Emotional Intelligence and Decision-Making

Question 1

Fernandez-Berrocal et al (2014)

Answer 1

How does EI affect competitive behaviour:
Examined the role of emotional intelligence on the strategic decision to either cooperate or compete in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game
- 2 people with the option to compete or not
- Dilemma because of a tradeoff between individual and mutually beneficial outcome
- Previous studies have shown that individuals with high self-reported emotional intelligence tend to cooperate

But concerns: cooperation may not always be a stable or the best outcome because in highly competitive contexts they do not allow individuals to confront others who use the always defect strategy

Two phases:
Phase 1: Participants completed measures of EI and IQ
Emotional intelligence was measured with the MSCEIT and Cognitive intelligence by the D-48 test
Tendency to cooperate VS compete was measured by describing the PD task for 2 players

Phase 2: Participants played a prisoner’s dilemma game. Participants were given strict instructions under three conditions:
i) Always cooperate
ii) Always compete
iii) Tit-for-tat =mirror the strategy of the opponent
- repeated game and randomly terminated
did not know when it would end

Results:
Women had higher EI
Individuals with higher EI tended to score highly on the PDG compared to low EI
MAIN EFFECT: EI was positively related to PDG scores across conditions
In the always defect condition, participants obtained higher PDG if they had higher EI and lower if they had <95
In the always compete condition, high EI participants did not score higher than their low EI counterparts
Previous research has suggested a linear relationship between EI and cooperation (high EI, more cooperation) but cooperation is not always the best strategy, tit-for-tat is better
EI does not make people cooperate regardless of others’ behaviour - it is associated with the ability to adapt to the other’s strategy

Question 2

Fischer et al. (2004)

Answer 2

Examine the cross-cultural variability of gender differences in emotion by analysing these in countries with different gender roles
Perform a secondary analysis on an existing cross-cultural dataset

• Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM): reflects the extent to which women actively participate in economic and political life.
• The higher the GEM, the more status and power women have in a specific society.

Design:
-Respondents were administered a questionnaire for fear, sadness, anger, etc. and they had to describe an eincident in which they had most recently experienced that emotion

Hypothesis:

1. Women are expected to report less intense powerful emotions (e.g. anger) and more intnese powerless emotions (fear, sadness, guilt) than men and these differences are likely to be larger in low GEM scored-countries
2. Expect women to be less antagonistic esp. in low GEM countries
3. Expect women to report more crying irrespective of GEM

Results:
1. Confirms hypothesis that women do not report powerful emotions but significant main effect for powerless emotions especially in countries with low GM scores
2. Significant effect of antagonism that was reported less frequently among women, especially in low GM scores
3. Found an overall significant main effect of crying for gender compared to men
=> Powerlessness and vulnerability correspond less in high GEM than low GEM countries w.r.t. men => the male pattern of RESTRICTIVE EMOTIONALITY is a Western phenomenon