Does Emotional Intelligence Relate to Workplace Incivility?

Does emotional intelligence relate to instigating incivility?

Does emotional intelligence relate to instigating workplace incivility, or mainly to how employees report and handle it? The evidence does not support a reporting-only answer. A direct study links self-reported emotional intelligence with respondents’ own reports of initiating incivility; a separate daily-diary study follows perceived incivility, later negative affect, and next-morning instigation. These studies examine both initiation and responses after an event, but do not establish that emotional intelligence prevents conduct or changes report accuracy. The 2016 study “Emotional Intelligence and Instigation of Workplace Incivility in a Business Organization” surveyed 260 full-time employed US adults using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form and the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale. It reported an inverse correlation between global trait emotional intelligence and self-reported instigation (r = −.23, p = .001). Since both measures came from the same respondents in a correlational study, the result cannot show whether emotional tendencies affect conduct, self-description, or both. The 2023 “A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace” followed 100 Chinese and 115 Pakistani employees over 10 workdays. It links perceived incivility with later negative affect and next-morning reported instigation, not with a global emotional-intelligence score. Initiating an exchange and responding after perceiving one are distinct questions; neither settles what happened in a particular disagreement. The evidence makes “mainly reporting” too strong a conclusion.

Sources: Emotional Intelligence and Instigation of Workplace Incivility in a Business Organization; A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace: A Cross-Cultural Daily Diary Study

What does the direct EI–instigation evidence show?

The clearest direct answer comes from a study that asked employees about their own conduct. In the 2016 dissertation “Emotional Intelligence and Instigation of Workplace Incivility in a Business Organization,” 260 full-time employed adults in the United States completed the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form. The first asks respondents to report their own instigated behavior; the second measures trait emotional intelligence, meaning people’s self-perceived emotional tendencies in everyday life. The study was correlational: it compared reported scores rather than assigning people to an intervention or observing exchanges at work.

The dissertation reports an inverse correlation between global trait EI and self-reported incivility instigation, r = −.23, p = .001. In that sample, people who rated their emotional tendencies more highly also tended to report less initiation of uncivil behavior. The reported associations for the self-control and emotionality subscales were also inverse: r = −.25 and r = −.21, respectively, each with p = .001. These are group-level relationships in one study. They do not tell us how a particular employee will behave, or whether a given workplace act occurred as described.

That result matters to the question at hand because the instrument focused on reported initiation, not only on feeling targeted. It therefore weighs against saying that the available research concerns only how employees report experienced incivility. But the contrast between initiation and experience is a contrast between questions on measures, not a test of reporting accuracy. The Workplace Incivility Scale, used in research on experienced acts, asks about behavior directed at the respondent; the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale asks about the respondent’s own conduct. A difference between the two kinds of reports cannot by itself reveal who is right about an ambiguous exchange or whether one person has a higher threshold for labeling it disrespectful.

A separate study offers convergence at the broad level, not a replication of the Walden finding. “Negative Affect as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Uncivil Workplace Behaviour Among Managers” surveyed 113 managers recruited through email, workplace networks, and social media. The anonymous online questionnaire asked about EI, positive and negative affect, and engaging in uncivil workplace behavior. The university repository abstract reports that higher EI was associated with more positive affect, less negative affect, and a lower likelihood of self-reported uncivil behavior. Its analysis found that negative affect mediated the reported relationship between lower EI and uncivil behavior. Here, mediation means the authors’ statistical model placed negative affect on a proposed pathway linking the two measures; a survey of this kind cannot establish that the pathway is causal.

The two studies point in a similar direction, but they do not use identical measures or samples. One surveyed 260 full-time US adults and measured trait EI alongside self-reported initiation; the other recruited 113 managers and examined EI, affect, and self-reported uncivil behavior. In both, the same respondent supplied information about emotional tendencies and conduct. When one person describes both sides of an association, the connection can partly reflect how that person understands or reports themselves. This shared-method concern can make a relationship look stronger or weaker; it does not demonstrate dishonesty, deliberate under-reporting, or inaccurate accounts. Neither study compared a respondent’s account with independent observation of the same incident.

So the direct evidence does not support the claim that EI mainly changes reporting: studies have found associations with self-reported initiation or perpetration as well. It also cannot separate conduct from self-description well enough to establish what EI causes, how accurately employees report events, or who was at fault in a particular conflict. The sound reading is narrower: some EI measures covary with what respondents say about their own uncivil behavior. That is evidence about reported conduct, and a reason to investigate the relationship further, not a license to turn a self-rating into a judgment about an employee.

Sources: Emotional Intelligence and Instigation of Workplace Incivility in a Business Organization; Negative Affect as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Uncivil Workplace Behaviour Among Managers

How can an experience carry into the next response?

