The Role of Reading Mind from Eyes, Mental Culture and Emotional Intelligence in Social Decision-Making

The present study aimed to evaluate the role of reading mind from eyes, mental culture and emotional intelligence on decision-making in social situations. To this aim, altruism and attitudes toward gender roles were considered as the indicators of mental culture.
The study included 30 male and female students (n = 15 per group) in Kharazmi University, who were selected based on simple random sampling. In order to collect data, Baron and Cohen's test of reading the mind in the eyes, ultimatum tasks, the test of social value orientation , Siberia-Shearing emotional intelligence questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to examine people's attitudes toward gender roles. Correlation analysis and simple regression were used for data analysis.
Results indicated that a positive correlation was observed between reading the mind in the eyes and making decision in social situations. However, no significant correlation was reported between emotional intelligence and mental culture with making decisions in social situations. Simple regression data could predict the role of emotional intelligence and reading the mind in the eyes in social decision-making. In addition, the results of qualitative observations indicated that people's attitudes toward gender roles can be related to significant predictors of making decisions in social positions.
Based on the results, reading the mind from eyes can play a significant role on social decision making. Therefore, it is necessary to teach important concepts such as social recognition in order to empower the individuals to improve cognitive skills.