed to involve an impaired capacity to construct mental representations of emotions and to communicate about emotional experiences. In a similar vein, empathy, when defined as vicarious responding to another person (Batson, 1987; Katz, 1963), should play a part in the perception of the mood of other people. Furthermore, empathy has been found to play an essential role in adapting to environmental demands to maintain social relations (e.g., Batson, Turk, Shaw, & Klein, 1995; Lanzetta & Englis, 1989; McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997; Tangney, 1991), and empathic responding seems to partly depend on emotional reactivity (Eisenberg et al., 1994). The self-assessment instrument of alexithymia known as the TAS-20 (Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994) has been found to correlate with selfreport measures of EI (see Taylor & Bagby, 2000), and self-reported Empathy has been found to correlate with the MEIS scale of EI (e.g., Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000). Emotion perception should benefit from the capacity to cope with states of mood instability that may ensue (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 2000). A measure of emotional stability (Hendriks, Hofstee, & De Raad, 1999) was therefore included as it should be related to selfmanagement with regard to emotions, which has been argued to be a crucial part of EI (Mayer et al., 2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Mayer, Salovey, Gomberg-Kaufman, & Blainey, 1991). Summing up, we collected measures of the ability to assess othersÕ mood in order to investigate this kind of emotion perception in relation to performance and self-report measures of EI. We included AIM on the assumption that strong reactivity to environmental stimuli is an essential component of emotion perception. The present study also investigated whether emotion perception is related to adaptation on a social level.
2. Method 2.1. Participants Participants consisted of applicants to the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) who were offered to take an entrance test after being notified that they had not been admitted in the regular procedure. Every academic year, nine tenths of the applicants are accepted in the order of highest school grades or score on a test of intellectual ability. Remaining applicants above a specific GPA or score on a test of intellectual ability are invited to the SSE in order to take an entrance test that will allow another thirty applicants to enroll. The invitation contained information that the test was about personality, as well as emotional and social skills important to vocational success. Participants were informed that the collected data would also be used for research. The present analysis was based on 282 respondents (180 men, 102 women) who simultaneously took the test in the same hall. The average age was 20.5 years (range 18–34).
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2.2. Questionnaire The test battery began with items for rating mood. Acute and habitual mood was measured by means of a scale consisting of 71 items, measuring six factors (Sj€ oberg, Svensson, & Persson, 1979). Upon completion of ratings of their own current and habitual mood, the participants were instructed to rate what they thought were the current and habitual mood of the other testees. Accuracy of these ratings were scored. Emotion perception was thus assessed on the basis of the extent to which ratings of othersÕ mood deviated from actual mood ratings of all participants. The alphas (computed across the six factors) were 0.48 and 0.55 for acute and habitual mood, respectively (for information on validity, see Sj€ oberg, 2001b). In addition, mood ratings were analyzed for two more aspects, as described in the results section below. A performance test of EI developed by Sj€ oberg (2001b, 2001c) consisted of 20 descriptions of social problem episodes involving two key actors. The participants were asked to rate, on unipolar three category scales, to what extent each of the two actors felt, at the conclusion of the episode: happy, angry, sad, ashamed, proud, afraid, relieved, disappointed, surprised, and guilty. Consensus scoring was used, i.e., the most common answer on each rating scale was considered to be ‘‘correct’’. The alpha value for the episode scale scored in this manner was 0.79 (for information on validity, see Sj€ oberg, 2001a). The instrument to measure self-report EI was the scale devised by Schutte et al. (1998, a ¼ 0:89). The sub-scales were indexed according to Petrides and Furnham (2000): Optimism/ Mood Regulation (a ¼ 0:75), Appraisal of Emotions (a ¼ 0:83), Social Skills (a ¼ 0:78), and Utilization of Emotions (a ¼ 0:56). Facets of EI were measured by the following instruments: the empathy scale of Mehrabian and Epstein (1970, a ¼ 0:75), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale developed by Bagby et al. (1994, a ¼ 0:81). Sub-scales of TAS-20 were Difficulty Identifying Feelings (a ¼ 0:80), Difficulty Describing Feelings (a ¼ 0:86), and Externally Oriented Thinking (a ¼ 0:62). In addition, a scale of emotional stability (Hendriks et al., 1999, a ¼ 0:87) was included on which a low score corresponds to low neuroticism and vice versa. In order to measure emotional reactivity, the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM, a ¼ 0:79) by Larsen et al. (1986) was employed. Social adjustment was measured by two sets of items: a scale measuring work-family balance (Sj€ oberg, 2001a, a ¼ 0:90) and the UCLA loneliness scale (Russell, 1996, a ¼ 0:85).
3. Results A regression analysis was run with AIM as the dependent variable and the Schutte Scale and the EI Performance and self-report measures as independent variables. The analysis achieved a significant result, F ð5; 281Þ ¼ 32:67, p < 0:0001, R2 ¼ 0:37. Hence, the independent variables explained almost 40% of the variance of the AIM score. Standardized regression coefficients show that the Empathy, b ¼ 0:45, t ¼ 7:73, p < 0:0001, the Schutte Scale, b ¼ 0:40, t ¼ 5:01, p < 0:0001, and Alexithymia, b ¼ 0:26, t ¼ 3:69, p < 0:0001, made positive contributions toward the explanation of AIM. Emotional Stability made a negative contribution, b ¼ 0:35, t ¼ 5:30, p < 0:0001, whereas that of EI Performance was non-significant (b ¼ 0:03, t ¼ 0:60, p < 0:55). The AIM, the Schutte Scale, and the performance and self-report measures of EI were subjected to a correlational analysis that included Balance and Loneliness. Inter-correlations are
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Table 1 Inter-correlations between AIM, performance and self-report measures of EI, and social adjustment
Measure
1
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
–
AIM EI Performance Schutte Empathy Alexithymia Emotional Stability Work/Leisure Balance Loneliness
p < 0:05;
p < 0:01;
0.05 0.19 0.50 )0.04 )0.21 )0.01 )0.08
2
3
4
5
– )0.43 0.05 0.14 )0.18
– )0.52 )0.28 0.49
6
7
8
– )0.53
–
– 0.05 0.04 )0.01 0.03 0.11 )0.14
– 0.44 )0.71 0.64 0.28 )0.50
– 0.43 )0.55
p < 0:001.
