High-context communication : mediating eastern cultures' collectivism and emotional intelligence

Abstract

Previous empirical findings suggest that characteristics of collectivist cultures foster greater emotional intelligence of those who grow up in them relative to individuals who grow up in individualist cultures. Further, previous research has also found evidence for the existence of a relationship between collectivism and emotional intelligence. However, no research has been done investigating what factors cause or influence this relationship. This study investigates whether high-context communication, a communication style associated with collectivist cultures, mediates the relationship between collectivism and emotional intelligence. Two hundred and ninety-three participants completed an emotion recognition task as well as a series of questionnaires assessing their emotional intelligence, cultural orientation, and use of high-context communication. Although results did not support the hypothesized mediation, exploratory results support the idea that emotional intelligence mediates the relationship between collectivism and high-context communication. Results also suggested partial support for hypothesized gender differences in emotional intelligence. Overall, these results provide insight into how to conduct ecologically valid cross-cultural emotion recognition research.