Study on Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Conflict Resolution Style

Objective: To study the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) of people and corresponding conflict resolution style and to understand if age, gender, occupation etc. have a bearing on these attributes. Methods/Analysis: Both primary and secondary data was collected. Primary data was collected through questionnaire which consisted of 46 items. Questionnaire source are well-established tools. Questionnaire was shared through the online mode only. Respondents, who are employed professional, were picked by random convenience sampling . Sample consisted of 110 respondents. For analysis data of 99 respondents was used because respondents who showed multiple conflict resolution styles were not consid - ered. Analysis tools - SPSS and Excel. Findings: Avoiding style of conflict resolution was observed to be widely adopted by respondents with high emotional intelligence score. Accommodating and avoiding styles were adopted by people with lesser amount of industry experience and people having more than 10 years of experience used competing as a conflict resolution style. The research shows that women have higher emotional intelligence and thus are able to use varied conflict resolution styles. On the other hand men seemed to adopt avoiding as their conflict resolution style. EI of women being higher than men is in consensus with other studies conducted in this area. Emotional intelligence score increases with age but it was observed that after 35 years of age the emotional intelligence score reduces. Few studies conducted in this area state that EI increases with age. Conclusion/Application: Better understanding of EI of teams and how they resolve conflicts can enable effective and refined recruitment/selection, team formations etc. and further lead to individual wellbeing at workplace and higher team performance.