presented in Table 1. These show that EI self-report measures inter-related positively, whereas EI Performance related only to Loneliness. The self-report measures of EI were related to measures of social adjustment. These results suggest that EI Performance did not follow a similar pattern of results as the EI self-report measures. For the AIM, there was a strong positive relation to Empathy. In addition, the AIM related moderately to the Schutte Scale, and negatively to Emotional Stability. Except for AIM, all measures were related to social adjustment, although weakly with regard to Empathy and EI Performance. This suggests that EI is involved in the processes underlying interaction with others and the maintenance of social relationships. 1 In order to determine the contributions of the Schutte Scale and the TAS-20 in more detail, a stepwise regression analysis was run with the respective sub-scales of these two scales as independent variables in addition to Empathy, Emotional Stability, and EI Performance. This analysis yielded a significant result, F ð6; 236Þ ¼ 25:62, p < 0:0001, R2 ¼ 0:40. Standardized regression coefficients are presented in Table 2 and showed that the final regression model included the TAS20 sub-scales for Difficulty Identifying Feelings and Externally Oriented Thinking, and the Schutte sub-scales for Social Skills and Optimism/Mood Regulation. The result pertaining to the sub-scales of TAS-20 suggests that a disposition for high affect intensity is related to a difficulty in fully identifying oneÕs own reactions and a tendency not to elaborate on such reactions. Results for the Schutte sub-scales suggest that a heightened emotional reactivity is involved in skills for both social interaction and emotion management. Mood ratings were analyzed for accuracy and two more aspects. One of these was a measure of the difference in the intensity of feelings experienced in the test situation and habitually. For each participant, the absolute difference was computed between the six ratings of their own acute and habitual mood and averaged across the six factors. This was a measure of Mood Difference. Large values on this measure indicate that the respondent felt differently in the test situation as compared to his or her habitual state of mind. The purpose of the remaining two measures was to assess the extent of rapport with the general mood of others in the group. First, the absolute values of deviations in the mean ratings of what was estimated to be the acute mood of other
1 The effect of social desirability with regard to the self-report measures was examined by partial correlations, holding scales for self-deception and Crowne Marlowe impression management constant. A comparison to raw correlations showed only small differences.
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Table 2 Final model of stepwise regression analysis for variables predicting Affect Intensity Measure (AIM) (N ¼ 236) Variable Empathy TAS 20––Difficulty Identifying Feelings Schutte––Social Skills Emotional Stability Schutte––Optimism/Mood Regulation TAS 20––Externally Oriented Thinking
p < 0:01;
p < 0:001;
B
SE B
b
0.43 0.12 0.19 )0.27 0.22 0.13
0.06 0.04 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.05
0.44 0.16 0.23 )0.30 0.22 0.17
p < 0:0001.
testees were computed from the means of what testees had actually rated as their acute mood. This was a measure of the deviation in the mean rating of Acute Mood of others. A large deviation on this measure indicates that the respondent was less accurate in the assessment of how other testees felt in that particular situation. Second, the same computation was done on the basis of what was thought to be habitual mood of other testees and means of what testees had actually rated as their habitual mood. This was a measure of the deviation in mean rating of Habitual Mood of others, and was obtained as an indication of the accuracy in the assessment of othersÕ habitual mood. The three mood measures were inter-correlated. Mood Difference was related negatively to the measures of deviation in ratings of othersÕ mood (Acute Mood, r ¼ 0:27, p < 0:001; Habitual Mood, r ¼ 0:32, p < 0:001), suggesting that people who reacted more strongly in the test situation were better at estimating the mood of others and had a higher EI, in this sense. The two measures of accuracy in rating othersÕ moods correlated positively (r ¼ 0:28, p < 0:001). The three mood measures were then included in a correlational analysis with the remaining measures. As shown in Table 3, Emotion Perception/Acute Mood were related to both performance and self-report measures to a similar degree. The other two assessments, that is, Mood Difference and Emotion Perception/Habitual Mood follow a similar pattern of results in that they were related more strongly to Alexithymia, Emotional Stability and the Schutte Scale. All of the three mood assessments were related to social adjustment, and particularly strongly to Loneliness.
