Emotional intelligence has positive aspects that have made us consider it a positive characteristic. However, it also has harmful and dark elements. If you want to learn about the negative aspects of emotional intelligence, continue reading this article. In this article, you will read about the dark dimensions of emotional intelligence.
What is meant by emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a type of social intelligence that allows us to understand our and other people’s emotions, distinguish between them, and use this information to regulate our thoughts and behavior. Based on numerous scientific evidence, emotional intelligence plays a vital role in various areas of life, including work, health, and relationships. In other words, emotional intelligence directly correlates with job satisfaction, mental health, physical and emotional health, and degrees of social support and indicates comprehensive psychological adjustment.
According to Goleman’s theory, the four main signs of emotional intelligence are:
- Self-awareness: the ability to recognize one’s emotions and the effect these emotions have on others.
- Self-control: the ability to regulate emotions and impulsive reactions and adaptability and flexibility according to changing conditions.
- Social awareness: the ability to understand the feelings of others and empathize with them.
- Relationship Management: A set of social skills that include positive influence, teamwork, clear communication, and conflict management.
What are the negative dimensions of emotional intelligence?
Although emotional intelligence has consistently been shown to have positive outcomes, it also has a dark side that is often overlooked. This skill may destroy the person and the people we interact with.
1. The dark triad of character
The relationship between emotional intelligence and personality traits, known as the dark trinity, has also been investigated and confirmed in research. This triad includes Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. These types of avoidant characters have common characteristics, examples of which are:
- lack of empathy with others;
- need for attention;
- Pulling towards power;
- deception;
- Cruel mind manipulation.
People with more of these characteristics can better manipulate other people’s minds by making others feel worse and doing things like criticizing and false shows like flattery and sarcasm.
According to research conducted in 2011 at the University of Toronto, more than others, employees with Machiavellian or cunning tendencies and high emotional intelligence had harmful behaviors with their colleagues, such as humiliating and shaming them for their benefit.
Psychosis is also associated with a tendency to adopt callous tactics in the workplace, involving more overt threats to punish others and the mental manipulation of people and situations. People who are more selfish than others also use softer or more attractive tactics, such as the promise of rewards, instead of harsh methods in the workplace. Their goal is to initially have sound effects and establish positive relationships with colleagues and finally abuse these relationships and positive impact to compensate for not fulfilling work commitments.
2. Emotional manipulation
According to new research, people who improve their emotional skills may also be better at psychologically or emotionally manipulating others. When we can control our emotions, it becomes easier for us to hide our true feelings. If we can understand other people’s feelings, we can grab their heartstrings and pull them towards us. We can incentivize them to act against their interests in such a situation.
This ability shows the dark side of social intelligence. We can use our knowledge of other people’s emotions to achieve our goals.
According to research conducted at the University of Cambridge, if a group leader gives an inspiring and passionate speech to that group, his audience pays less attention to the content of his words. With the help of their emotional intelligence, people can create positive effects, express their emotions strategically, and reduce others’ ability to think critically.
There have been other researches about the relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional manipulation, according to which people with less agreeableness characteristics (one of the dimensions of the five macro personality model) use emotional intelligence skills for emotional manipulation more than others. Some of the attributes of the agreement are:
- Cooperation;
- tolerance;
- Altruism;
- kindness
What other people use emotional intelligence to their advantage?
Emotional intelligence has something in common with the concept of empathy, but its structure is different from empathy. It has been hypothesized that people with high emotional intelligence, who have less empathy, commit antisocial behaviors and psychological manipulation more than others. Therefore, if there is no empathy, emotional intelligence may be misused, and this intelligence, which could lead to better social behaviors, may cause aggression.
This problem is especially evident in people with high emotional intelligence who have goal-oriented persistence, are sensitive to rewards, and have behaviors related to impulsivity. In such people, social and aggressive behaviors are used strategically to gain more control over resources and progress in society.
How do we know if someone abuses their emotional intelligence?
Signs of abuse
The first step in dealing with those who use their emotional intelligence to manipulate others psychologically is recognizing their signs. Some of the common symptoms of these people are:
- Contradictory behavior: These people’s actions do not align with specific moral values or principles but rather serve their personal needs. Their behavior seems inconsistent or contradicts what they initially said to manipulate you emotionally.
