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). Past research highlighted the importance of EI in interpersonal relations as well as the key role of emotions underlying outgroup prejudice. Remarkably, hardly any research has investigated the associations between EI and outgroup prejudice. In three studies (total N = 922) conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, we measured emotional intelligence using self-report and performance tests and prejudice toward a variety of outgroups. Results showed that those with stronger performance-based emotion management skills expressed lower generalized ethnic prejudice (Studies 1–3), more positive attitudes toward immigrants (Study 2a) and refugees (Study 2b), and less homophobic attitudes (Study 3). This negative association between emotion management and prejudice was found with different performance-based EI measures and held after controlling for self-perceived EI (Study 1) and self-reported abilities to regulate emotions (Study 3). Study 3 further demonstrated that higher empathy partly accounted for the association between emotion management and prejudice. The findings suggest that emotion management abilities play an important, but so far largely neglected role in generalized prejudice.

中文翻译：

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情商高的人偏见少吗？情绪管理技能对外群体态度的重要性

人们理解、处理和管理有关自己和他人情绪的信息的能力各不相同，这种构造称为情商 (EI)。过去的研究强调了情商在人际关系中的重要性以及情绪在外群体偏见中的关键作用。值得注意的是，几乎没有任何研究调查 EI 与外群体偏见之间的关联。在三项研究中（共N = 922）在西班牙和英国进行，我们使用自我报告和表现测试以及对各种外群体的偏见来衡量情商。结果表明，那些基于绩效的情绪管理技能更强的人表现出较低的普遍种族偏见（研究 1-3），对移民（研究 2a）和难民（研究 2b）的态度更积极，对同性恋的态度较少（研究 3）。情绪管理和偏见之间的这种负相关是在不同的基于绩效的 EI 测量中发现的，并且在控制了自我感知的 EI（研究 1）和自我报告的情绪调节能力（研究 3）之后成立。研究 3 进一步表明，较高的同理心在一定程度上解释了情绪管理和偏见之间的关联。