4. Discussion A main purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which emotion perception associated with EI entails an accurate assessment of othersÕ mood. In addition, the present study had two more purposes. One of them was to investigate the relation of affect intensity to EI. We hypothesized that a heightened reactivity to emotional stimuli would be involved in processes underlying the perception of emotion-laden information. The other purpose was to examine whether emotion perception is related to social adjustment. Data pertaining to affect intensity and EI were first analyzed. A multiple regression analysis suggested that EI does draw on a disposition to experience more intense affect in response to emotional stimuli. The analysis revealed more precisely that self-reported measures of EI, and not the performance measure, made significant contributions toward the prediction of AIM. This
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Table 3 Correlations of mood measures to performance and self-report EI, the AIM, facets of EI, and social adjustment Measure
Mood Difference
Emotion Perception Deviation in OthersÕ Mood Habitual
)0.20 )0.15 )0.12 )0.14
)0.06 )0.05 )0.07 )0.27
EI Performance AIM Empathy Emotional Stability
)0.07 0.02 0.03 0.33
Alexithymia Difficulty Identifying Feelings Difficulty Describing Feelings Externally Oriented Thinking
)0.17 )0.22 )0.20 )0.04
0.14 0.07 0.18 0.12
0.21 0.18 0.20 0.17
0.23 0.21 0.16 0.16 0.10
)0.20 )0.13 )0.14 )0.16 0.06
)0.21 )0.21 )0.17 )0.19 0.04
)0.16 0.25
)0.20 0.32
Schutte Optimism/Mood Regulation Emotion Appraisal Social Skills Emotion Utilization Work/Leisure Balance Loneliness
Acute
p < 0:05;
p < 0:01;
0.20 )0.29
p < 0:001.
result is consistent in view of the latter being a measure of a mental ability, as opposed to the former, in similarity to AIM, being measures of different behavioral tendencies. The performance measure was not, as revealed by the correlational analysis, related to any of the self-report measures, which is a common result in studies on EI (e.g., Sj€ oberg & Engelberg, submitted for publication). The strong association that was found between AIM and self-report measures nevertheless makes it defensible to consider affect intensity as part of EI. The sub-scales of the TAS-20 that emerged in the stepwise regression suggested that affect intensity is part of EI precisely in the sense that emotional competence entails a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli. The cognitive processing of affective reactions to such stimuli seems to hinge on other variables or facets of EI. In building on the results of the regression analyses, there is support for the claim that emotion management is part of the ability related to EI (Mayer et al., 2000). The positive contribution of Alexithymia and the negative contribution of Emotional Stability toward the explanation of AIM suggested, in line with previous research (Eisenberg et al., 1994), that some form of inhibition control increases with higher intensity and variability in affective reactions. In short, these results bear strong resemblance to the notion of the nature of emotion management as involving strategies to influence which emotions to experience, as well as when and how to express them (see Gross, 1998, for an overview). The Schutte sub-scales similarly suggest that a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli may be functional for perceiving implicit demands to emit specific forms of emotional or social behavior. The results pertaining to the mood assessments (see Table 3) showed that a more accurate perception of othersÕ mood is indeed dependent on the emotional competence associated with EI.
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A clear pattern in the results is discernable, and there is consistency to them in light of what the measures pertaining to EI and the AIM are assumed to reflect. To begin, Mood Difference is a measure of the variability of own mood. This measure was found to correlate with Alexithymia and Emotional Stability. Presumably, a capacity to fully experience and process emotions, yet maintain stable feeling states, is expedient for monitoring and managing internal emotional cues. Emotion Perception/Acute Mood correlated with EI Performance, AIM and Empathy, while the corresponding measure for habitual mood did not. This result should be expected since Acute Mood is an assessment of othersÕ current mood by judges who themselves took part in the particular test event when generating their ratings. Affect intensity and Empathy are considered to be behavioral tendencies that enhance attention and sensitivity to external emotional cues in the immediate environment. EI Performance measures the ability to make sense of the information that such cues convey. Hence, affect intensity, empathy and emotion knowledge should primarily be involved in the on-line assessment of emotions as experienced by other people. By contrast, results for Habitual Mood correspond closely to those pertaining to Mood Difference. Emotional Stability and Alexithymia, in particular, suggest that a greater openness to and insight into oneÕs own emotions enable judgments of greater accuracy with regard to othersÕ habitual feeling states. A greater emotional self-awareness presumably provides a salient reference point in the assessment of othersÕ habitual mood. As participants were of approximately the same age and of somewhat similar background, it is reasonable to believe that they would share similar norms for emotional behavior. Assumedly, such knowledge provided proper guidance in the assessment of otherÕs habitual mood. Regardless of what may be the cause, results clearly reveal a link between emotional reactivity and accuracy in the assessment of othersÕ mood, as further suggested by the inter-correlations between Mood Difference and the two measures of Emotion Perception. These results show that a stronger emotional reaction experienced during the test entailed a more accurate perception of the mood of fellow participants. In other words, the more affect intense, or the more prone to react with greater affect to emotional stimuli, the more attuned to othersÕ feeling states. This interpretation would, of course, be strengthened if Mood Difference and AIM were found to be related to one another. The unexpected lack of correlation between Mood Difference and AIM may nevertheless be understood in reference to the strong correlation between AIM and Empathy. This result suggested that there is an Empathy-related property of affect intensity. However, Mood Difference was computed on ratings of the testeesÕ own mood. The generation of these ratings most likely required introspection and not Empathy. Similarly, Habitual Mood did not relate to AIM, but such a judgment requires that mood is assessed across a number of different everyday situations and would not, for this reason, lend itself to the specifics of emotional information. Another possibility is that people are basically of somewhat similar affect intensity, but differ in their awareness of variations in own mood as a function of emotional competence. 2 Since the present results suggest that affect intensity does not involve a cognitive component, it is possible that people high in EI attend to and elaborate on their affective reactions, as opposed to people low in EI. In doing this, emotionally intelligent individuals are able to ascertain a more
2
We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
