Emotional Intelligence and Negotiation Performance

Abstract

When individuals negotiate, they employ many personal and intellectual skills. Over the many years I have taught Negotiation courses, I have sought to determine the factors that influence bargaining outcomes. I have found no statistically significant differences based upon the gender or race of the participants, and no correlation with student GPAs. Since Daniel Goleman suggests that if something is not due to IQ it must be based upon EQ, or emotional intelligence, I decided to determine whether there is any correlation between my student perofmance on negotiation exercises and their individual emotional intelligence scores. I had the exceptional assistance of Psychologist Dr. Allison Abbe, who unfortunately lost her non-tenure track teaching position and had to accept a full-time external position which caused a delay in the work on our project. Nonetheless, once finished, it became clear that there was no correlation between student emotional intelligence scores and their performance on course negotiation exercises.