Associations amongst emotional intelligence, personality and reaction times

Abstract

Abstract

The present study aimed to replicate the findings from Akrami et al. (2007) as well as findings from Austin (unpublished). Therefore the main hypotheses were to examine whether participants answering self report personality items would respond faster to a trait if they had a high or low scoring on that factor, and whether participants answering self report emotional intelligence (EI) questions would respond faster if they had high EI and slower if they had low EI. Intelligence (IQ) tests were also added to the experiment in order to discover whether they had any significance on the trait level/response relationship, and gender influences were also hypothesised to have some effect. Participants (N = 50) carried out five tests comprising of one personality, two EI and two IQ. Correlations and regressions were carried out on the data, and it was discovered in the regression that Extraversion (F(2, 47) = 6.25, p < .005, Adj. R² = .176) created an inverted-U effect, just as was found in Akrami et al, (2007). T-tests were also performed with gender and the reaction times from the personality and EI tests, and there were interesting gender differences found. The hypotheses of the current study were therefore not fully supported, although the Extraversion inverted-U effect was a small piece of reinforcement within it. The results are discussed in light of this study’s findings in relation to the outcomes it was attempting to replicate, the limitations and possible reasons for this, and discusses the potential and scope of future studies that could build on the original theories.