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genuine assessment of their emotional experience when rating their immediate and habitual reactions. Taken together, the three mood assessments were related quite strongly to measures of social adjustment. Adjustment apparently seems to benefit from an ability to be in tune with the kind of mood prevailing in different social groups. An alternative interpretation is that social adaptation benefits from a capacity for monitoring oneÕs own mood as not to deviate from emotions prevailing in the social context at large or, more precisely, emotion management skills. A relation between mood assessments and social adjustment thus emerged as expected, and seems in addition to the inter-correlations between facets of EI and social adjustment, to strengthen the contention that emotion perception is essential for adaptation on a social level. The present study is a contribution toward the analysis of the claim that EI basically consists of the ability for emotion perception. It revealed that different measures of the concept were related to more accurate perception of mood as experienced by others. Results further suggest that EI may be construed, in part, as a matter of emotional reactivity. This facet of EI seems to be of some importance for an empathy-related ability to perceive emotions as experienced by others in the concurrent situation. Another important finding was that successful social adjustment is related to, on the one hand, a greater variation in self-perceived mood, and on the other hand, a more accurate perception of variations in othersÕ mood. In sum, there seems to be an interesting interconnection between emotion perception and social adjustment that needs to be elaborated upon in future research on EI. References Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty item Toronto Alexithymia Scale––I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 23–32. Bar-On, R. (2000). Emotional and social intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Quotient Inventory. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 363–388). San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Batson, C. D. (1987). Self-report ratings of empathic emotion. In N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 356–360). New York: Cambridge University Press. Batson, C. D., Turk, C. L., Shaw, L. L., & Klein, T. R. (1995). Information function of empathic emotion: Learning that we value the otherÕs welfare. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 300–313. Campos, J. J., Campos, R. G., & Barrett, K. C. (1989). Emergent themes in the study of emotional development and emotion regulation. Developmental Psychology, 25, 394–402. Ciarrochi, J. V., Chan, A. Y. C., & Caputi, P. (2000). A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence construct. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 539–561. Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Murphy, B., Karbon, M., Maszk, P., Smith, M., OÕBoyle, C., & Suh, K. (1994). The relations of emotionality and regulation of dispositional and situational empathy-related responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 776–797. Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169–200. Frijda, N. H., & Mesquita, B. (1994). The social roles and functions of emotions. In S. Kitayama & H. Marcus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 51–87). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Gross, J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271– 299. Hendriks, A. A. J., Hofstee, W. K. B., & De Raad, B. (1999). The Five-Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI). Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 307–325.
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Katz, R. L. (1963). Empathy: Its nature and uses. London: Free Press of Glencoe. Keltner, D., & Kring, A. M. (1998). Emotion, social function, and psychopathology. Review of General Psychology, 2, 320–342. Lanzetta, J. T., & Englis, B. G. (1989). Expectations of cooperation and competition and their effects on observersÕ vicarious emotional responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 543–554. Larsen, R. J., Diener, E., & Emmons, R. A. (1986). Affect intensity and reactions to daily life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 803–814. McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 321–336. Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2000). Selecting a measure of emotional intelligence: The case for ability scales. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 320–342). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books. Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., Gomberg-Kaufman, S., & Blainey, K. (1991). A broader conception of mood experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 100–111. Mehrabian, A., & Epstein, N. (1970). A measure of emotional empathy. Journal of Personality, 40, 525–543. Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2000). On the dimensional structure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 29, 313–320. Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2001). Trait emotional intelligence: Psychometric investigation with reference to established trait taxonomies. European Journal of Personality, 15, 425–448. Russell, D. (1996). The UCLA loneliness scale (version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, 20–40. Salovey, P., Bedell, B. T., Detweiler, J. B., & Mayer, J. D. (2000). Current directions in emotional intelligence research. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185–211. Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., & Dornheim, L. (1998). Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 25, 167– 177. Sj€ oberg, L. (2001a). Emotional intelligence and life adjustment: A validation study. In SSE/EFI working paper series in business administration (p. 8). Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics. Sj€ oberg, L. (2001b). Emotional intelligence measured in a highly competitive testing situation. In SSE/EFI working paper series in business administration (p. 13). Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics. Sj€ oberg, L. (2001c). Emotional intelligence: A psychometric analysis. European Psychologist, 6, 79–95. Sj€ oberg, L., & Engelberg, E. (submitted for publication). Measuring and validating emotional intelligence as performance or self-report. Sj€ oberg, L., Svensson, E., & Persson, L.-O. (1979). The measurement of mood. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 20, 1–18. Tangney, J. P. (1991). Moral affect: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 598–607. Taylor, G. J., & Bagby, R. M. (2000). An overview of the alexithymia construct. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The handbook of emotional intelligence. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Taylor, G. J., Bagby, R. R., & Parker, J. D. A. (1997). Disorders of affect regulation: Alexithymia in medical and psychiatric illness. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Emotional intelligence, affect intensity, and social adjustment q €berg Elisabeth Engelberg *, Lennart Sjo Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm 113 83, Sweden Received 2 December 2002; received in revised form 5 September 2003; accepted 29 September 2003 Available online 19 November 2003
Abstract The present paper deals with the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) for the main purpose of investigating the claim that it involves emotion perception. Emotion perception was operationalized as accuracy in the judgment of othersÕ acute and habitual feeling states. An accurate perception of othersÕ emotions should be related to, on the one hand, heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli and, on the other hand, social adjustment. EI, as measured by both performance and selfreport measures, was therefore investigated in relation to these concepts. The analysis was based on 282 respondents and showed that emotion perception was related to a greater accuracy in the assessment of mood as experienced by others. Results further suggest that EI may be construed, in part, as including emotional reactivity. Another finding was that successful social adjustment was related to a more accurate perception of variations in othersÕ mood, which strengthens the hypothesis that emotion perception is essential for adaptation on a social level. Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Emotional intelligence; Emotion knowledge; Affect intensity; Social adjustment
1. Introduction The concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI), introduced by Salovey and Mayer (1990), has emerged along with a new emphasis on the inter-personal characteristics of emotion (e.g., Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989; Ekman, 1992; Frijda & Mesquita, 1994). According to a social-functional view, emotions signal socially relevant information that is of potential use for understanding how to engage successfully in interactions with others (Keltner & Kring, 1998). q
This study was supported by a grant from the Stockholm School of Economics. Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-8-736-90-00; fax: +46-8-31-81-86. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Engelberg).