Introduction
We work in an environment which is highly dynamic and ever changing therefore, the role that Emotional Intelligence (EI) of people plays in building effective teams and leading to successful team outcomes is a matter of concern.Over the past few decades researchers all over the world have been trying to study emotional intelligence and its effects on various realms of our life.The authors have tried to study EI effect on conflict resolution strategies that people adopt through their research.The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument also known as TKI assesses an individual's behaviour in conflict situations i.e. situations in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible.
These are the 5 options in conflict resolution in the Thomas-Kilmann model.
People with an ability to control their emotions have an important ability but another important ability is to understand, interpret and respond to others emotions.This ability is called emotional intelligence and it is considered as more important that IQ by some experts.
Originally, the term Emotional Intelligence was coined by two US psychologists, P. Salovey and John Mayer, emotional intelligence refers to learned ability to perceive, understand and express our feelings accurately and to control our emotions so that they work for us, not against us.The conflict resolution methods are based on the Dual Concern theory which is a function of concern for others and for self.Conflict resolution affects not only the individual wellbeing at workplace but also the team performance and the organizational effectiveness in the long run.
Managers spend a lot of time at workplace resolving/ managing conflicts.Given the significance of conflict management it is imperative to have conflict measurement tools and instruments.But most of the tools suffer from low psychometric quality.To overcome this Van de Vliert 4 designed the Dutch Test for Conflict Handling (DUTCH).The study scrutinized the psychometric qualities of the DUTCH by conducting Study 1, 2 and 3.
Study 1: This was conducted on 78 psychological students.Participants were asked to involve themselves in audiotaped negotiations and also were made to fill out a questionnaire.The study focussed on self, opponent's and observer's ratings.It also tried to assess the self-serving bias.It was observed in the results that the self-reported forcing were positively correlated to opponent's and observer's ratings and negatively correlated to other conflict resolution methods rated by observers and opponents.On self-serving bias it was observed that participants rate own problem solving as higher than that of the opponent's.
Study 2: This was carried out to study the psychometric qualities in the lean version of the DUTCH test.A company of 364 employees that specialised in construction and development of food processing systems were identified and chosen to undertake the test.It analysed the unidimensionality, interrelations between four-scales and the discriminant validity.
Study 3: It included Compromising in addition to the four other scales; 'avoiding' , 'forcing' , 'problem-solving' and the 'yielding' .So, it checked uni-dimensionality, interrelatedness among five scales, discriminant validity, gender and hierarchical level invariance.There weren't any differences found between female and male respondents.Also,  It was observed that DUTCH provides a means to measure the conflict management style of people at workplace but it measures the individual's behavioural intentions rather than actual.Also, there was no research done to analyse convergence between self-reports and that of observers and opponents.Belbin's team role model used for this study defines team role as a pattern of behaviour characteristic of the way in which one team member negotiates with another to enable the advancement of the team.There are nine role models -Specialist, Completer finisher, Team worker, Resource investigator, Implementer, Monitor Evaluator, Co-ordinator, Plant and Shaper.Here we consider team role signifies preferences regarding behaviour not functional/technical role.In work teams' people interact and assume different team roles, thereby, leading to varied conflict resolutions styles and approaches.
The study used the Blake and Mouton's 5 model extended by Thomas Kilmann and Rahim 24 .It states that there are five different approaches to resolve conflicts -Integrating, Dominating, Obliging, Avoiding and Compromising.
Depending on the above two models positive, negative and/or negligible hypothesizes were devised.Predictions: negative with compromising, integrating, obliging and avoiding style.9. Shapers -Dominant style is predicted and a negative correlation with the other four styles or subscales.
Participants were administered Team Role Self Perception Inventory (TRSPI) and Rahim 24 Organizational Conflict Inventory (ROCI-II) and the spearman correlations were conducted for the scores.It was found that no correlations contradicting their predictions were statistically significant.
The study also emphasised on the fact that with time the role clarity would change and so would the interpersonal conflict management style.Therefore, the teams that were analysed were teams for a limited life span and clear deadlines.It was found that if the team role was clearer then there was a stronger association between the team's role and the style of conflict management.A lacunae in the study was that gender composition was not studied to understand the effect on gender composition in teams.
