Positive association between emotional intelligence and white matter integrity in the cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus in healthy Japanese adults.

Abstract

With the growing intensity of global competition, understanding employees' psychological awareness has become a vital aspect of organizational management. Among related constructs, emotional intelligence (EI) has drawn considerable interest, leading to a growing body of research linking EI to specific brain structures. Nevertheless, the association between EI and fractional anisotropy (FA), an index of white matter integrity, has not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, we examined the relationship between self-reported trait EI and FA using diffusion tensor imaging data from 292 healthy adults in Japan. Others' Emotion Appraisal was positively associated with FA in the cingulum, and Use of Emotions was positively associated with FA in the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). These associations were small in magnitude and were robust to several sensitivity analyses; exploratory tract-specific associations did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. These findings suggest that self-perceived emotional competencies are associated with individual differences in white-matter microstructure in tracts implicated in socio-emotional and cognitive processes. Because the study is cross-sectional, the results do not establish causal direction and require replication in more diverse samples. Keywords: emotional intelligence; cingulum; fractional anisotropy; superior longitudinal fasciculus; diffusion tensor imaging.