*
0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2003.09.024
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Since EI is defined as the ability to identify, process and manage emotions of oneÕs own and in others (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000), this ability should be involved in the processes underlying the perception of emotional signals and the adaptation to different situations of an emotional and social nature. The present paper deals with EI and has the main purpose of investigating the claim that it involves emotion perception. Other aims of the present study were to examine EI in relation to, on the one hand, heightened reactivity to emotional stimuli and, on the other hand, social adjustment. Emotion perception should be related to both reactivity and social adjustment. We posit that the ability to accurately perceive information of an emotional character should be related to a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli, although the definition of EI by Mayer et al. (2000) does not include such an aspect. Their definition nonetheless implies a disposition of this kind in the postulation that EI involves registering and attending to emotional cues in order to extract information inherent to such stimuli. We therefore tested the hypothesis that EI is related to a disposition to experience more intense affect in response to emotional stimuli and employed, for this purpose, the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM: Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1986). The ability to accurately read othersÕ emotions should further contribute toward potential opportunities for interaction and the maintenance of social relationships. In our previous studies, we have found that people high in EI reported experiencing less loneliness (Sj€ oberg & Engelberg, submitted for publication) and a better balance between work and family/leisure (Sj€ oberg, 2001a). Prior studies thus lead us to the expectation that an accurate perception of othersÕ emotional states is related to a greater degree of social adjustment. The kind of emotional competence associated with EI should hence have implications for the ability to attain a richer and more varied social life. In order to test the claim that high EI entails a more accurate ability to read othersÕ emotions, various types of data were collected. Mood measures were obtained to assess the rapport with the mood of fellow participants in a concurrent situation. A measure of the accuracy of emotion perception was obtained by examining how accurate assessments of othersÕ feelings were in relation to actual ratings of those being judged. This is a measure of performance with regard to emotion perception. In their studies, Mayer and Salovey made use of performance measures derived from the judgment of emotions experienced by people as described in short narratives or as shown in photographs. These kinds of judgments are assessed according to the principle of consensus scoring which means that ratings are assessed in reference to the most common answer in the sample as a whole. In the present study, we utilized the same kind of performance measure as originally developed by Salovey and Mayer. Respondents were presented with the task to judge the extent to which each of the characters in descriptions of social problem episodes experienced different emotions. Thus, the performance task was a measure of emotion knowledge, or the ability to judge emotions on the basis of beliefs about reactions that are likely to be elicited under given circumstances. This type of performance samples knowledge about generally held beliefs, in oneÕs culture, about emotional reactions in social problem episodes. Another common approach to measure EI draws heavily on self-report instruments assessing personality variables and dispositions (e.g., Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995; Petrides & Furnham, 2001; Schutte et al., 1998). One such instrument is the scale designed by Schutte et al. (1998) which
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was, in accordance with the investigation by Petrides and Furnham (2000), included as a reasonably valid measure of EI. Other instruments were chosen on the basis of their more specific relevance for emotion perception associated with EI, viz. alexithymia, empathy, and emotional stability. These are concepts very close to the definition of EI and we shall refer to them as facets of EI. The inclusion of alexithymia was based on the rationale that the ability for emotion perception should preclude difficulties with processing and describing feelings. In the formulation by Taylor, Bagby, and Parker (1997), alexithymia is assumed to involve an impaired capacity to construct mental representations of emotions and to communicate about emotional experiences. In a similar vein, empathy, when defined as vicarious responding to another person (Batson, 1987; Katz, 1963), should play a part in the perception of the mood of other people. Furthermore, empathy has been found to play an essential role in adapting to environmental demands to maintain social relations (e.g., Batson, Turk, Shaw, & Klein, 1995; Lanzetta & Englis, 1989; McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997; Tangney, 1991), and empathic responding seems to partly depend on emotional reactivity (Eisenberg et al., 1994). The self-assessment instrument of alexithymia known as the TAS-20 (Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994) has been found to correlate with selfreport measures of EI (see Taylor & Bagby, 2000), and self-reported Empathy has been found to correlate with the MEIS scale of EI (e.g., Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000). Emotion perception should benefit from the capacity to cope with states of mood instability that may ensue (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 2000). A measure of emotional stability (Hendriks, Hofstee, & De Raad, 1999) was therefore included as it should be related to selfmanagement with regard to emotions, which has been argued to be a crucial part of EI (Mayer et al., 2000; Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Mayer, Salovey, Gomberg-Kaufman, & Blainey, 1991). Summing up, we collected measures of the ability to assess othersÕ mood in order to investigate this kind of emotion perception in relation to performance and self-report measures of EI. We included AIM on the assumption that strong reactivity to environmental stimuli is an essential component of emotion perception. The present study also investigated whether emotion perception is related to adaptation on a social level.
2. Method 2.1. Participants Participants consisted of applicants to the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) who were offered to take an entrance test after being notified that they had not been admitted in the regular procedure. Every academic year, nine tenths of the applicants are accepted in the order of highest school grades or score on a test of intellectual ability. Remaining applicants above a specific GPA or score on a test of intellectual ability are invited to the SSE in order to take an entrance test that will allow another thirty applicants to enroll. The invitation contained information that the test was about personality, as well as emotional and social skills important to vocational success. Participants were informed that the collected data would also be used for research. The present analysis was based on 282 respondents (180 men, 102 women) who simultaneously took the test in the same hall. The average age was 20.5 years (range 18–34).
