Predicting Leadership Status Through Trait Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Ability

Many interconnected factors have been implicated in the prediction of whether a given individual occupies a managerial role. These include an assortment of demographic variables such as age and gender as well as trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) and cognitive ability. In order to disentangle t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bogdan S. Zadorozhny, K. V. Petrides, Yongtian Cheng, Stephen Cuppello, Dimitri van der Linden
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-03-01
Series:Behavioral Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/15/3/345
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Many interconnected factors have been implicated in the prediction of whether a given individual occupies a managerial role. These include an assortment of demographic variables such as age and gender as well as trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) and cognitive ability. In order to disentangle their respective effects on formal leadership position, the present study compares a traditional linear approach in the form of a logistic regression with the results of a set of supervised machine learning (SML) algorithms. In addition to merely extending beyond linear effects, a series of techniques were incorporated so as to practically apply ML approaches and interpret their results, including feature importance and interactions. The results demonstrated the superior predictive strength of trait EI over cognitive ability, especially of its sociability factor, and supported the predictive utility of the random forest (RF) algorithm in this context. We thereby hope to contribute and support a developing trend of acknowledging the genuine complexity of real-world contexts such as leadership and provide direction for future investigations, including more sophisticated ML approaches.
ISSN:2076-328X