Are emotional intelligent workers also more empathic?

This paper analyzes whether emotional intelligence and self-monitoring are related to empathy among a sample of workers in both the public and private employment sectors. Two hundred and forty-two employees (42.5% men and 57.5% women) with a mean age of 35.21 years ( SD = 10.07, range 18-61) completed a questionnaire that measured the variables of interest. The results showed that emotion regulation, a dimension of emotional intelligence, accounts for most of the variance of empathy, followed by the ability to understand emotions and the management of others' emotions. Furthermore, gender did not yield any moderator effect on the relations among emotional intelligence, self-monitoring and empathy. We conclude that the intrapersonal aspects of emotional intelligence, in particular, emotion regulation, help explain the empathy of workers. The implications of these findings are discussed herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]