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2.2. Questionnaire The test battery began with items for rating mood. Acute and habitual mood was measured by means of a scale consisting of 71 items, measuring six factors (Sj€ oberg, Svensson, & Persson, 1979). Upon completion of ratings of their own current and habitual mood, the participants were instructed to rate what they thought were the current and habitual mood of the other testees. Accuracy of these ratings were scored. Emotion perception was thus assessed on the basis of the extent to which ratings of othersÕ mood deviated from actual mood ratings of all participants. The alphas (computed across the six factors) were 0.48 and 0.55 for acute and habitual mood, respectively (for information on validity, see Sj€ oberg, 2001b). In addition, mood ratings were analyzed for two more aspects, as described in the results section below. A performance test of EI developed by Sj€ oberg (2001b, 2001c) consisted of 20 descriptions of social problem episodes involving two key actors. The participants were asked to rate, on unipolar three category scales, to what extent each of the two actors felt, at the conclusion of the episode: happy, angry, sad, ashamed, proud, afraid, relieved, disappointed, surprised, and guilty. Consensus scoring was used, i.e., the most common answer on each rating scale was considered to be ‘‘correct’’. The alpha value for the episode scale scored in this manner was 0.79 (for information on validity, see Sj€ oberg, 2001a). The instrument to measure self-report EI was the scale devised by Schutte et al. (1998, a ¼ 0:89). The sub-scales were indexed according to Petrides and Furnham (2000): Optimism/ Mood Regulation (a ¼ 0:75), Appraisal of Emotions (a ¼ 0:83), Social Skills (a ¼ 0:78), and Utilization of Emotions (a ¼ 0:56). Facets of EI were measured by the following instruments: the empathy scale of Mehrabian and Epstein (1970, a ¼ 0:75), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale developed by Bagby et al. (1994, a ¼ 0:81). Sub-scales of TAS-20 were Difficulty Identifying Feelings (a ¼ 0:80), Difficulty Describing Feelings (a ¼ 0:86), and Externally Oriented Thinking (a ¼ 0:62). In addition, a scale of emotional stability (Hendriks et al., 1999, a ¼ 0:87) was included on which a low score corresponds to low neuroticism and vice versa. In order to measure emotional reactivity, the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM, a ¼ 0:79) by Larsen et al. (1986) was employed. Social adjustment was measured by two sets of items: a scale measuring work-family balance (Sj€ oberg, 2001a, a ¼ 0:90) and the UCLA loneliness scale (Russell, 1996, a ¼ 0:85).
3. Results A regression analysis was run with AIM as the dependent variable and the Schutte Scale and the EI Performance and self-report measures as independent variables. The analysis achieved a significant result, F ð5; 281Þ ¼ 32:67, p < 0:0001, R2 ¼ 0:37. Hence, the independent variables explained almost 40% of the variance of the AIM score. Standardized regression coefficients show that the Empathy, b ¼ 0:45, t ¼ 7:73, p < 0:0001, the Schutte Scale, b ¼ 0:40, t ¼ 5:01, p < 0:0001, and Alexithymia, b ¼ 0:26, t ¼ 3:69, p < 0:0001, made positive contributions toward the explanation of AIM. Emotional Stability made a negative contribution, b ¼ 0:35, t ¼ 5:30, p < 0:0001, whereas that of EI Performance was non-significant (b ¼ 0:03, t ¼ 0:60, p < 0:55). The AIM, the Schutte Scale, and the performance and self-report measures of EI were subjected to a correlational analysis that included Balance and Loneliness. Inter-correlations are
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Table 1 Inter-correlations between AIM, performance and self-report measures of EI, and social adjustment
Measure
1
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
–
AIM EI Performance Schutte Empathy Alexithymia Emotional Stability Work/Leisure Balance Loneliness
p < 0:05;
p < 0:01;
0.05 0.19 0.50 )0.04 )0.21 )0.01 )0.08
2
3
4
5
– )0.43 0.05 0.14 )0.18
– )0.52 )0.28 0.49
6
7
8
– )0.53
–
– 0.05 0.04 )0.01 0.03 0.11 )0.14
– 0.44 )0.71 0.64 0.28 )0.50
– 0.43 )0.55
p < 0:001.
presented in Table 1. These show that EI self-report measures inter-related positively, whereas EI Performance related only to Loneliness. The self-report measures of EI were related to measures of social adjustment. These results suggest that EI Performance did not follow a similar pattern of results as the EI self-report measures. For the AIM, there was a strong positive relation to Empathy. In addition, the AIM related moderately to the Schutte Scale, and negatively to Emotional Stability. Except for AIM, all measures were related to social adjustment, although weakly with regard to Empathy and EI Performance. This suggests that EI is involved in the processes underlying interaction with others and the maintenance of social relationships. 1 In order to determine the contributions of the Schutte Scale and the TAS-20 in more detail, a stepwise regression analysis was run with the respective sub-scales of these two scales as independent variables in addition to Empathy, Emotional Stability, and EI Performance. This analysis yielded a significant result, F ð6; 236Þ ¼ 25:62, p < 0:0001, R2 ¼ 0:40. Standardized regression coefficients are presented in Table 2 and showed that the final regression model included the TAS20 sub-scales for Difficulty Identifying Feelings and Externally Oriented Thinking, and the Schutte sub-scales for Social Skills and Optimism/Mood Regulation. The result pertaining to the sub-scales of TAS-20 suggests that a disposition for high affect intensity is related to a difficulty in fully identifying oneÕs own reactions and a tendency not to elaborate on such reactions. Results for the Schutte sub-scales suggest that a heightened emotional reactivity is involved in skills for both social interaction and emotion management. Mood ratings were analyzed for accuracy and two more aspects. One of these was a measure of the difference in the intensity of feelings experienced in the test situation and habitually. For each participant, the absolute difference was computed between the six ratings of their own acute and habitual mood and averaged across the six factors. This was a measure of Mood Difference. Large values on this measure indicate that the respondent felt differently in the test situation as compared to his or her habitual state of mind. The purpose of the remaining two measures was to assess the extent of rapport with the general mood of others in the group. First, the absolute values of deviations in the mean ratings of what was estimated to be the acute mood of other
1 The effect of social desirability with regard to the self-report measures was examined by partial correlations, holding scales for self-deception and Crowne Marlowe impression management constant. A comparison to raw correlations showed only small differences.
