Emotional Intelligence and Facial Affect Recognition among College Psychopaths versus Controls

This study had two purposes: to replicate research on facial affect recognition and to test for differences in emotional intelligence abilities between a college psychopathic and controls population. Two groups were formed based on Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised scores with the college psychopathic group scoring above the 75% cut off, and the controls below the 50% cut off. Forty-two college students completed questionnaires including a demographic questionnaire, the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised, the Bar-On EQ-i, and the Illegal Behavior Checklist. They also completed a facial affect recognition task. There were no significant differences between the psychopathic group and the control group on their performance on the facial affect recognition task. Results indicate that the college psychopathic group was significantly lower on total emotional intelligence and four of five facets emotional intelligence subscales (as assessed by the EQ-i) and were more likely to engage in illegal behaviors