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 required for all types of conflict behavior, prosocial as well as antisocial, but 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 peaceful conflict resolution-decrease. Social intelligence is related differently to various forms of aggressive behavior: more strongly to indirect than to verbal aggression, and weakest to physical aggression, which is in accordance with the developmental theory of aggressive style. More sophisticated forms; of aggression require more social intelligence. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.