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Table 2 Final model of stepwise regression analysis for variables predicting Affect Intensity Measure (AIM) (N ¼ 236) Variable Empathy TAS 20––Difficulty Identifying Feelings Schutte––Social Skills Emotional Stability Schutte––Optimism/Mood Regulation TAS 20––Externally Oriented Thinking
p < 0:01;
p < 0:001;
B
SE B
b
0.43 0.12 0.19 )0.27 0.22 0.13
0.06 0.04 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.05
0.44 0.16 0.23 )0.30 0.22 0.17
p < 0:0001.
testees were computed from the means of what testees had actually rated as their acute mood. This was a measure of the deviation in the mean rating of Acute Mood of others. A large deviation on this measure indicates that the respondent was less accurate in the assessment of how other testees felt in that particular situation. Second, the same computation was done on the basis of what was thought to be habitual mood of other testees and means of what testees had actually rated as their habitual mood. This was a measure of the deviation in mean rating of Habitual Mood of others, and was obtained as an indication of the accuracy in the assessment of othersÕ habitual mood. The three mood measures were inter-correlated. Mood Difference was related negatively to the measures of deviation in ratings of othersÕ mood (Acute Mood, r ¼ 0:27, p < 0:001; Habitual Mood, r ¼ 0:32, p < 0:001), suggesting that people who reacted more strongly in the test situation were better at estimating the mood of others and had a higher EI, in this sense. The two measures of accuracy in rating othersÕ moods correlated positively (r ¼ 0:28, p < 0:001). The three mood measures were then included in a correlational analysis with the remaining measures. As shown in Table 3, Emotion Perception/Acute Mood were related to both performance and self-report measures to a similar degree. The other two assessments, that is, Mood Difference and Emotion Perception/Habitual Mood follow a similar pattern of results in that they were related more strongly to Alexithymia, Emotional Stability and the Schutte Scale. All of the three mood assessments were related to social adjustment, and particularly strongly to Loneliness.
4. Discussion A main purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which emotion perception associated with EI entails an accurate assessment of othersÕ mood. In addition, the present study had two more purposes. One of them was to investigate the relation of affect intensity to EI. We hypothesized that a heightened reactivity to emotional stimuli would be involved in processes underlying the perception of emotion-laden information. The other purpose was to examine whether emotion perception is related to social adjustment. Data pertaining to affect intensity and EI were first analyzed. A multiple regression analysis suggested that EI does draw on a disposition to experience more intense affect in response to emotional stimuli. The analysis revealed more precisely that self-reported measures of EI, and not the performance measure, made significant contributions toward the prediction of AIM. This
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Table 3 Correlations of mood measures to performance and self-report EI, the AIM, facets of EI, and social adjustment Measure
Mood Difference
Emotion Perception Deviation in OthersÕ Mood Habitual
)0.20 )0.15 )0.12 )0.14
)0.06 )0.05 )0.07 )0.27
EI Performance AIM Empathy Emotional Stability
)0.07 0.02 0.03 0.33
Alexithymia Difficulty Identifying Feelings Difficulty Describing Feelings Externally Oriented Thinking
)0.17 )0.22 )0.20 )0.04
0.14 0.07 0.18 0.12
0.21 0.18 0.20 0.17
0.23 0.21 0.16 0.16 0.10
)0.20 )0.13 )0.14 )0.16 0.06
)0.21 )0.21 )0.17 )0.19 0.04
)0.16 0.25
)0.20 0.32
Schutte Optimism/Mood Regulation Emotion Appraisal Social Skills Emotion Utilization Work/Leisure Balance Loneliness
Acute
p < 0:05;
p < 0:01;
0.20 )0.29
p < 0:001.
result is consistent in view of the latter being a measure of a mental ability, as opposed to the former, in similarity to AIM, being measures of different behavioral tendencies. The performance measure was not, as revealed by the correlational analysis, related to any of the self-report measures, which is a common result in studies on EI (e.g., Sj€ oberg & Engelberg, submitted for publication). The strong association that was found between AIM and self-report measures nevertheless makes it defensible to consider affect intensity as part of EI. The sub-scales of the TAS-20 that emerged in the stepwise regression suggested that affect intensity is part of EI precisely in the sense that emotional competence entails a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli. The cognitive processing of affective reactions to such stimuli seems to hinge on other variables or facets of EI. In building on the results of the regression analyses, there is support for the claim that emotion management is part of the ability related to EI (Mayer et al., 2000). The positive contribution of Alexithymia and the negative contribution of Emotional Stability toward the explanation of AIM suggested, in line with previous research (Eisenberg et al., 1994), that some form of inhibition control increases with higher intensity and variability in affective reactions. In short, these results bear strong resemblance to the notion of the nature of emotion management as involving strategies to influence which emotions to experience, as well as when and how to express them (see Gross, 1998, for an overview). The Schutte sub-scales similarly suggest that a heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli may be functional for perceiving implicit demands to emit specific forms of emotional or social behavior. The results pertaining to the mood assessments (see Table 3) showed that a more accurate perception of othersÕ mood is indeed dependent on the emotional competence associated with EI.
