So where does it say narcs have better emotional intelligence? It only says that those narcs with better EI tend to use it to manipulate others. It's what plenty of non narcs do too.
Definition of Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
I say this definition is kinda shitty, and that "emotional intelligence" is kind of an irrelevant concept. Let's start by analyzing the definition. First clause: "the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions". This can be reduced to "the ability to monitor emotions". Second clause: "the ability to discriminate emotions and label them appropriately". This is merely reinforcing the first clause, since you can't very well monitor anything if you can't even distinguish black from white. So monitoring emotions implies discriminating and labeling them. Third clause: "the ability to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior". This is redundant because ultimately all information is emotional and all thought and behavior is "guided" (=propelled) by emotion.
So the newly-made non-redundant definition of EI becomes: The ability to monitor emotions.
And now I ask: isn't it obvious that the most charming and manipulative persons are great at monitoring emotions? There's a reason they are charming and manipulative: it's because they can. And the reason they can is because they are more "emotionally intelligent" than the average man. I.e. they are better at monitoring, observing, distinguishing, understanding, etc., emotions than the average man.
This, by the way, does not mean that everyone "emotionally intelligent" will be charming and manipulative. You could excel at monitoring emotions and still not give a rat's ass about charm (i.e. about appearing awesome to others with a view to seduce them). Or still be a pussy and be afraid of fooling people into doing what you want because they might hurt you back. Etc.
So, basically, this is all an non-issue. There's nothing incredible nor troubling about any of this. There's only one kind of intelligence that's important, and that's the complete one. You can have high "EI" and still be a retard. Just as autistic retards keep being retards even after solving complex math operations. Etc. The only way I can imagine the concept of "emotional intelligence" being useful is as a kind of IQ test for autists: to see which autist is less autistic than the other.
It's obvious. Your behaviour is a consequence of your feelings. (I prefer using the word feelings, because when people use the word "emotion" they usually refer exclusively to powerful feelings (love, hatred, happiness, sadness, whatever)). So by acting you are already "processing emotional information" even if that processing happens deep within your subconscious. It all boils down to feelings in the end. Because feelings are the only thing we can ever experience in this world.
Last year, a group of Austrian psychologists reported a correlation between EI and narcissism, raising the possibility that narcissists with high EI might use their "charming, interesting, and even seductive" qualities for "malicious purposes," such as deceiving others.
#noshit
How is it surprising that individuals with keen sensitivity to other people's motives, high paranoia, no empathy, and a complete self-focus might use all of that to manipulate other people? Seems pretty obvious to me.