Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence: Do They Contribute to the Explanation of Prosocial Behaviour?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article has potential benefits not only understanding theoretical background but provides implications on practical work on enhancing emotional intelligence. However, I have some concerns, according to which paper could be improved. First of all, student sample has a few drawbacks, which is included in the limitations. Further, comparison with other non-student samples could be advisable.
Regarding results, I have some suggestions:
- run factor analyses in order to examine if constructs are one-factor constructs, or there could be subscales, subfactors added to the analyses
- in the mediation model figure, the direct link has two values (both the direct and the total effect), which should be clearly indiced, which value stands for what (or just put the direct effect size on the link)
Overall, article is suggested to publication with minor revision.
Author Response
Dear Madam/Sir,
Thank you very much for your review of the manuscript "Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence: Do they Contribute to the Explanation of Prosocial Behaviour?". We made some changes according to your suggestions. We added comparisons with adolescent and adult samples in the Discussion section. Furthermore, we added additional data on psychometrical characteristics of instruments, as third reviewer also suggested, as all instrument were used previously. However, we think that conducting FA of our instruments is over the scope of this manuscript. Second reviewer also noticed that instrument is detail explained. As you also suggested, we made changes in the mediation model figure.
We also made some other changes suggested by other reviewers, as you can see in the manuscript. We hope that our manuscript has been significantly improved.
Best regards.
Reviewer 2 Report
This a very interesting paper on an important topic really in need of evidence based research . Emotional intelligence is very important within the concept of "personhood" yet not well studied.
The tools are very well detailed . The population -college students- for this study leaves me puzzled . I am concerned that there is large gender bias , mostly women who are according to the literature likely to have a higher level of emotional intelligence and empathy. Also , a bit puzzled that the study goals where verbally discussed prior to the written questionnaires since the aims as stated in the paper are likely to affect the responses of the students especially the self-report component of emotional intelligence.
The paper does need some minor English editing. For example the sentence in line 121-122 uses the word studies . Is that a equivalent to " major" ??
Not sure how to best address the limitations mentioned above , perhaps add a section of limitations ?
The paper should be published since the topic is of great importance but since little research in the specific aspects of emotional intelligence is available the limitations have to be clearly defined.
Generally good
Author Response
Dear Madam/Sir,
Thank you very much for your review of the manuscript "Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence: Do they Contribute to the Explanation of Prosocial Behaviour?". We made some changes according to your suggestions. We share your concern about gender bias of the sample, so we included another step in the hierarchical regression analysis (specifically, we put sex in the first step of the HA). We also put gender in the mediation analysis as covariate in our last version, but we forgot to write in the manuscript. We corrected that mistake now. We added a gender bias as limitation in the last part of the Discussion and changed language mistakes.
We also made some other changes suggested by other reviewers, as you can see in the manuscript. We hope that our manuscript has been significantly improved.
Best regards.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for inviting me to review this interesting paper. I enjoyed reading it very much. However, I would like to make some suggestions for authors that might help strengthen their manuscript.
- In page 3 (INSTRUMENTS): it would be convenient to describe in this section the psychometric properties of the instruments (validity and reliability) or refer to the section of the article where these data are presented.
- In page 5 (RESULTS):
· In the following sentence: “The results showed that the significant effect of the self-assessed EI on PSB (β = 0.38, p = 0.0001) became weaker/less significant (β = 0.25, p = 0.0003)”, please check if the numerical data in the text and in Table 3 are the same, it seems that they do not match exactly (0.38 in the text vs. 0.39 in the table / 0.25 in the text vs. 0.24 in the table). I advise applying the same rounding to both data.
· In the following sentence: “indirect effect = 0.07, 95%CI [0.082, 0.139], and for emotional empathy indirect effect=0,084 95%CI [0.042, 0.138]”, why are there two decimals in one of the indirect effects and three in the other, and why is a period used in one case and a comma in the other to indicate the decimals? Unify all data.
· Figure 1: it would improve the clarity of the results if reference to Figure 1 were made in the text when appropriate.
Author Response
Dear Madam/Sir,
Thank you very much for your review of the manuscript "Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence: Do they Contribute to the Explanation of Prosocial Behaviour?". We made some changes according to your suggestions. We added additional data on psychometrical characteristics of instruments. We also corrected minor mistakes in numerical data, and put reference to Figure 1 in the text.
We also made some other changes suggested by other reviewers, as you can see in the manuscript. We hope that our manuscript has been significantly improved.
Best regards.
Reviewer 4 Report
General comments
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This paper aims to discuss the prediction of the ability emotional intelligence (EI) to prosocial behavior (PSB). This topic is very important and interesting. I would like to express several concerns and provide some comments and suggestions as follows. Hopefully, the following comments and suggestions will be helpful for improving this paper.
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Major comments
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1. This paper still lacks link of EI abilities in PSB, especially the reference to past literature on prosocial behavior (PSB) and how this article differs from past literature.
2. For the literature, it is recommended that the literature related to emotional intelligence (EI) to prosocial behavior (PSB). The authors can show more papers in these factors and how the difference.
Minor comments
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3. This study used a questionnaire sampling method. Is there any difference in the sample compared to other research? And please explain more about what criteria you used to choose the total of 331 university students?
4. The authors should explain why choose to test whether empathy (emotional reactivity and cognitive empathy) mediated the relationship between self-assessed EI and PSB? How this article differs from past literature?
5. The authors can discuss results, implications for managers and scope for future researches in different sections to enhance readability. And please try to make some different from other papers.
Author Response
Dear Madam/Sir,
Thank you very much for your review of the manuscript "Ability and Trait Emotional Intelligence: Do they Contribute to the Explanation of Prosocial Behaviour?". As you suggested, we tried to clarify novelty of our study and differences from past literature, so we added text in the Introduction and Discussion sections. In the description of the sample we stated that our sample is convenient.
The reason why we choose to test whether empathy (emotional reactivity and cognitive empathy) mediated the relationship between self-assessed EI and PSB is explained in the Introduction and we tried to emphasize it more in this version of the manuscript. As you also suggested, we added in last part of the Discussion text that refers to implications for future researches and practical implications.
We also made some other changes suggested by other reviewers, as you can see in the manuscript. We hope that our manuscript has been significantly improved.
Best regards.
