Mood and maladaptive behaviour: the effect of emotional intelligence, personality, and mood on emotional manipulation

The current study aimed to investigate mechanisms of emotional manipulation, by examining the combined predictive utility of emotional intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness and mood, within a correlational design, with an experimental longitudinal component. Participants (155 male and female undergraduate students) completed measures of personality and emotional intelligence before undergoing a mood induction procedure (happy, sad, and neutral). Participants then reported their ability and willingness to emotionally manipulate, as well as to adopt specific emotional manipulation strategies. It was hypothesised that personality and emotional intelligence would predict emotional manipulation, with strongest effects with mood-worsening and inauthentic strategies. It was also expected that worse moods would be associated with greater emotional manipulation. Hypotheses received mixed support. Personality and emotional intelligence did predict emotional manipulation, however this did not differ across aspects of emotional manipulation. Only the use of inauthentic strategies was predicted by sad moods. Future research could explore these findings across different contexts, in addition to using ability measures of emotional manipulation. It can be concluded that emotional intelligence, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are predictors of emotional manipulation. The current study has implicated mood as predictor for the first time, however further research is needed clarify its role