PERSONALITY VARIABLES AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE PREDICTING PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
The relevance of voluntary helping behaviour goes beyond social interactions within the society and social setting, but even into social interactions in the organizations; either towards fellow workers or towards members of the society. This study, thus investigate the impact of personality variables (core self-evaluation, emotional stability and work locus of control) and emotional intelligence on prosocial behaviours among security and safety personnel, considering the role of psychological strain. Adopting the cross sectional survey design, 247 personnel (Male-168; Female-79) were purposively selected from security and safety organizations. Their age ranges between 18 and 60 (M=38.56; SD=9.11) and they responded to standardized measures of core self-evaluation (α= .79), emotional stability (α= .63), work locus of control (α= .89), emotional intelligence (α= .79), psychological strain (α= .71) and prosocial behaviour (α= .84). The result indicated that psychological strain did not moderate the relationship between core self-evaluation and prosocial behaviour (β=-.11, p> .05). Also, the relationship between emotional stability and prosocial behaviour was not moderated by psychological strain (β= .00, p> .05). Work locus of control did not predict prosocial behaviour on its own (β= -.09, p> .05). However, the relationship between emotional intelligence and prosocial behaviour was significantly moderated by psychological strain (β= -.52, p< .01). The findings add to the knowledge of the relationship between emotional intelligence and prosocial behaviour with consideration of the moderating role of psychological strain. This will help prevent the eliciting of negative work behaviour from emotional intelligence, and improve positive utilization of such intelligence in building and managing positive work behaviours and selfless helping attitudes.