Psychopath and Emotional Intelligence
Introduction
Following different studies’ provisions on psychopaths, it is vivid that it is among individuals’ personalities. It has been said to be a disorder whereby an individual has extreme willingness and callousness to violate other people’s rights and exploit them (Malterer, Glass & Newman, 2008). According to various kinds of literature, people with psychopathic traits are associated with profound rates of violence and criminality than ordinary people. However, not all people who are psychopaths do commit crimes. In a social setting, when an individual thinks of a psychopathic person, they reasonably think of a person who is extremely dangerous to others or even an evil person. Additionally, these people may be deemed as people of high intelligence. However, according to different research on psychopathy, it has been established that psychopaths are not highly intelligent people, as many average individuals perceive them. It is due to this reason that people tend to associate social norms, disregard, and emotional coldness with high intelligence (Malterer, Glass & Newman, 2008). Since it has been established that criminality and violence to other people are attributed to psychopathy, now the issue of emotional intelligence comes in since it is through the EI that the fatality of psychopathy is mitigated. This necessitates the literature since it shows the difference between psychopathy and EI. EI refers to the technicality of applying agreeableness trait to neutralize psychopath. Generally, Emotional Intelligence is associated with agreeableness trait, while psychopathy is associated with less disagreeableness trait. People who take them to be more intelligent than others tend to disagree with others.
The Relationship between Psychopath and Emotional Intelligence
Following different studies that have been conducted on the two areas, emotional intelligence and psychopathology, no similarity between the two terms has been established. However, the two terms have been found to be two close terms, and they coexist. This is true since emotional intelligence complements psychopathy (Malterer, Glass & Newman, 2008). This complimentary aspect is depicted by the fact that the crimes associated with psychopaths are reduced or even completely solved through the application of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, in this case, involves one’s ability to perceive, understand, use, and regulate emotions (Sacco et al. 2016). The application of emotional intelligence is made through three specific approaches. Such approaches include self-report ability, performance-based ability, and self-report mixed approaches. Consequently, the criminality and violence associated with psychopaths can be protected by emotional intelligence through the aforementioned models.
The Self-Report Ability Approaches
Trait-Meta Moods Scale is the self-report espoused in this model. In this particular model, there are three scale categories involved. The first scale is attention to the feelings (Megías et al. 2018). This is useful in the evaluation of the degree to which a psychopath thinks about his or her feelings, and it is 0.86. The second scale is clarity of feelings that is helpful in assessing the extent to which a person is able to notice understand and discriminate among his or her feelings and the moods, and it is 0.87 (Megías et al. 2018). The third scale is repair scale. This is the most critical scale since it determines the ability of an individual to effectively regulate his or her feelings, and moods, and emotional experiences repair and it is 0.82. According to various researches that have been conducted on this particular approach, TMMS has been supported as a reliable and valid emotional intelligence index, although there are other three, SEIS, WLEIS, and SSI.
Performance-Based Ability Approaches
This model involves two areas, strategic and experimental. The former involves branches of emotions, understanding, and management, while the latter involves branches of thought facilitation and emotions perception (Megías et al. 2018). Consequently, the aforementioned branches measure the individual’s ability to perceive, understand, facilitate, and manage emotions. It is through this approach that the general management of emotions by an individual is established.
Self-Report Mixed Approaches
Under this approach, the main idea is to establish the self-control, wellbeing, sociability, and emotionality of concerned individuals. Questionnaires are employed in this approach whereby 153 self-reflective items are responded to using a scale of seven points for the case of TEIQue. For the case of TEIQue-SF, it involves 30 items, and for the Bar-on EQ-I, it involves 133 items (Megías et al. 2018). Generally, the above-discussed models consist of the three approaches through which the emotional intelligence protects the criminality and violence linked with psychopaths.
Given the above discussion on the two variables, it is vivid that they are two extreme single dimensions. This is because; the effectiveness of emotional intelligence is only visible during the presence of the psychopathy personality (Sacco et al. 2016). According to the above knowledge, the main difference between these two variables is that psychopathy is associated with violation of other people’s rights and intents to exhaust them while emotional intelligence is associated with other people’s concern and agreeability with other people’s perceptions. It is due to this reason that many people deem the two variables as independent ones. The prime similarity of the two variables is that both variables are associated with a high level of intelligence (Sacco et al. 2016). For instance, psychopaths take themselves the most intelligent than others, and through that, they do not agree with them, while emotional intelligence proves them wrong by portraying the right direction to show intelligence. However, there are many reasons why people commit a crime. Not all crimes and law violations are committed by psychopaths. The limitation of this literature is the differentiation between the psychopath-related criminalities and violations from other influences of the criminalities and violations.
This gap in the differentiation of different felonies necessitates the future studies on psychopaths. Additionally, there is a lot to be investigated on the area, for instance, a clear similarity between emotional intelligence and psychopaths. Among the previously conducted studies, no one has tried to bring out a clear similarity between the two variables (Sacco et al. 2016). In implication, there is a lot of information that is yet to be established apart from social relations. For instance, many studies have tried to establish the linkage between the two variables apart from the recent studies that are depicting an effort to bring out the comparison between the two. Now, through the social factor, the difference between the variables is clear, but the similarity is not coming out clearly. It is therefore
Conclusion
In conclusion, the issue of psychopathy has been associated with issues of people’s exploitation, violation of people’s rights, law violations, and social discrimination. Psychopaths, according to various studies, are those people who make themselves more intelligent than others and thus more disagreeing with them. The effects of psychopaths on social relations have been said to be measured by emotional intelligence. The high psychopaths score low on the emotional intelligence scale.
References
Malterer, M. B., Glass, S. J., & Newman, J. P. (2008). Psychopathy and trait emotional intelligence. Personality and individual differences, 44(3), 735-745.
Megías, A., Gómez-Leal, R., Gutiérrez-Cobo, M. J., Cabello, R., & Fernández-Berrocal, P. (2018). The relationship between trait psychopathy and emotional intelligence: a meta-analytic review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 84, 198-203.
Sacco, D. F., Merold, S. J., Lui, J. H., Lustgraaf, C. J., & Barry, C. T. (2016). Social and emotional intelligence moderate the relationship between psychopathy traits and social perception. Personality and Individual Differences, 95, 95-104.