People who have higher emotional intelligence are better decision makers

Washington – A new study has showed people who have higher emotional intelligence are better decision makers.

The study shows that understanding the source and relevance of emotions influences how much sway they have over individuals’ decision-making and can affect the willingness to take risks.

Stephane Cote, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, who co-wrote the study with lead researcher Jeremy Yip of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said that people often make decisions that are influenced by emotions that have nothing to do with the decisions they are making.

The study’s first experiment showed that participants with lower levels of emotional understanding allowed anxiety unrelated to decisions they were making concerning risk influence these decisions. Those with higher emotional intelligence did not.

A separate experiment involving the willingness to sign up for a flu clinic found that people with lower levels of emotional intelligence can also block unrelated emotions from influencing their decisions about risk, simply by making them aware that their anxiety was not related to the decisions at hand.

Cote said that the findings suggest that an emotionally intelligent approach to making decisions is if they’re feeling anxious because of something unrelated to the decisions, to not make the decisions right away.

The study has been published in journal Psychological Science.