New Research: Do Emotionally Intelligent People Use AI More Often?

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Across dozens of interviews with talent development leaders, every conversation has wove its way to some variation of this question: How exactly does emotional intelligence fit into the “AI Era?”

So, to deepen the conversation, I looked at data from 993 working professionals. In addition to measuring their emotional intelligence, we asked two simple questions:

1. Do you use AI daily?

2. Do you use AI weekly?

The idea was to see if emotionally intelligent people were more or less likely to use AI. Here’s what we found, what it implicates, and what we intend to look at moving forward:

The Findings: EQ Has No Bearing on AI Adoption

In a sample of 993 respondents, emotional intelligence showed no meaningful relationship with how often employees use AI at work. Overall EQ was essentially unrelated to daily AI use (r = –0.03, p = .37) and weekly AI use (r = –0.00, p = .92), indicating that people with higher emotional intelligence are no more or less likely to adopt AI than their peers. In practical terms, AI adoption appears to be driven less by individual social-emotional capabilities and more by other variables like role, industry, access, and organizational expectations.

The Implications: 3 Key Takeaways for Talent Development Leaders

1. Other Factors Drive AI Adoption More So Than EQ, but EQ May Still Matter: With no significant relationship, this likely implies that other factors drive AI adoption more so than emotional intelligence. For example, job type, age, industry, manager support, and access could all influence AI adoption more than EQ. It would be interesting to control for these other factors and see then if EQ would influence AI adoption.

2. Low EQ + High AI Usage Could Have Serious Repercussions for Organizations: If low EQ employees are using AI just as much as high EQ folks, this could lead to problems such as:

• Poor Decision-Making: Emotional intelligence has been strongly linked to sound decision-making. Someone lower in emotional intelligence could easily find theirself using AI in an unthorough or impulsive manner. This can lead to overlooking hallucinations and not fact-checking meticulously. And this of course can lead to mistakes and even unethical results. Consider the consultancy Deloitte as an example. They’re currently being sued for AI-caused factual errors in a $1.6 million report they put together for the Canadian government.

• Poor Communication: The Menlo Ventures report estimates that 19% of people use AI to write emails. When you factor in Slack messages, slide scripts, and more, that number goes up. In other words, a significant percentage of people already rely on AI to help them communicate. While AI companies clamber to make their LLMs “more emotionally intelligent,” they’ve found that emotional intelligence is one of the most difficult skills to automate. Good communication is complex. It takes into account things like how you’re coming across tonally (self-awareness), how the other person feels (social awareness), and how your message will impact your relationship (relationship management.

3. EQ as a Force Multiplier for AI: Since those high in emotional intelligence are also using AI, you could essentially flip the previous bullet on its head. Those who are emotionally intelligent and use AI should be able to use it much more judiciously. By making better decisions with AI and vetting out when communications need more human and less AI, emotionally intelligent employees will gain yet another advantage over their low EQ counterparts.

How Talent Development Leaders Can Author a New Way of Working: Core Skills for the AI Era

Reports estimate that about 60% of jobs will fundamentally change by 2030. McKinsey, LinkedIn, and the World Economic Forum have all made educated predictions around which core skills will likely be the most important. The skills that have topped their lists include:

• Emotional intelligence

• Creativity

• Critical Thinking

• Communication

• Decision Making

• Adaptability

In addition to being directly on the list, emotional intelligence is foundational to each of the other five skills.

As Brian Glaser, the Chief Learning Officer at Google, said in our recent interview, “We have an opportunity to author new ways of working that bring out the best in people and organizations. And there’s no playbook for it yet. That’s what makes this era exciting.” Every company has no choice but to move forward into the unknown. The choice they can make is whether or not emotional intelligence skills will help drive their future.