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A clear pattern in the results is discernable, and there is consistency to them in light of what the measures pertaining to EI and the AIM are assumed to reflect. To begin, Mood Difference is a measure of the variability of own mood. This measure was found to correlate with Alexithymia and Emotional Stability. Presumably, a capacity to fully experience and process emotions, yet maintain stable feeling states, is expedient for monitoring and managing internal emotional cues. Emotion Perception/Acute Mood correlated with EI Performance, AIM and Empathy, while the corresponding measure for habitual mood did not. This result should be expected since Acute Mood is an assessment of othersÕ current mood by judges who themselves took part in the particular test event when generating their ratings. Affect intensity and Empathy are considered to be behavioral tendencies that enhance attention and sensitivity to external emotional cues in the immediate environment. EI Performance measures the ability to make sense of the information that such cues convey. Hence, affect intensity, empathy and emotion knowledge should primarily be involved in the on-line assessment of emotions as experienced by other people. By contrast, results for Habitual Mood correspond closely to those pertaining to Mood Difference. Emotional Stability and Alexithymia, in particular, suggest that a greater openness to and insight into oneÕs own emotions enable judgments of greater accuracy with regard to othersÕ habitual feeling states. A greater emotional self-awareness presumably provides a salient reference point in the assessment of othersÕ habitual mood. As participants were of approximately the same age and of somewhat similar background, it is reasonable to believe that they would share similar norms for emotional behavior. Assumedly, such knowledge provided proper guidance in the assessment of otherÕs habitual mood. Regardless of what may be the cause, results clearly reveal a link between emotional reactivity and accuracy in the assessment of othersÕ mood, as further suggested by the inter-correlations between Mood Difference and the two measures of Emotion Perception. These results show that a stronger emotional reaction experienced during the test entailed a more accurate perception of the mood of fellow participants. In other words, the more affect intense, or the more prone to react with greater affect to emotional stimuli, the more attuned to othersÕ feeling states. This interpretation would, of course, be strengthened if Mood Difference and AIM were found to be related to one another. The unexpected lack of correlation between Mood Difference and AIM may nevertheless be understood in reference to the strong correlation between AIM and Empathy. This result suggested that there is an Empathy-related property of affect intensity. However, Mood Difference was computed on ratings of the testeesÕ own mood. The generation of these ratings most likely required introspection and not Empathy. Similarly, Habitual Mood did not relate to AIM, but such a judgment requires that mood is assessed across a number of different everyday situations and would not, for this reason, lend itself to the specifics of emotional information. Another possibility is that people are basically of somewhat similar affect intensity, but differ in their awareness of variations in own mood as a function of emotional competence. 2 Since the present results suggest that affect intensity does not involve a cognitive component, it is possible that people high in EI attend to and elaborate on their affective reactions, as opposed to people low in EI. In doing this, emotionally intelligent individuals are able to ascertain a more
2
We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
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genuine assessment of their emotional experience when rating their immediate and habitual reactions. Taken together, the three mood assessments were related quite strongly to measures of social adjustment. Adjustment apparently seems to benefit from an ability to be in tune with the kind of mood prevailing in different social groups. An alternative interpretation is that social adaptation benefits from a capacity for monitoring oneÕs own mood as not to deviate from emotions prevailing in the social context at large or, more precisely, emotion management skills. A relation between mood assessments and social adjustment thus emerged as expected, and seems in addition to the inter-correlations between facets of EI and social adjustment, to strengthen the contention that emotion perception is essential for adaptation on a social level. The present study is a contribution toward the analysis of the claim that EI basically consists of the ability for emotion perception. It revealed that different measures of the concept were related to more accurate perception of mood as experienced by others. Results further suggest that EI may be construed, in part, as a matter of emotional reactivity. This facet of EI seems to be of some importance for an empathy-related ability to perceive emotions as experienced by others in the concurrent situation. Another important finding was that successful social adjustment is related to, on the one hand, a greater variation in self-perceived mood, and on the other hand, a more accurate perception of variations in othersÕ mood. In sum, there seems to be an interesting interconnection between emotion perception and social adjustment that needs to be elaborated upon in future research on EI. References Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty item Toronto Alexithymia Scale––I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 23–32. Bar-On, R. (2000). Emotional and social intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Quotient Inventory. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 363–388). San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass. Batson, C. D. (1987). Self-report ratings of empathic emotion. In N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 356–360). New York: Cambridge University Press. Batson, C. D., Turk, C. L., Shaw, L. L., & Klein, T. R. (1995). Information function of empathic emotion: Learning that we value the otherÕs welfare. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 300–313. Campos, J. J., Campos, R. G., & Barrett, K. C. (1989). Emergent themes in the study of emotional development and emotion regulation. Developmental Psychology, 25, 394–402. Ciarrochi, J. V., Chan, A. Y. C., & Caputi, P. (2000). A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence construct. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 539–561. Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Murphy, B., Karbon, M., Maszk, P., Smith, M., OÕBoyle, C., & Suh, K. (1994). The relations of emotionality and regulation of dispositional and situational empathy-related responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 776–797. Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169–200. Frijda, N. H., & Mesquita, B. (1994). The social roles and functions of emotions. In S. Kitayama & H. Marcus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 51–87). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Gross, J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271– 299. Hendriks, A. A. J., Hofstee, W. K. B., & De Raad, B. (1999). The Five-Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI). Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 307–325.
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