The dark triad consists of psychopathy, machiavellianism, and narcissism; the dark triad is mostly negatively related to emotional intelligence; only narcissism is positively related to trait EI

Emotional intelligence and the dark triad: A meta-analysis. Moritz Michels, Ralf Schulze. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 180, October 2021, 110961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110961

Highlights

• The dark triad consists of psychopathy, machiavellianism, and narcissism.

• A meta-analysis regarding emotional intelligence and the dark triad was conducted.

• The dark triad is mostly negatively related to emotional intelligence.

• The relations are small and similar for trait EI and ability EI.

• Only narcissism is positively related to trait EI.

Abstract: The dark triad is commonly conceived of three subclinical socially aversive and exploitative personality traits: psychopathy, machiavellianism, and narcissism. These traits have been linked to certain abilities that may facilitate the attainment of goals in social interactions, one of which may be emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence encompasses the abilities to perceive emotions correctly, to understand the regularities of emotional functioning, and to regulate one's own and others' emotions. However, it has alternatively also been conceptualized as a set of emotion-related personality characteristics assessed with self-reports (Trait emotional intelligence). The aim of this study was to examine the possible relationships between the dark triad and emotional intelligence. A meta-analysis with a total of 109 effect sizes (6 ≤ ks ≤ 30) culled from 71 studies was conducted. Of the resulting six most relevant combined effect sizes (1561 ≤ Ns ≤ 8127), five were small and negative (−.23 ≤ s ≤ −.13). Only the correlation between narcissism and emotion-related personality characteristics was small and positive ( = .15). In total, the results indicate that the dark triad constructs are only weakly related to emotion-related traits, either conceptualized as abilities or personality characteristics.

Check also Neither the dark triad nor general intelligence are meaningfully related to lying ability:

The ability to lie and its relations to the dark triad and general intelligence. Moritz Michels, Günter Molz, Frederic Maas. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 166, 1 November 2020, 110195. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/07/neither-dark-triad-nor-general.html