- Charisma: They can easily influence people’s thinking or change their opinion. This state is called the unique effect; in it, one’s energy is used to evoke the positive emotions of others and ultimately dominate them.
- Exploiting others’ feelings of guilt: Such people recognize others’ weaknesses and use their insecurities to induce guilt. In this way, they can more easily manipulate their minds.
- Sharing details about themselves: To make us feel like part of their circle of friends, they share many details about themselves or information that makes them think sensitively and in a friendly way. Their main goal is to gain our trust and confidence. They use this trust and confidence to advance the relationship faster and influence us. The result is that we behave in a way that aligns with their goals and expectations.
- Reciprocation Reliance: They may initially try to say our permission or do us a small favor and expect us to do bigger things in return.
Our feelings toward abusers
Sometimes, to recognize people who use emotional intelligence negatively, we must consider our feelings when interacting with them. In such situations, our emotions may be alarm bells, including:
- Doubt: Since these people like to show us only one side of the story, we may often doubt their honesty and transparency. In addition, we may feel confused by their contradictory behavior and question our ability to understand and interpret reality correctly.
- Fear: Such people often exaggerate the facts and force us to act according to their wishes. The unpredictability of their reactions may make us feel uncomfortable around them.
- Anger: We may quickly become frustrated and resentful of such people because they like to talk over us, impose their opinions on us, and tell us how we should think or feel.
- Desperation: If we are closely related to such people, we may feel trapped in the relationship and unable to escape. Since these people are often emotional black holes, we may feel overwhelmed by their emotions and have to act on them.
Is it possible for someone to have too much emotional intelligence?
Emotionally intelligent people are more successful at interpreting the feelings of others and having social interactions. Still, their sense of empathy may lead them to take things too personally and quickly suffer from emotional exhaustion.
In 2016, an experiment was conducted to examine this issue. In this experiment, students were asked to answer several questions to assess their emotional intelligence. This test included recognizing emotions from people’s faces. Those who spent more sensitivity in this part to detect the feelings of others showed a more stressful reaction in the next part of the test. In that part, they were asked to talk about their jobs in front of experts with grim faces. According to similar research, paying attention to emotions is directly related to experiencing more negative emotions in victims of cyberbullying. To put it simply, the higher the emotional intelligence of the victim of cyberbullying, the more negative emotions he will experience.
High emotional sensitivity can establish an essential relationship between emotional intelligence and overreaction to stress. Especially people who have disproportionate emotional skills, such as high emotional awareness with little stress control, show less psychological adjustment. In contrast, people with high or average emotional intelligence respond better to life’s challenges, such as strenuous work or school environments and bad events. In the workplace, social intelligence has always had many negative consequences.
For example, susceptible people in interpersonal relationships may have difficulty providing honest negative feedback to their colleagues. In this case, their potential growth may be affected. In addition, these people may hesitate to make unpleasant decisions for others, usually required in managerial positions to create innovation and change in organizations.
Answers to common questions
1. Is it possible to pretend to have emotional intelligence?
Pretending to be emotionally intelligent may work in the short term, but people who try to appear likable, receptive, or emotionally balanced will not succeed in the long run. Emotional intelligence represents a skill that must be developed from the inside out and requires creating more self-awareness and empathy with others. Even the most capable leaders will fail if they pretend to genuinely accept the opinions of others and be willing to take feedback for continuous professional development.
2. What should I do if I suspect someone uses emotional intelligence to manipulate me?
Being a victim of psychological manipulation often means being emotionally drained. Although the first step is to recognize the expected behaviors and strategies that these people use, it is also essential to identify your weaknesses, such as the desire to please others or a lack of self-confidence. In the next step, we should try to be decisive about our needs and express them directly and continuously. People who manipulate our minds will try to change our opinions. For this reason, maintaining personal boundaries is essential to prevent them from abusing us.
last word
Emotional intelligence may have different positive and negative aspects. Usually, more attention is paid to its positive aspects. This problem causes the negative dimensions of emotional intelligence to be ignored. In such situations, those who abuse the dark side of their emotional intelligence engage in actions such as emotional manipulation of others. Knowing the dark dimensions of emotional intelligence will help you avoid being caught by such people.
