Money Attitudes and Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

As the notion of money tends to be imbued with salient emotions, it is plausible that emotional intelligence (EI) has a bearing on the efficacy to cope with emotion‐eliciting issues involving money. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which money attitudes relate to EI. The study included a sample of 212 respondents who filled out a questionnaire with items of the Money Attitude Scale (MAS) developed by Yamauchi and Templer (1982). The questionnaire further contained a test of EI performance consisting of judging emotions in facial expressions, and of self‐report measures considered to be subscales of EI. Results suggested that high levels of EI imply a less pronounced orientation toward money and a greater sense of economic self‐efficacy. Furthermore, money orientation seemed to be linked to worse adjustment of work vs. family/leisure time.