Peter J. Jordan 21  Researchers also compared WEIP-3 results with that of existing psychometric instruments.It was concluded that data collected supported Mayer and Salvoy's construct for emotional intelligence based on following factors: 1. Nonverbal and verbal appraisal and expression of emotion 2. Regulation of emotion in others and self 3. Emotional intelligence designed to promote intellectual and emotional growth 4. Ability to generate emotions to assist problem solving For measuring team performance, team process & team goal focus were used as indicators.They studied 448 undergraduate students.It was found that high EI teams operated at high performance levels throughout but low EI teams performed at a low level initially however, their performance improved eventually.Also, WEIP-3 scale's ability to manage emotions of others was significantly correlated with Acquisitive Self-Monitoring.People with emotional intelligence preferred managing emotions rather than avoiding personal distress.
The limitations in the study were that it did not analyse the effects of group internal structure and the effect of training, learning and group dynamics on WEIP-3 scores.
Jesse R. Toepfer 27 in his article -The basics of emotional intelligence cited that emotional intelligence since Goleman's book on Emotional intelligence, published in 1995, has gained momentum and have come in the limelight.According to him, theories on emotional intelligence can be categorized in three parts -ability emotional intelligence, trait emotional intelligence and mixed models.
According to Standard Criteria for an Intelligence (SCFAI) 11 ability emotional intelligence is the true intelligence.It measures performance capabilities and therefore, should be measured using ability measures.MEIS and MSCEIT are two tests designed by Mayer and Salvoy, which can be used to score people for their ability emotional intelligence.But it should be noted that subjective nature of emotions can cause barriers while measuring the ability emotional intelligence.
It was observed that Emotional Intelligence shares many features of personality psychology.Therefore, trait based emotional intelligence was development and manifestation of specific personality characteristics and not just a representation of new intelligence.The basic behind trait model was that it is the intrinsic capacity of a person to understand his personality traits and to use these traits for self-advancement.There are many tests that measure trait emotional intelligence -Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS), Emotional Quotient Inteventory (EQi), Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) etc.These tests measure and consider emotional intelligence not as a cognitive ability but another facet of personality psychology.
Many hybrid approaches were also developed to measure emotional intelligence, which measured ability and non-ability aspects of emotional intelligence.Measurement of non-ability aspects like Motivation, leadership etc. were incorporated to make emotional intelligence more beneficial to application in management, leadership etc. Goleman's two models -Emotional Competency Inventory (ECI) and Emotional Social and Competency Inventory (ESCI) are primary tools to assess emotional intelligence.Other tools like EQi and Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WEIS) are other popular mixed models.Bar-on mixed model considered emotional intelligence an ability that can be developed over a period of time and that there isn't any significant correlation between emotional intelligence and cognitive ability.The authors defined intelligence as the ability of person to identify the differences and similarities between objects, to analyse parts and its relation to the whole and to reason validly.They also established that there are many aspects of intelligence -Meta-processing, Abstract understanding, knowledge base processing and input processing.Also, emotions were described as an organized response to an event that includes experimental, physiological and cognitive aspects.Their analysis led them to divide EI, perceiving emotions, using emo tions to facilitate thought, understanding emotions and managing emotions.
Multi-factor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) findings prove that emotional intelligence can be measured correctly, it was sizeable and that the EI ability increased with age.The scale also had the advantage of expert scoring unlike only the consensus scoring in earlier tools.It was done to include another criterion of correctness.Later, Mayer-Salvoy-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) was developed that included 21 experts for expert scoring and the Conesus scoring both.The correlation was much higher at .98 than claimed by Robert et al. i.e. r = .26.
The scores obtained in MEIS were convergent scores i.e. it measures convergent thinking (the ability to pinpoint a correct answer/s).The full length tests' (MEIS and MSCEIT) scores were reliable and had reliability above 0.90.
The research done has its own shortcomings.Firstly, it does not address the issue of expert and general consensus is uniform or culture bound, Secondly, the interrelation between IQ and EI.The authors highlight that the tools so developed by them to measure emotional intelligence would, post proper research and development, help in identifying outcomes in various realms of our life.In this paper, they described all latest researches in Emotional Intelligence field, and measurement of EI as trait.It also provides useful listings of already existing Emotional Intelligence measures, and the basic information regarding their structure, validity & reliability.The reader becomes critical based on the sifting facts, than his/her opinions and later speculations.The models of Emotional Intelligence are not contradictory but are complementary 13 .
