Social intelligence minus empathy = aggression?

Empathy reduces aggressive behavior. While empathy and social intelligence are strongly correlated it is, for both logical and consequential reasons, important to regard them as different concepts. Social intelligence is requ ired for all types of conflict behavior, prosocial as well as antisocial, b ut the presence of empathy acts as a mitigator of aggression. When empathy is partialed out, correlations between social intelligence and all types of aggression increase while correlations between social intelligence and pea ceful conflict resolution-decrease. Social intelligence is related differen tly to various forms of aggressive behavior: more strongly to indirect than to verbal aggression, and weakest to physical aggression, which is in acco rdance with the developmental theory of aggressive style. More sophisticate d forms; of aggression require more social intelligence. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.