Exploring The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Prejudice and Intergroup Relations

People vary in their ability to understand, process, and manage information about one's own and others' emotions, a construct known as Emotional Intelligence (EI). Previous research indicates that EI is an important factor in interpersonal relations, but hardly any research has investigated the associations between EI and intergroup relations. This thesis aims to explore the role of EI (and specifically emotion management) in prejudice across different contexts and different target outgroups. The first empirical chapter (Chapter 3) investigated the associations between EI and prejudice in two different counties (Spain and the UK) using both student and community samples. Results showed that those with higher emotion management skills expressed lower levels of prejudice (Study 1 and 2), and more positive attitudes towards immigrants (Study 2a) and refugees (Study 2b). Chapter 4 (Study 3) investigated the role of empathy in explaining (i.e., mediating) the association between emotion management and prejudice. The results demonstrated that higher empathy partly accounted for the association between emotion management and different forms of prejudice. The next set of studies described in Chapter 5 aimed to test whether those with higher emotion management scores are less likely to endorse right-wing and prejudicial attitudes. We tested these associations in both student (Study 4) and adult (Study 5) samples from the UK, and results showed that those who are better at managing their emotions are less likely to endorse attitudes which support social hierarchies and inequalities (i.e., SDO) and traditional, conservative views (i.e., RWA, Study 5 only), which in turn related to more positive attitudes towards outgroups. Finally, Chapter 6 examined if one's ability to manage emotions can facilitate (i.e., moderate) the relationship between positive and negative contact experiences and prejudice, using an app-based experience sampling method (Study 6). The results from the moderation analysis showed that the main effect between positive contact and prejudice was negative and significant, however the main effect of negative contact and prejudice was non-significant. Furthermore, we also found a significant interaction between positive contact and emotion management on prejudice, indicating that the effect of everyday positive contact was significant for those with greater emotion management abilities, but not for those with lower levels of emotion management. Taken together, the findings highlight that emotion management abilities play an important, but so far largely neglected role in generalised prejudice and outgroup attitudes.