EI may also be important for social interactions (i.e., role player func-
tions) because it involves the ability to decode nonverbal and emotional
signals and to manage one’s own and others’ emotions. Therefore, an emo-
tionally intelligent person is predicted to have more harmonious social rela-
tionships that include mutual care and understanding and less conflict (see
Ciarrochi, Forgas, & Mayer, 2001; Lopes et al., 2003).
Finally, EI should be related to aspects of the executive consciousness. In
particular, the regulation of emotion branch could be expected to correlate
negatively with impulsive behavior and positively with healthier life deci-
sions. Therefore, it is expected that EI would negatively correlate with physi-
cal fighting, and excessive drug and alcohol consumption.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE RELATED TO
COMPONENTS OF THE PERSONALITY SYSTEMS SET
The framework previously described suggests that EI should be associated
with a number of mental abilities, motivational and emotional qualities, and
social behavior. In this section, we discuss how EI is both conceptually and
empirically related to the four components of the systems set: knowledge
works (e.g., verbal intelligence), energy lattice (e.g., well-being), role player
(e.g., social relationships), and executive consciousness (e.g., maladaptive be-
haviors). Note that we do not expect EI to be highly correlated to many areas
of psychological functioning, or to explain large amounts of variance in spe-
cific behaviors, but to contribute to important predictions above and beyond
other abilities and traits. Even moderate associations are considered impor-
tant when they signal theoretically important links between psychological
processes and entail far-reaching consequences for applied purposes (Abel-
son, 1985; Prentice & Miller, 1992).
KNOWLEDGE WORKS
Traditional Intelligence
Because most IQ tests rely on vocabulary and basic reading comprehension
skills there should be a relation between EI, in particular, understanding of
emotions, with traditional intelligence. Furthermore, because IQ partly re-
flects self-regulatory and executive function capacities such as the ability to
sustain attention (Lynam, Moffitt, & Southamer-Loeber, 1993), we expect
the management of emotion branch to correlate with traditional measures of
intelligence. For example, unregulated anxiety can undermine focus and con-
centration, inhibiting smooth performance in challenging intellectual or
182 BRACKETT ET AL.