Furthermore, Emotional Intelligence models share core facets, along with prima facie that is irrelevant to construct.Commonalities among models provides basis for systematic identification of 1 st sampling group of trait Emotional Intelligence which excluded peculiar ones but included shared facets 15 .The paper focuses on relationship between EI & transformational styles of leadership.Also a relationship was found between transactional, transformational leadership styles and certain EI constructs.At AgriLife Extension (organisation) mid-managers level, it is observed that increased level of EI has been linked to higher use among transformational leaders behaviour.Thus according to the findings, the leaders can strengthen and develop EI and thus more likely show the usage of transformational leadership behaviour.Thus, if leaders get trained in Emotional Intelligence, and if these skills are nurtured, they utilize transformational leadership, resulting into organisational effectiveness & satisfaction.According to the paper, the Conflict Resolution Questionnaire (CSQ) requires psychometric evaluation in order to confirm the utility of the questionnaire.The first stage of conflict is to recognize the potential environment of conflict, and existing warring forces.The second stage being cognitive i.e. awareness of the situation, the way the two parties involved relates themselves to the situation.It is perceived and felt.The third stage is manifestation of the conflict, either with self, or between two individuals, or between an individual and a group, or between two organisations.The final stage is the outcome stage of conflict, i.e. resolution 9,12,16,22,25 .
The author had tried to validate the content, construct, concurrency of CRQ.The validity of content was done by using a qualitative process.The validity of construct was done by statistical techniques, by using Factor analysis.The validity of concurrency was tested by comparative correlation matrices, comparing ROCI-II (Rahim Organisation Conflict Inventory-II) with CRQ.Syeda Shahida Batool Ruhi Khalid from GC University, Lahore Beaconhouse National University, Lahore conducted a research on Development of Indigenous Scale of Emotional Intelligence and Evaluation of Its Psychometric Properties.
According to the research conducted by the author, a pilot study was conducted to validate and develop a measure (self-report trait, famous among researchers) of Emotional Intelligence.In their report they have references to papers which claim emotional knowledge as a trait which is culturally learned.Thus they developed and validated a scale of EI in the Pakistani denizen's context.For the validation of this scale, the respondents were from different cities of Pakistan, a total number of 1547 (857 male respondents and 690 female respondents).In the test conducted, when a highest correlation was found between flexibility & self-regard, it indicated that the person, who coped with the challenges in a better way and Vol 8 (S6) | March 2015 | www.indjst.orgwho felt good about himself/herself, is most likely selfreliant & adaptive, can adjust their thinking, emotions, feelings, behaviour towards changing conditions.
According to the observations, the women population group scored higher on Emotional intelligence, reasons being parent-child interaction at an early stage, sex roles & socializations process.Mothers were found to speak more to their daughters than they spoke to their sons anything related to feelings or emotions, since women in Pakistan like countries are encouraged to pay more attention towards emotions, to adjust to all circumstances, and suppress negative emotions expressions in open.Thus these stand as strong evidence for women scoring high on EI, self-awareness, impulse control, flexibility when compared to men.
A study conducted by Marc A Brackett.Rebecca M Warner, John D Mayer from University of New Hampshire, conducted a study on Emotional intelligence and its relation to everyday behaviour.
The study was conducted to test the EI correlation with the big 5 personality types.The survey was carried out on 330 college students.To assess the Emotional Intelligence expressions, 13 scales were selected, few of which are, leisure pursuits, behaviour towards self-care, interpersonal relations and academic activities.The relationship between MSCEIT and the 13 scales is also examined.The study shows that a pattern of negative relation between Emotional Intelligence & Life spaces only for male group respondents.Adverse aspects in life like Deviant behaviour, Illegal usage of drug, Negative relations with friends etc.Also in male population, statistically, the absolute value of correlations was found to be higher in males than in females when tested directly against each one with Z -test.
Limitations for this study were concerns towards the EI group differences and EI predictive validity for females and males, which might show up again in bigger and diverse samples.There is ample possibility of conclusions in this study being specific to college going students in New England and not generalise to ethnically diverse individuals.
Thus, the study examines the relation between Emotional Intelligence, considered as MSCEIT measured ability; by CSLSS, Life Space scale measured life conditions.As females and males significantly scored differently on MSCEIT and on scale of Life Spaces, the correlations were examined separately for the two genders.From the findings, Emotional Intelligence may protect the males from exhibiting harmful behaviours like drug use & social deviance.Very fewer relations were obtained for women sample.Thus to understand EI in people's lives, more research is needed.
Based on the above review of literature gaps were identified in finding correlation in the emotional Intelligence and conflict Management Strategies.

