Emotional Intelligence and Cooperation in the Lab

Emotional Intelligence and Policies towards the Sustainable Transition

LUMSA University
29 January 2026

Matteo Ploner

DEM, University of Trento (Trento)

Wubeshet Regasa

DEM, University of Trento (Trento)

Introduction

EI, Cooperation, and Sustainability

Many sustainability challenges are social dilemmas: private short-run incentives vs shared long-run gains (e.g., emissions, commons).
Cooperation requires trust, self-restraint, reciprocity, and conflict repair.
Emotional intelligence (EI) supports cooperation by improving:
- emotion regulation (less impulsive defection/retaliation),
- social perception and empathy (expectations/coordination),
- constructive responses after setbacks (repair, forgiveness, norm enforcement).
Hence, higher EI can make cooperative norms more stable, supporting sustained pro-social (sustainable) behavior.

Our Study

Study Focus: Predictive capacity of EI for cooperative behavior in a finitely repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game.
- Includes players with heterogeneous EI levels (high vs. low).

Main Hypothesis

Individuals with higher EI will cooperate more effectively than those with lower EI, especially when paired with other high-EI individuals.

The Experimental Design

Overview

Supervised online experiment @CEEL
Day 1 about a week before Day 2
- Both lasted for about 1 hour
10 Euro flat payment for completing both days
Participants could earn additional money based on their performance in Day 2

Day 1

EIS (Schutte, 1998)
- self-report questionnaire
MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2003)
- performance-based test

Day 2: Cognitive Test

10 minutes of Raven Matrices
- Max 30 items
- For each item correctly solved they earn .1 euro

Day 2: Cooperation Task

10X Prisoner’s Dilemma
- 10 rounds of PD with a partner
One round randomly chosen for payment

Day 2: Cooperation Task (Matching)

Treatment
- Matching (not communicated) of participants based on EI
  - High EI <-> High EI
  - Low EI <-> Low EI
  - High EI <-> Low EI
EI measured as score from MSCEIT
- “Local” ranking of participants in the session
  - High EI: above median
  - Low EI: below median

Day 2: PD

Choose whether to cooperate (A) or defect (B)

Report beliefs about partner cooperation (probability of A)
- Incentivized using a binarized scoring rule

Day 2: Type Detection

Predict own type (high EI vs low EI)
- Incentivized using a binarized scoring rule

Predict partner’s type (high EI vs low EI)
- Incentivized using a binarized scoring rule

Hypotheses

EI and Cooperation

Hypothesis 1a: \(C_{HH} > C_{LH} > C_{LL}\)

High–high (HH) pairs cooperate more than low–low (LL) pairs, likely because H-types better regulate immediate emotional reactions that can drive poor decisions.
H-types cooperate less when matched with L-types, who are more prone to free-ride.

EI and Cooperation Dynamics

Hypothesis 1b: \(C^−_{HH} \sim C^+_{HH} \sim C^−_{LH} > C^+_{LH}\)

Cooperation in HH and LH pairs is similar in early rounds, as L-types initially cooperate, expecting H-types to reciprocate.
However, in later rounds, L-types decrease cooperation as they begin to exploit H-types by free-riding.

EI, Beliefs, and Learning

Hypothesis 1c: \(B^C_{HH} > B^C_{LH} > B^C_{LL}\)

High-EI individuals matched with other high-EI individuals form more optimistic beliefs about partner cooperation (perspective-taking and adaptive learning).
Low-EI individuals matched with other low-EI individuals form more pessimistic beliefs due to limited emotion regulation and empathy gaps.

Results

Sample

type_match	n
high_high	68
low_high	70
low_low	68

A total of 206 participants
- 2160 observations (10 rounds of PD)
Pre-registered on OSF c2twe; target: ~75 participants per match type
- We will continue collecting data until we reach 75 per match type

Emotional Intelligence

Positive and significant correlation between EIS score and MSCEIT performance (\(r = .18^{**}\))
Our median-split classification seems to work well

Cooperation (1)

High levels of cooperation in early rounds, decreasing over time
- Average cooperation: 52.6%

Cooperation (2)

Very similar cooperation patterns across all matches
- No significant difference between matches (Wilcoxon rank-sum test, p-values > 0.355)
→ Hypotheses 1a and 1b are not supported

Beliefs in cooperation

Beliefs about partner cooperation are fairly stable across rounds
- Beliefs drop for low-low and low-high matches in later rounds
  - Weak support for Hypothesis 1c

Type Detection

High-EI individuals are more accurate at predicting their own type
Low-EI individuals tend to overestimate their own type

High-EI individuals are slightly more accurate at predicting their partner’s type

Regression Analysis

Regression Results
	Coop	Coop (+ctrls)	Beliefs	Beliefs (+ctrls)
low-high	0.06 (0.47)	0.00 (0.49)	3.41 (5.10)	2.86 (4.90)
low-low	0.29 (0.48)	0.32 (0.51)	1.08 (5.13)	-2.26 (5.05)
round number	-0.17 (0.03)^***	-0.18 (0.03)^***	-0.01 (0.31)	-0.01 (0.30)
low-high:round number	-0.02 (0.05)	-0.02 (0.05)	-1.05 (0.43)^*	-1.05 (0.42)^*
low-low:round number	0.01 (0.05)	0.01 (0.05)	-0.02 (0.43)	-0.02 (0.42)
Model	Mixed-effects Logistic Regression	Mixed-effects Logistic Regression	Mixed-effects Linear Regression	Mixed-effects Linear Regression
Num. obs.	2160	2160	2160	2160
Num. groups: group.id	103	103	103	103
^*p < 0.001; ^p < 0.01; ^*p < 0.05

No significant effect of match type on cooperation
Mismatched pairs show a sharper decline in beliefs over rounds

Conclusions

Summarizing

Emotional intelligence does not meaningfully shift cooperation
- The usual decay over rounds appears across all match types.
Homogeneous pairs sustain more optimistic beliefs over time
- However, this does not translate into notable cooperation differences.

Why does EI have no measurable impact on cooperation in this setting?

Thank you :)

matteo.ploner@unitn.it