Emotional Intelligence and Personality Traits: Assessing Response Distortion in a Motivated Faking Task

Although research on emotional intelligence (EI) and Cluster B personality traits has considerable potential for elucidating aspects of the emotional and interpersonal difficulties experienced by individuals with elevations on these traits, the findings to date have been mixed. The purpose of this study was to use an experimental manipulation to examine the pattern of associations between both trait and ability EI and Cluster B disorders, to test whether individuals could fake their EI via self-report versus maximum performance tests to appear more socially desirable, as well as to explore the pattern of associations between EI and Cluster B disorders, after accounting for the capacity to fake EI and social desirability. The results showed that a) antisocial personality disorder traits, borderline personality disorder traits, and narcissistic personality disorder traits were negatively correlated with EI; b) participants could fake their trait EI responses, bit not their ability EI responses, when motivated to do so; c) only honest trait EI scores predicted faked trait EI scores, but honest ability EI scores and impression management predicted faked ability EI scores; and d) after accounting for variance from faking, EI was negatively associated with antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic personality disorder traits. EI was found to be a core feature of Cluster B disorders, and as such, offers a multitude of implications for everyday situations, clinical settings, and future research