Sense and sensibility: The role of cognitive and emotional intelligence in negotiation

This study tested whether El (conceptualized as a performance-based ability) predicted economic and relational outcomes in an employee-recruiter negotiation above general mental ability (GMA) and whether a novel measure of emotion recognition ability (ERA; a central component of El) predicted these outcomes better than an established broad ability El test. Results showed that GMA was unrelated to negotiation outcomes. Higher scores on the ERA test and the emotional understanding subtest of the broad El measure were associated with higher dyadic gains and higher individual gains for participants' counterparts. Negotiators with high ERA were also perceived as more cooperative and likable and showed higher self-ratings of cooperativeness. Overall, the ERA test predicted outcomes more consistently than the broad ability El test. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.