This video answers the question: Is psychopathy linked with lower emotional intelligence? When we talk about psychopathy a lot of times we think of the mental health disorder antisocial personality disorder as it's listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), but psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder aren't exactly the same thing. We could think of antisocial personality disorder as being the official classification and psychopathy as being a particular version of antisocial personality disorder and this version has characteristics like grandiosity, impulsivity, irresponsibility, callousness, being manipulative, having a shallow affect, and violating society's norms. There is a lot of overlap there between psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. When we think of the term emotional intelligence, we're thinking of a construct that is not as well-defined a psychopathy, but there is a good deal of research on it. In general, we think of the definition as perceiving, managing, or reasoning about emotions both internally and externally. It's this ability to understand and manage emotions and apply them to oneself and apply them to others in the world. Emotional intelligence usually this is thought of as an adaptive ability, so it has a positive outcome. With higher emotional intelligence we see certain associations like better interpersonal relationships, fewer problems with interpersonal relationships, a lower instance of substance use disorders, a lower incidence of violence, and fewer health problems. Then we can make this link between psychopathy and emotional intelligence by taking some of the elements of psychopathy and relating them to what we see with emotional intelligence and realizing that a lot of those areas seem to represent a deficit emotional intelligence. For example, some of the characteristics of psychopathy like emotional detachment, lack of empathy, relational difficulties, trouble differentiating neutral words from emotional words, and a difficulty in recognizing facial expressions would appear to negatively associated with emotional intelligence. Research indicates that when we look at the relationship between psychopathy and experiential emotional intelligence, there is no association. With the relationship between psychopathy and strategic emotional intelligence, there is a modest association. This highlights the importance of conducting research and not just making assumptions that two constructs would be related.

Ermer, E., Kahn, R. E., Salovey, P., & Kiehl, K. A. (2012). Emotional intelligence in incarcerated men with psychopathic traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(1), 194-204. doi:10.1037/a0027328

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