A 10-day diary study offers a closer look at what may happen between experiencing an uncivil exchange and initiating one later. In “A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace: A Cross-Cultural Daily Diary Study,” employees reported perceived incivility during the workday, negative affect after work, and their own instigated incivility the following morning. The researchers collected reports over 10 consecutive workdays from 100 employees in China and 115 in Pakistan, recruited through snowball sampling. Across the samples, perceived incivility was associated with stronger negative affect after work, which in turn was associated with more self-reported incivility the next morning. The proposed middle link is called mediation: the researchers tested whether negative affect could help account for the association between an earlier perceived event and later reported conduct. They also tested moderation, which asks whether a condition changes the strength of a link. In their model, self-regulation moderated the association between perceived incivility and after-work negative affect: higher self-regulation was associated with a weaker link. Momentary mindfulness, or attention to present experience at that point in time, moderated the link between after-work negative affect and next-morning instigation. Higher state mindfulness was associated with a weaker relationship between the two. The sequence matters because it separates an employee’s response to an event from a general description of emotional skill. A person may perceive disrespect, carry negative affect beyond work, and respond sharply in a later interaction. That possibility concerns how an emotional reaction is handled over time. It does not show that a stable overall emotional-intelligence score explains the sequence, nor does it establish that a person’s account of the first event is accurate or inaccurate. The study measured perceived events and self-reported later conduct; it did not independently verify what coworkers said or did. Repeated daily reports give more temporal detail than asking someone once to summarize a long period. Here, the researchers could place the reported experience, after-work feeling, and next-morning behavior in a stated order. But timing alone does not establish cause. The study did not assign employees to experience incivility, change their self-regulation or mindfulness, or otherwise isolate those factors experimentally. Other features of the workday or relationship could contribute to both the feelings and the later response. Snowball recruitment also means these samples should not be treated as representative of all employees in either country. The country results further limit a single universal reading. The first mediation path was not significant among Chinese employees, even though the abstract reports the proposed sequence across the study and significant moderation effects in both groups. It also says a moderation effect was weaker in the Chinese group than in the Pakistani group. The abstract does not provide enough detail to turn those differences into a simple cultural explanation. They do show that the pathway was not equally supported in both samples, so the overall association should not be presented as a rule that applies to every worker or workplace. For an individual reflecting after a difficult exchange, the study makes a narrow point: the emotional residue of one interaction may be relevant to a later response, and self-regulation or present-moment attention may be connected to parts of that process. This is not a forecast about what any particular employee will do. It is also not evidence that a general EQ test can identify who will pass disrespect along. It offers a reason to notice whether an unresolved reaction is shaping the next conversation, while keeping the event itself, its impact, and one’s subsequent behavior as separate questions.

Sources: A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace: A Cross-Cultural Daily Diary Study

What does an EQ measure let us compare?

An EQ score can look like a single answer to “How emotionally intelligent am I?” Yet the label covers different measures. Before comparing an EQ result with a study about workplace incivility, ask what the instrument asked a person to do: describe their usual tendencies, solve emotion-related problems, or rate a mix of skills and competencies. The answers concern emotions, but cannot stand in for evidence about a particular exchange. Emotional Intelligence Measures: A Systematic Review examined instruments used with professionals and identified 40 measures across skill-based, trait-based, and mixed models. Ability measures are performance tests: respondents solve emotion problems, such as identifying an emotion in a face. They assess maximum capacity on those tasks, rather than predict everyday conduct. Trait measures usually ask people to rate statements about their typical behavior, with no right answer. A mixed measure can combine self-reported traits, social skills, and competencies; some versions also collect ratings from colleagues or supervisors. Its one-database search covered literature through 2020; it maps the field rather than settling which model predicts incivility. That distinction matters for the direct instigation finding. The Walden dissertation used the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form, a self-report measure, alongside the Instigated Workplace Incivility Scale. Among 260 full-time employed adults in the United States, the correlational analysis found an inverse association between global trait EI and self-reported instigation (r = −.23, p = .001). Participants rated both their typical emotional tendencies and their own conduct. It does not compare those ratings with an observer’s record, a performance task, or an independent account of the same event. It cannot show whether participants acted differently, described themselves differently, or both. A performance test would answer a different question: how well did someone solve the emotional problems presented under the test’s scoring method? Even a strong result there would not verify whether a terse reply occurred in a meeting, what the speaker intended, or how a colleague experienced it. A self-report trait measure can speak more directly to perceived typical tendencies, while still depending on the respondent’s self-description. Neither format is an event recorder. Mixed measures broaden the material being rated; they do not automatically turn a rating into independent confirmation. “EQ test” alone tells a reader too little to compare studies. Language and version also matter. Emotional Intelligence Measures: A Systematic Review describes instruments developed in different countries and languages, and notes gaps in the literature’s language coverage. Check which version a study used and what evidence applies. It is not, by itself, evidence that the Walden sample’s questionnaire was culturally biased or that its association is invalid. Evidence for one instrument or translation does not transfer automatically to another. The private 32-item Emotional Skills Profile discussed here is a separate educational reflection tool. It asks about recent behavior and emotional situations, and its report distinguishes behavior summaries from judgments on authored scenarios. It was not used in the cited incivility studies; it is not a standardized ability instrument and has no validated norms. Its answers can help someone inspect a habit they want to work on. They cannot be compared numerically with the dissertation’s association or used to determine who caused an ambiguous exchange. Start with the measure’s task and evidence before drawing either conclusion.

