Here's how you can avoid the potential consequences of neglecting emotional intelligence in UX Research.

To avoid the potential consequences of neglecting emotional intelligence in UX research, actively listen to participants, empathize with their experiences, maintain sensitivity to their emotional responses, foster a supportive environment, and ensure that your research findings reflect a deep understanding of user needs and emotions.

Recognizing EI while interacting with potential users will make your solution stand out. The key is how you can think of a user's emotional state and come up with a creative and better solution. Here, pointing out every statement and researching it will give a boost even if you neglect emotional intelligence.

Creating empathy maps is for the designer himself to simplify the user experience. It will somehow make designers connect with the core needs of the users and consequences will go out with the procedure.

It seems must to select some core questions before you enter to the interview session. Some questions can also help you to make more interconnecting questions and also make users easy to reply thoroughly even if they are not very much into the interview.

As previously said making notes or pointing out every statement will help. But, actively listening will allow you to think of what comes first whenever a user is thinking about a particular statement. Also, will make the interviewee ask a casual question that will make the environment of the session more friendly. The consequences of neglecting EI will get less space if the environment is friendly enough.

Testing and iterating your designs is to make the betterment of the product. As designs are for the users, making the iteration keep the EI in mind would make your designs more connected with the users. Make the iteration slides to see the differences.

While reflecting regularly is essential for continuous improvement as a UX professional. Reflecting is not about being self-critical but about analyzing your performance to understand your choices, the theories behind your approach, and the organizational constraints you navigated. Reflection is powerful because experience alone doesn't always lead to learning. I’d suggest, while reflection must be a continuous process, one way to work around it is to take it as a cue to reflect whenever you feel uncertain or satisfied with a phase of your work. Start small; to make this a habit, I'd recommend reflecting at the end of each sprint. In my experience, this practice has consistently uncovered valuable insights and fostered significant growth.