Received: 22 March 2018 | Revised: 19 July 2018 | Accepted: 23 July 2018 DOI: 10.1002/ab.21788 RESEARCH ARTICLE The role of emotional intelligence and negative affect as protective and risk factors of aggressive behavior: A moderated mediation model María J. Gutiérrez-Cobo 1 | Alberto Megías 1 | Raquel Gómez-Leal 1 | Rosario Cabello 2 | Pablo Fernández-Berrocal 1 1 Faculty of Psychology, Department of Basic Psychology, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain 2 Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Málaga, Spain Correspondence Alberto Megías, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Basic Psychology, University of Málaga, Campus Teatinos, s/n. 29071, Málaga, Spain. Email: amegias@uma.es Funding information The Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Grant number: PSI2017-84170-R; Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish, Grant number: MINECO FJCI-2015-25600 The General Aggression Model (GAM) offers an integrative explanation of the aggressive behavior based on three stages: 1) inputs: personal and situational factors; 2) routes or individual internal states: affect, cognition, and arousal; and 3) outcomes: decision processes with a (non) aggressive result. Researchers are interested in looking for protective factors within the GAM to diminish aggression. Previous studies have found two relevant variables acting independently as risk and protective factors: emotional intelligence (EI) and negative affect (NA). The aim of the present study is to analyze a moderated mediation model including these variables as an explanation of aggressive behavior and integrate it within the GAM. Four hundred and six participants were assessed on EI, NA, and aggression. The moderated mediation analysis showed a significant negative indirect effect of the perceiving EI branch on total aggression mediated through NA levels, which, in turn, was moderated by the managing EI branch. Moreover, this relationship was also observed for the physical, anger, and hostility sub- scales of aggression. Our study demonstrates the importance of having a high ability to perceive emotions as a protective factor in the first stage of the GAM. These individuals will present lower NA in the second stage of the model, resulting in a reduction in aggression. Moreover, having a high ability to perceive emotions is particularly relevant for individuals that are less able to manage emotions, given that those participants with higher scores on the managing EI branch can reduce their aggressive behavior by mitigating the effect of NA on aggression in the third stage of the GAM. KEYWORDS aggressive behavior, emotional intelligence, GAM, moderated mediation model, negative affect 1 | INTRODUCTION Aggressive behavior has been the focus of numerous investigations, given its prevalence and undesirable consequences for aggressors and victims, both in children and adults (e.g., Ashy, Yu, Gutowski, Samkavitz, & Malley- Morrison, 2017; Brendgen & Poulin, 2018). Aggression is defined as any behavior intended to cause harm to another individual who does not desire to be hurt (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Human aggression is a complex form of behavior influenced by a range of factors. Therefore, it is important to explain this phenomenon by looking for an integrative framework such as the General Aggression Model (GAM; Allen, Anderson, & Bushman, 2018; Anderson & Bushman, 2002). The GAM explains human aggressive episodes as being the result of three stages: (1) inputs: this includes personal (e.g., attributional Aggressive Behavior. 2018;1–9. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ab © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1