Intelligence is defined as one's ability to comprehend, understand and make use of experience. Intelligence is not a one-dimensional concept but there are multiple types of intelligence in individuals (Yerizon et al., 2018). Regarded as one of the types of intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence refers to one's capacity to explore one's own and others' emotions, well-being and inner worlds (Behjat, 2012). Intrapersonal intelligence includes an introverted and self-reflective capacity that enables one to gain self-understanding, recognise one's advantages and disadvantages, and often becomes visible through a contemplative self-experience (Read & Laschinger, 2017). At its core, intrapersonal intelligence not only infuses one's self and identity but also ensures one to self-direct and manage one's life effectively (Gardner, 1993; Guerrero et al., 2019). A high level of intrapersonal intelligence contributes morally to the world and promotes success in professions with a heavy moral dimension (Moran, 2009). Also, it can be predicted that the high level of intrapersonal intelligence of individuals belonging to professions such as nursing, where negative emotions such as pain and loss are frequently experienced, would protect the members of the profession who stand at risk in this respect from negative mental states such as burnout, compassion fatigue and emotional contagion.

Emotional contagion, which can trigger burnout and compassion fatigue in nurses, is defined as the transfer of one's mood to individuals in the environment through interactions with individuals in the frequently penetrated environment. Involuntariness is what should be underlined here (Gök, 2015). Emotional contagion, defined as the transfer of emotions or moods from one person to another, has drawn the attention of scientists for a long time (Barsade et al., 2018). Emotions are more likely to be transmitted when they are expressed rather than being felt internally or expressed through physiological manifestations such as body language and facial expressions (Prochazkova & Kret, 2017). Researchers have stated that emotional contagion can occur in groups of two or more people and can be induced by one or two people (Kramer et al., 2014). Emotional contagion, which takes on emotional-social forms, indicates the importance of collective emotion and highlights that people who are dependent on others are more vulnerable to emotional contagion (Barsade et al., 2018; Eyre et al., 2017). Nurses are among the highest number of healthcare professionals who serve in the hospital setting. Moreover, patients, for whom they are mostly responsible for their care, substantially increase the number of people contacted during the day. Given that emotional contagion can have a collective structure and the amount of contagion is high in multi-person environments, it may be inevitable and problematic for a negative emotion to spread like a virus to others in the work environment. Within this context, nurses who are affected by emotional contagion may be more likely to withdraw from or desensitise to the people who cause this effect (Denk & Köçkar, 2018). Both situations may lead to the disruption of essential and non-deferrable care and formation of negative effects on nurses' caring behaviours.

Nursing is a “care” based profession, with a human being as its field of endeavour. Care is not only specific to nursing, yet is unique to nursing. The feature that distinguishes care as “nursing care” is that the moral and affective properties of care are integrated with professional knowledge and skills and reflected on the patient-nurse relationship (Kol et al., 2017). Therefore, nursing care consists of nursing intervention such as injection and intravenous injection and communication, attitudes and behaviours between nurse and patient play a major role in the care and treatment of the individuals even in the most basic nursing intervention (Erzincanlı & Yükse, 2018). Many studies in the literature have stated that the duration of hospitalization is shortened with quality and effective care, loss of labour force is prevented, less cost is incurred, complications are reduced, and consequently, patient satisfaction increases (Cerit & Coşkun, 2018; Erzincanlı & Yükse, 2018; Kol et al., 2017). The caring behaviours that nurses manage and shape with their intrapersonal intelligence in the treatment of the patient are believed to be significant in decreasing or preventing emotional contamination. However, before all of these, it is necessary to identify the effect of intrapersonal intelligence levels of nurses on emotional contagion and caring behaviours, and determine the correlation between these three concepts, as well as attain a clear idea and knowledge through scientific researches on this subject. The lack of a study that enables the determination of the correlation between these three concepts in the literature in order to attain such clear ideas and knowledge has motivated the researchers to study this issue.

This study was designed to determine the correlation between the intrapersonal intelligence levels of nurses with their emotional contagion and caring behaviours and to serve as a catalyst for future descriptive or invasive studies. Therefore, answers to the following questions were sought in this study:

Is there a difference between the socio-demographic characteristics of nurses and their intrapersonal intelligence, emotional contagion and caring behaviours?

What are the levels of intrapersonal intelligence, emotional contagion and caring behaviour of nurses?

Is there any correlation between intrapersonal intelligence, emotional contagion and caring behaviour?