1. Pre-training Questionnaires
• Explicit prejudice.
• Pro-Black Attitudes Scale (Katz & Hass 1988)
• Modern Racism Scale (McConahay, 1986)
• Feelings Thermometer (Krysan, 2000)
• Alexithymia: TAS-20 (Taylor, Ryan, & Bagby, 1986).
Random Assignment to Training Program
Post-training Questionnaires
• Same as pre-training. Add a word-stem
completion task to measure racial salience.
Social Interaction Task
• Participant led to room with table 4 empty
chairs and one filled chair has “partner’s”
backpack.
• How far away does participant sit?
The Effect of Emotional Intelligence Training
on Prejudice and Discrimination
Summary
• This study examined the connection
between emotional intelligence and
prejudice. Participants randomly
assigned to experience emotional
intelligence training showed less
behavioral prejudice than control
group participants. However, the training did not affect self-
reported prejudicial attitudes.
Definitions
• Explicit Prejudice: A conscious, negative, generalized
attitude towards a particular group of people
• Discrimination: The conscious decision to behave in a
negative way towards a particular group
• Racial Salience: The extent to which race is on one’s mind.
• Emotional Intelligence: The ability to recognize and
describe emotions in one’s self and others.
• Alexithymia: Difficulty verbalizing one’s own emotions. This
is related to difficulty with others’ emotions as well.
Theory & Hypothesis
• Few studies have examined the relationship between emotional
intelligence, prejudice, and discrimination. Yet prejudice may have
underlying emotional roots.
• Can training people to be more emotionally intelligent lead to
lower prejudice and discrimination?
• We expect that individuals trained to improve emotional
recognition (either in themself or in others), would show lower
levels of explicit prejudice and discrimination compared to those
experiencing control training (vocabulary building).
Literature Review
• Emotionally intelligent people can inhibit their prejudiced
attitudes so that they don’t affect behaviors. Thus emotional
intelligence may moderate the link between prejudice and
discrimination (Pioro, 2005).
• Prejudiced people have difficulty identifying facial expressions,
especially of out-group members. Thus, more prejudiced people
show lower emotional intelligence at times. (Andrzejewski, 2009).
• Alexithymic individuals feel more aggressive after exposure to
out-group members than in-group members (Konrath, Novin, & Li, 2012).
• Intergroup interactions often elicit uncomfortable emotions.
Each of these studies suggests that difficulty in dealing with
emotions might cause problems with such interactions.
Results
• Participants sat closer to their partners after emotional training
Results (continued)
• Emotional training programs have different effects on
participants depending on whether they score high or low
in alexithymia.
• High alexithymia: sat closer to partner after the other-
emotion training, compared to self-training and control.
• Low alexithymia: sat closer to partner after the self-
emotion training, compared to other-emotion training
and control.
• Training did not effect any self-reported explicit prejudice
measure, ps > .25.
• Training did not affect racial salience, p = .93.
Discussion
• Emotional intelligence training decreases discrimination,
confirming a causal relationship and suggesting that
interventions are possible.
• Alexithymia moderates how different emotional training
programs impacted discrimination.
Implications
• This study has implications for
the possibility of combating
Discriminatory behavior in
individuals.
• Alexithymia acting as a
moderator suggests that when
targeting discrimination, it is
important to personalize
training programs.
• No causal relationship between emotional intelligence
and prejudice suggests that:
A) these do not share a causal relationship
B) they are connected in a different way, or
C) explicit prejudice may be a trait and not a changeable
behavior.
Limitations and Future Directions
• This study had no measure of implicit prejudice, which is
more responsive to situational cues, and is not
consciously controlled. Future studies should use such
measures.
• This study was run in one short lab session, thus
participants may have remembered pre- measures in post-
questionnaires and potentially tried to be consistent.
Indeed, there was limited change in these measures.
Future studies should either separate the pre and post
measures over time, or only measure outcomes (without
baseline measures).
Methods
Recognize others’
emotions
Recognize own
emotions (e.g.
Stress and anxiety)
Control
Vocabulary
Training
Cover Story
White participant is told they will later interact with a same-sex
African American partner. They see partner’s photo.