Sources: Emotional Intelligence Measures: A Systematic Review; Emotional Intelligence and Instigation of Workplace Incivility in a Business Organization

Why can two accounts of the same exchange differ?

Workplace incivility is low-intensity conduct that violates norms of mutual respect while leaving intent to harm ambiguous. That ambiguity is part of the definition, not proof that a person who reports an incident has misread it. The 2026 review “Workplace Incivility” describes why such conduct can be discounted or disputed and why the workplace setting matters. A curt reply, for example, is observable; whether it was disrespectful, what effect it had, and whether it was meant to wound are separate judgments.

Those distinctions matter because a survey question about experienced incivility asks whether the respondent encountered particular acts, while a question about instigated incivility asks whether the respondent reports doing them. The answers describe different positions in an interaction. Neither questionnaire, on its own, records the exchange for independent review or establishes what the initiator intended. An observer may add another account, but that account also comes from a particular place in the conversation and may not include its prior context. Comparing reports can reveal disagreement; it cannot by itself identify which person is accurate or what caused the disagreement.

Workplace conventions help shape those judgments. The review “The Measurement of Workplace Incivility in Indonesia: Evidence and Construct Validity” reports two studies: 217 Indonesian employees first identified experienced or witnessed behaviors, then a scale developed from that work was tested with 561 employees from different regions. The researchers found behaviors resembling the established construct alongside a distinctive, culturally influenced behavior, and concluded that local behavior should be considered when studying incivility. This is evidence that item meaning and norms may not travel unchanged across settings. It does not mean that culture makes every report subjective or that a local norm excuses disrespect. It means a score based on one list of acts may not capture every relevant exchange equally well in every workplace.

The distinction between behavior and interpretation also limits what an emotional-intelligence result can tell us. In “Burning Out? Watch Your Own Incivility and the Emotions You Spread,” a study of 350 US and 273 Italian employees linked self-reported emotional contagion with self-reported instigation: transmitted anger related positively to instigation, while transmitted joy related negatively. The study examined emotions spreading among coworkers, not whether people with higher EI classify an event more accurately. It therefore offers a possible emotional process around conduct, not evidence about reporting thresholds.

The research described here makes reports useful records of how employees experience or describe conduct. It does not compare people with different EI scores against an independent standard of what happened, nor test whether EI makes a target more or less likely to label an act uncivil. Ambiguity and differing norms make such differences plausible; plausibility is not a finding that EI mainly changes reporting. Keep the act, its impact, and inferred intent distinct when discussing an exchange, and do not use an EQ measure to settle whose account is correct.

Sources: Workplace Incivility; Burning Out? Watch Your Own Incivility and the Emotions You Spread; The Measurement of Workplace Incivility in Indonesia: Evidence and Construct Validity

Which emotional process may matter before conduct?

