Sapioemotionality as a New Attribute in Socio-Cultural Studies

Given the significance of people’s attitudes in shaping the dominant culture of a society, this study intends to see how people react or are emotionally aroused when they see an intelligent person (i.e., sapioemotionality), and then examine the underlying cultulinguistic reasons for different degrees of sapioemotionality in the Persian culture. To do so, first, a sapioemotionality scale was developed and validated using 440 individuals. For further analysis, 68 interviews were conducted and a list of Persian, knowledge-related utterances/expressions were extracted to cross-validate the quantitative findings. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and t-test were used to analyze the quantitative data, and cultuling (culture + language) analysis was employed to examine the qualitative data. The results substantiated the validity of the proposed scale, revealing that the level of sapioemotionality is dwindling in Iranian society. Cultuling analysis, confirming the low level of sapioemotionality, espoused the quantitative findings. In the end, the results were discussed, and a number of suggestions were made to shed more light on sapioemotionality.