The Mediating Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Relationship between Theory of Mind and Risky Decision-Making in Adolescents

The present study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between theory of mind and risky decision making. The design of the research was descriptive-correlation, which was carried out by the method of structural equation modeling. In terms of its purpose, this research is among applied research. The statistical population included female students (13 to 18 years old) of Khomeini Shahr city in 2021, of which 300 were selected as the research sample using the available method. The data were collected using the emotional intelligence questionnaire of Schutte (1998) and software tests of balloon risk taking bart by Lejuez et al. (2002) and mind reading through eye images Baron-Cohen et al. (2001). The results showed that theory of mind has a positive and significant effect on emotional intelligence (p < 0.05 and with an effect coefficient of 0.233), theory of mind has a positive and significant effect on risky decision making (p < 0.05 and with an effect coefficient of 0.138), emotional intelligence has a positive and significant effect on high-risk decision-making (p<0.05 and with an effect coefficient of 0.188) and the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between theory of mind and high-risk decision-making was significant (p <0.001 and with an effect coefficient of 0.044). Finally, the findings indicated that theory of mind and emotional intelligence could not improve risky decision-making performance in teenagers.