Affect-related pathways may help explain uncivil behavior, but they are not interchangeable with emotional intelligence. A cross-country study, “Burning out? Watch your own incivility and the emotions you spread,” examined 350 employees in the United States and 273 in Italy. Participants completed questionnaires about emotional contagion, meaning emotions experienced by one employee and conveyed to people around them, and about their own uncivil conduct. Both anger conveyed to others and joy conveyed to others were associated with self-reported instigated incivility; the reported association was stronger for anger. Instigated incivility here means rude or disrespectful behavior respondents said they themselves initiated. The study also linked instigation with emotional exhaustion and cynicism. This is evidence about a proposed emotional process, not a test of general EI. The authors did not measure whether participants could solve emotion problems on a performance test, nor whether a broad EQ score predicts conduct. Their cross-country questionnaire design identifies associations among participants’ accounts; it cannot show that transmitted anger caused a rude act, or that improving emotional intelligence would prevent one. Including joy complicates a simple “negative emotion leads to incivility” account: both forms of reported emotion transmission related to instigation, with a stronger association for anger. Still, the measures concern patterns described by respondents, not independently observed workplace exchanges. A different study, “Negative affect as a mediator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and uncivil workplace behaviour among managers,” surveyed 113 managers through an anonymous online self-report questionnaire. Higher reported EI was associated with more positive affect, less negative affect, and a lower reported likelihood of uncivil behavior. The authors’ analysis found that negative affect statistically mediated the relationship between lower EI and uncivil behavior: in their model, the association ran partly through respondents’ reports of negative affect. Mediation describes a pattern consistent with an intervening link; in a one-time observational survey it does not establish a time-ordered causal chain. The recruitment through email, workplace networks, and social media, and shared self-reports limit generalization. Taken together, these studies make affect a plausible place to look when considering what happens before or around uncivil conduct. They do not collapse into proof that EI is the cause: one measured emotions people said they spread, the other measured EI, affect, and behavior among managers. Emotion regulation may therefore be a sensible personal development target when someone notices anger shaping their tone or response. That is a practical inference, not an intervention result from either study. Workload, role expectations, power differences, and local norms can also shape an exchange. A broad EQ label cannot absorb these distinct processes or settle responsibility; it can at most prompt a closer look at one’s own recurring response.

Sources: Burning Out? Watch Your Own Incivility and the Emotions You Spread; Negative Affect as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Uncivil Workplace Behaviour Among Managers

Does intervention evidence change the conclusion?

One expressive-writing study offers a counterweight to the correlational findings. In “The Effect of an Expressive-Writing Intervention for Employees on Emotional Self-Efficacy, Emotional Intelligence, Affect, and Workplace Incivility,” participants assigned to the writing intervention showed increased emotional intelligence and positive affect, alongside decreased workplace-incivility perpetration, compared with participants in a control-writing condition. Within the intervention condition, participants who began with lower emotional self-efficacy also showed significant increases in that self-efficacy. The pattern matters: reported uncivil conduct was not only associated with emotional measures in surveys; it changed alongside them in an intervention comparison.

That still leaves open what changed the behavior. The intervention was designed to increase emotional self-efficacy, and the abstract reports several outcomes moving together. It does not show that increased emotional intelligence mediated the decrease in perpetration. Writing could have affected positive affect, self-efficacy, reflection, or more than one of these at once. Without evidence separating those pathways, the study cannot tell us which change accounted for the difference in reported conduct. The abstract also does not provide details that would let readers judge how durable the changes were, or whether coworkers independently observed less incivility. Its result concerns the intervention condition, not proof that raising an EQ score prevents a person from acting uncivilly.

This finding therefore complicates a purely fixed-trait reading, while stopping short of a causal claim about EI itself. It suggests that emotional and behavioral measures can move during a workplace writing intervention. It does not validate a particular EQ test, establish that a score tracks the mechanism, or show that expressive writing is a general incivility-prevention program. The study is counterevidence to the idea that the research only captures how employees describe events, but it cannot settle whether reports changed because conduct changed, because perceptions changed, or both.

A stronger conclusion would require replicated intervention studies that track behavior over time, include evidence beyond participants’ own reports, and test whether change in EI explains change in conduct. Until then, the reading is that change may be possible, while the available abstract does not warrant promising that a higher EQ score will prevent uncivil behavior.

Sources: The Effect of an Expressive-Writing Intervention for Employees on Emotional Self-Efficacy, Emotional Intelligence, Affect, and Workplace Incivility

What should a reader do with an EQ result after conflict?

After a tense exchange, use an EQ result to examine your own response, not to decide who was uncivil. Separate three things in a note: the words or action you can describe, the effect you noticed, and what you did next. Then ask what emotion showed up before your response and whether you want to clarify, set a boundary, or repair something. This is a reflection method, not a tested intervention or a way to establish another person’s intent.

The 10-day diary study, “A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace,” found links between perceived incivility, after-work negative affect, and next-morning self-reported instigation across Chinese and Pakistani employee samples. Notice what carries from one exchange into the next; the study does not show that a profile predicts what you will do. If the pattern recurs, you might open a conversation with: “Could we go over what happened in that exchange and agree how to handle it next time?” Consider the other person’s account and workplace conditions too.

The 32-item Emotional Skills Profile can help organize reflection on recent behavior and authored scenarios. It has no validated norms, and the cited studies did not use it. Explore it at [/assessment](/assessment). The evidence connects some EI measures with reported initiation and regulation-related processes; it does not show that EI mainly changes reporting or settle fault in a particular conflict.

Sources: A Moderated Mediation Model Between Perceived Incivility and Instigated Incivility on Workplace: A Cross-Cultural Daily Diary Study

Questions readers ask