“…In this regard, a study by Mayer, Caruso and Salovey [12], in which they administered the "Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale" (MEIS; [50]), to a sample of 183 American university students, found that the most emotionally intelligent people were those who desired and sought greater social involvement, both in general and in intimate social relationships. These results are in line with other research (e.g., Tiwari and Bhat, [8]; Mayer, Salovey and Caruso, [37]), which highlights that people with higher levels of EI are, in turn, those who show greater empathy, which will facilitate their involvement in positive social relationships with their peers. Thus, Gorostiaga, Balluerka and Soroa [51] found positive and significant correlations between empathy and the three dimensions of EI, namely perception, understanding and regulation, evaluated by the TMMS-23.…”