Methodology Adopted for Present Study
The topic that has been chosen for this research is "Emotional Intelligence and its effects on conflict management styles".Companies/organizations these days give more stress on EQ rather than IQ.It is also known that managers spend a lot of time to resolve inter/intra team conflicts.Therefore, the study was undertaken to understand the relation between emotional intelligence and conflict resolution styles.Various standard tools were used to measure the Emotional intelligence and conflict management styles of people, for eg.WEIS is a standard, internationally acclaimed tool to measure Emotional Quotient, which was used to determine the emotional intelligence scores of respondents.
The methodology adopted for present study is as below:

Objectives of the Study
1. To analyse Emotional Intelligence correlation with conflict management strategies.2. To understand if age, gender, industry/occupation etc.
have an effect on the emotional intelligence and conflict management style of a person.

Formulation of Questionnaire
A questionnaire was prepared as it is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents.The questionnaire included questions on determining emotional intelligence scores and identifying the conflict resolution styles adopted by respondents.

Sample Technique and Size
The respondents in respect to employees of the organization had been picked on the basis of random convenience sampling.The sample size of this study was 110.

Data Collection
Primary Data: Questionnaire consisting of 46 items was used for collecting data.Questionnaire is extracted from well-established tools to measure emotional intelligence and conflict resolution style.
Secondary Data: Secondary data has been collected from books, internet and journals.

Limitations of the Study
The study was limited to respondents who could reply online.

Insufficient Number of Respondents
The questionnaire being long (composed of 46 questions) not many respondents replied to the online questionnaire we had mailed them.This leads to a significantly lower number of respondents replying to our questionnaire.This restricted our study to just 110 respondents who responded.

Multiple Conflict Resolution Styles
During analysis it was observed that few respondents scored equal on multiple conflict management style which caused ambiguity.Therefore, we could not consider such records for our study and we had to carry forward the study with just 99 respondent data.

Comparative Scale
The tools available for testing Emotional Intelligence give scores that are comparative in nature.Therefore, there is no standard way of categorizing the scores as high or low.

Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1: Women have higher emotional intelligence than their male counterparts.
Hypothesis 2: Emotional intelligence score increases with age and experience.

Observations Based on Findings of Data
The data collected has been presented in the form of tables and figures.Appropriate statistical tools -MS Excel and SPSS, have been used to analyse the data.Discussion: Table 2 & Figure 3 clearly show that males use avoiding as a technique to resolve conflicts.Females on the other hand were showcasing varies conflict management techniques.

Conclusion:
The conflict style can also be influenced by the state of mind or the scenario to which the respondent was exposed to at the time filling the questionnaire.Hence the conflict style adopted is always subjective to the state of mind.Discussion: Table 3 & Figure 4 show the average emotional intelligence scores of the females is higher than males.This also proves our hypotheses that women have higher emotional intelligence score than men.

Conclusion:
It has been noted that women think and evaluate from heart and men does the same in a more mechanical fashion i.e. his thoughts and actions are as per his mind's doing.Hence women tend to act maturely when compared to their counterparts of the same age.

Observation 4: Table 3. T Test-Group
Discussion: In the independent T-test carried out for the data it was observed that the Emotional Intelligence of women is more than men.The levene's test values that test the significance of hypothesis was 0.861.This indicates that the null hypothesis needs to be rejected and that there is a statistical relationship between gender and emotional intelligence score.
Observation 5:  Discussion: Table 5 & Figure 5 show the distribution of conflict management style for people with different duration of work experience.It was observed that accommodating method of conflict resolution slowly reduces as employment duration increases.People exposed to industry for more than 10 years have a competing style of managing conflicts.

Conclusion:
As the experience in the industry increases, people tend to understand the nitty-gritty of the game and hence become more competent as they gain more experience.

Conclusion:
Emotional Intelligence decreases with age.

Observation 7:
Discussion: From Table 7 and Figure 7, it is observed that with increase in age, people become more competent and also resolve conflict in the same fashion whereas the younger population is more "Accommodating" while resolving conflict.Of 99 respondents, 51.6% of total respondents were • scaled on high EI category where as 35% and 12% respondents were scaled on medium and low scale of EI category.From the 51.61%, the conflict resolution style observed highest was "avoiding" (50%)."Accommodating" was the style of resolution of 25% of high EI respondents whereas, "Competing" and "Compromising" were shown by 13% of respondents who were scaled high on EI. 12.90% respondents were scaled on medium EI level, • 50% resolve conflict by "compromising".25% resolved by "Accommodating" and "Avoiding".Out of those who were scaled low on EI level (35.48%), • 36% resolved conflict by "Compromising", 27% did by "Avoiding", and 18% did by "Accommodating" and "Competing" each.

