Are Emotionally Intelligent Individuals Hypersensitive to Emotions?Testing the Curse of Emotion

Several years ago the possibility was raised that leaders high in Emotional Intelligence (EI) might be oversensitive to emotions felt by themselves and by others in a way that could compromise their social effectiveness (Antonakis, Ashkanasy, & Dasborough, 2009). In this article, we provide an empirical test of this “curse of emotion” hypothesis and of the hypersensitivity hypothesis, which appears to be its wellspring. We show that high EI...