Emotional intelligence (EI) relates to one's ability to recognize and understand emotional information and then, to use it for planning and self-management. Given evidence of abnormalities of emotional processing in impulsively aggressive individuals, we hypothesized that EI would be reduced in subjects with Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED: n = 43) compared with healthy (n = 44) and psychiatric (n = 44) controls. The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) was used to assess both Experiential EI and Strategic EI. Strategic, but not Experiential, EI was lower in IED compared with control subjects. These differences were not accounted for demographic characteristics, cognitive intelligence, or the presence of clinical syndromes or personality disorder. In contrast, the relationship between IED and Strategic EI was fully accounted for by a dimension of hostile cognition defined by hostile attribution and hostile automatic thoughts. Interventions targeted at improving Strategic EI and reducing hostile cognition will be key to reducing aggressive behavior in individuals with IED.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), as defined in DSM-5, is characterized by recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggressive behavior (Coccaro, 2012). Aggression in IED may be displayed as high frequency/low intensity aggression that is non-destructive or injurious, or as low frequency/high intensity aggression that is destructive and/or injurious. However expressed, the aggression is impulsive, and/or anger-based, in nature. Based on data analyzed for the DSM-5 Task Force, about 70% of individuals with IED display both forms of impulsive aggression while 20% display only the high frequency/low intensity aggression, and 10% display only the low frequency/high intensity aggression (Coccaro et al., 2014). Aggressive behavior in IED is most often provoked in social interactions. It is of interest then that individuals with IED demonstrate hostile cognitive distortions such as hostile automatic thoughts and hostile attribution bias, both of which render individuals with IED vulnerable to misinterpreting non-threatening social-emotional cues as potentially threatening, and responding inappropriately (Coccaro et al., 2009).
In addition to social cognition, affective processes likely shape aggressive responding. We have previously reported that the more hostile an individual believes another person is in the interaction, the more anger is reported by the individual (Coccaro et al., 2009). Previous work examining neurobiological factors confirm that IED individuals are predisposed to having exaggerated responses to social and emotional stimuli. The functional activity of corticolimbic structures such as the amygdala is exaggerated in response to angry face stimuli in individuals with IED (Coccaro et al., 2011). Depletion of central serotonin with tryptophan depletion has been found to alter perception of angry faces and increase subjective angry mood in males with IED (Lee et al., 2012).
While previous work has focused specifically on cognitive factors like hostility and emotional factors like anger, work in the area of emotional intelligence (EI) integrates social and emotional processes more broadly. Currently, there are two basic models of emotional intelligence: the “trait” model and the “ability” model. The trait model, developed by Petrides (Petrides et al., 2007), posits emotional intelligence as a set of self-perceptions of emotions in the context of personality. In contrast, the ability model (Mayer and Salovey 1993) focuses on one's ability to perceive emotion, use emotions, understand emotions, and manage emotions. In the ability model, EI hypothesizes that emotional knowledge is embedded within a social context of communication and interaction and entails the ability to recognize emotions in ourselves and others. Coping with stressful events requires skill in the ability to attend, understand and label, communicate, and modulate emotions. These emotion processing competencies enable one to utilize emotional information adaptively in a variety of social situations. Individuals high in EI use these emotional skills in a manner that potentially benefits themselves and others. EI consists of multiple dimensions, including the inclination to pay attention to one's feelings, have clarity in discriminating, and in repairing, dysphoric mood states.
Given our interest in the ability of aggressive individuals to use and manage emotions, we chose a measure that assessed one's “ability” to navigate in social-emotional situations. For the “ability model”, the most widely used measure is the Meyer, Caruso, Salovey Emotional Intelligence Test (MCSEIT; Mayer et al., 2007). The MCSEIT displays content (Tucker and Riggio, 1988), structural (Ciarrochi et al., 2000), discriminant (Brackett and Mayer, 2003) and predictive (Lopes et al., 2003 and Lopes et al., 2004) validity. In this study, we used the MSCEIT to assess Experiential EI and Strategic EI. Experiential EI provides an index of the subject's ability to perceive emotional information, to relate it to other sensations such as color and taste, and to use it to facilitate thought. Strategic EI provides an index of the subject's ability to understand emotional information and use it strategically for planning and self-management. We hypothesized that both Experiential EI and Strategic EI would be lower in individuals with IED and that both forms of EI would correlate inversely with aggression and with measure of hostile cognition.