Conclusion:
Conclusion based on the study is as below 1. Avoiding style of conflict resolution was observed to be widely adopted for respondents with high emotional intelligence score.2. Accommodating and avoiding styles were adopted by people with lesser number of industry experiences and people having more than 10 years of experience used competing as a conflict resolution style.3. The research shows that women have higher emotional intelligence and thus are able to use varied conflict resolution styles.On the other hand men seemed to adopt avoiding as their conflict resolution style.4. Emotional intelligence score increases with age but it was observed that after 35 years of age the emotional intelligence score reduces.
The study was interesting finding about the conflict resolution styles and emotional intelligence of the responded.However there was no strong correlation in the two phenomenon's.This is bit in contradiction to the literature study conducted in this area.

Conclusion
Our study group is a healthy combination of women and men (Table 1), hence there is no bias towards the gender.From Table 2 and its corresponding Figure 3 (gender Vs conflict styles) exhibits that men adopt majorly to avoiding style and females adopt to varying styles.This substantiates our hypothesis 1 that women have higher EI than their male counterparts.This is also confirmed from Table 4 and Figure 4.
From Table 6 and Figure 6, it nullifies our 2nd hypothesis that as age increases, emotional intelligence decreases.

3
Arne Evers, K. W. Carsten De Dreu and Bianca Beersma of University of Amsterdam, Esther S. Kluwer of Utrecht University and Aukje Nauta of University of Groningen conducted a study on -A theory-based measure of conflict management strategies in the workplace, Journal of Organizational Behaviour (2001).

1 Aitor
Aritzeta and Sabino Ayestaran of Basque Country University, Spain and Stephen Swailes of University of Hull, UK carried out a research on 26 work teams comprising of 169 participants in all to study the Team role preference and conflict management styles.This study focuses on analysing the relation between team role preferences of an individual with their interpersonal conflict resolution styles.Understanding the team associations and the dynamics involved help to resolve problems better.The research also studies the convergent validity of two models -Belbin's team role model & Conflict management model of Rahim.
19 John D. Mayer of University of New Hampshire, Peter Salovey of Yale University, David R. Caruso, Work-Life Strategies and Gill Sitarenios of Multi-Health Systems, Inc. in their article on Emotional Intelligence as a Standard Intelligence have tried to address the reasonableness and reliability of emotional intelligence scores/measurements.

14 Juan
Carlos Pérez, Faculty of Education, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED); K. V. Petrides, Institute of Education, University of London; Adrian Furnham, Department of Psychology, University College London conducted a study on Measuring Trait Emotional Intelligence.

2 Angela
Bohannon Burkham, M.S.Texas Tech University, August 2010 conducted a research on The relationship of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership behaviour in Texas AgriLife Extension Service mid-managers.

18 Marcus
Henning of Auckland University of Technology, 2003 conducted a study on Evaluation of conflict resolution questionnaire.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Distribution of conflict management styles among work experience population.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Age wise distribution of conflict management styles.

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Conflict resolution style and EI level.

Table 1 .
Demographics and general informationThe study considered data from 99 respondents who are working across industry.All respondents were with employment in the industry, majority of the respondents were from the 25 to 35 age group.

Table 2 .
Data on conflict resolution style and gender

Table 5 .
Data on experience (in years) and conflict management style

Table 6 .
Data on age group and average EI score Figure 6.Age group vs average emotional intelligence.Discussion:Table 6 and Figure 6 depict the variation in EI score with age.It is clearly seen that the EI scores were highest for 20-25 and 30-35 age group.It was observed that people of 40-45 age groups showed the lowest level of Emotional Intelligence.Average EI score was maximum among 30-35 age group (3.0833) followed by people from age group 20-25 (3.0764).The next highest average EI score was found from age group 35-40 (3.0313).The next in line were age group 25-30 (2.8889).The least was scored by age group 40-45 (2.6875).

Table 8 .
Emotional intelligence level and conflict management style