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Bipolar or Independent? Relations Between Positive and Negative Affect Vary by Emotional Intelligence

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Abstract

Individuals who are intelligent concerning their emotions should experience them differently. In particular, being conversant with the valence dimension that is key to emotions should reasonably result in emotional experiences that are more bipolar with respect to this dimension. Pursuant of these ideas, three studies (total N = 335) assessed emotional intelligence in ability-related terms (ability EI). The same participants also reported on their recent experiences of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) at work (studies 1 and 2) and/or their day-to-day emotional experiences within a daily diary protocol (study 3). Within each of these studies, ability EI moderated the relationship between experiences of PA and NA, such that the PA-NA relationship was more bipolar at higher levels of EI. These findings are discussed with respect to their implications for debates about bipolarity as well as for their value in highlighting ways in which the ability EI dimension operates.

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Additional Information

Data Availability

The datasets pertinent to the present project can be found at the following OSF repository web address: https://osf.io/8wzrk/?. None of these studies was preregistered.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The studies were approved by our institutional IRB.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

    Michael D. Robinson & Roberta L. Irvin

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Michelle R. Persich

  3. Keck Graduate Institute, Claremont, CA, USA

    Sukumarakurup Krishnakumar

Authors
  1. Michael D. Robinson
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  2. Roberta L. Irvin
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  3. Michelle R. Persich
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  4. Sukumarakurup Krishnakumar
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the designs and analyses of these studies. The first author wrote the paper, the second author played a key role in revision efforts, the third author conducted study 3, and the fourth author contributed to analyses as well as paper preparation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael D. Robinson.

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Handling Editor: Alicia Grandey

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Robinson, M.D., Irvin, R.L., Persich, M.R. et al. Bipolar or Independent? Relations Between Positive and Negative Affect Vary by Emotional Intelligence. Affec Sci 1, 225–236 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00018-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00018-6

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