1. THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN TRAIT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE,
STRESS, ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
Balgiu Beatrice Adriana1, Tebeanu Ana Voichiţa1 , Macarie George Florian University “POLITEHNICA” of Bucharest, ROMANIA;
2 "Gr. T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, ROMANIA;
Contact:
Aim
evaluation of the relationship between Trait Emotional Intelligence and perceived stress, anxiety and depression in a technical college students' sample.
Methods
Introduction
 Objectives: evaluation of TEI, of perceived stress, and of its correlatives in a group of technical students, and the analysis of the relation between TEI and perceived stress, as well as of the relation between TEI and anxiety and depression, as a secondary concern.
Participants: 115 students in the technical domain: 86 males (M = yrs old, S.D. = .72), and 29 females (M = 20.07, S.D.= .74), enrolled in the 1st and 2nd year of study at the University “POLITEHNICA” of Bucharest.
Hypotheses
1. High EI-trait level subjects are less affected by the stress caused by university life.
2. High EI-trait levels are negatively associated with anxiety and depression.
Instruments
1. Trait emotional intelligence questionnaire – TEIQue SF (Petrides, 2009). 30 items evaluated on a Lickert scale from 1 − totally disagree to 7 − totally agree.
− measure a global EI trait score ( = .88 ) and its facets TEI factor structure:
Well-being: Individuals with high scores feel positive, happy, and fulfilled. Individuals with low scores tend to have low self-regard and to be disappointed about their life as it is at present.
Self-control: High scorers have a healthy degree of control over their urges and desires and are good at regulating external pressures and stress. Low scorers are prone to impulsive behavior and may find it difficult to manage stress.
Emotionality: Individuals with high scores are in touch with their own and other people’s feelings. Individuals with low scores on this factor find it difficult to recognize their internal emotional states and to express their feelings to others, which may lead to less rewarding personal relationships.
Sociability: Individuals with high scores are better at social interaction. They are good listeners and can communicate clearly and confidently with people from diverse backgrounds. – Those with low scores believe they are unable to affect others’ emotions and are less likely to be good negotiators and networkers.
2. Stress perception scale – PSS 14 (Cohen & Wiliamson,1988) − explores the subjective stress feeling over the last month. It entails 14 items on a scale from 1− Never to 5−Often. A total perceived stress score is calculated – STSP.
3. Anxiety and depression – HAD ( Zigmond & Snaith, 1983) contains 14 items evaluated on a continuum from 0 – Never to 3 – Very often ( = .75).
− it evaluates the health state on two levels: the presence of anxious disorders and of depressive disorders, each beetwen 0 and 21.
Background
Research on the relation between stress and character traits tried to predict individuals’ reaction to stressors. This type of research also includes the great amount of empirical studies on the role that Emotional Intelligence plays in stress. However, there is little research on Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI). We have no knowledge of studies that use this concept and instrument based on TEI theory in the Romanian space.
 Trait Emotional Intelligence vs. Ability Emotional Intelligence
Trait EI (or emotional self-efficacity) is defined as a constellation of emotion-related self-perceptions and dispositions which pertains primarily to the realm of personality and should be measured via self reported questionnaires (Petrides & Furnham )
TEI and EI ability are two constructs which differ from one another from a conceptual, methodological, and empirical point of view.
The term EI created by Bar-On (1997) and the one used by Mayer & Salovey (1997) and Goleman (2001) defines EI as ability, and EI tests used scoring procedures which tried to create correct options within various alternatives that measured the maximum of performance in this way.
The relation between TEI, stress, anxiety and depression
TEI moderates the impact that stress has on mood changes: individuals with higher TEI undergo lower mood deterioration (Mikolajczak, Petrides, Coumans & Luminet, 2009). There are positive relations between TEI and induced stress.
TEI is negatively associated with somatic stress-induced disorders (Fernandez-Berrocal, Alcaide, Extremera & Pizarro, 2006).
TEI is a significant predictor for mental distress, and negative and positive affects act as partial mediators of the relation between TEI and mental distress (Kong, Zhao & You, 2012).
TEI is negatively associated with anxiety (Ciarrochi, Chan&Bajgar, 2001, Mikolajczak, Luminet, Leroy & Roy, 2007; Bauld & Brown, 2009), with depression (Ciarrochi, Deane &Anderson, 2002, Saklofske, Austin & Minski, 2003).
Results and discussions
b) Associations of variables
A Spearman's rank-order correlation was run to assess the relationship between TEI facets and Perceived stress, Anxiety and Depression in university students, years old. Preliminary analysis showed the relationships are monotonic, as assessed by visual inspection of a scatterplot.
As expected, there is a significant negative correlation between the dimensions in the TEI-que SF questionnaire and the perceived stress score (PSS-14) (rs between and -.529). It also shows significant negative associations between the dimensions from the TEI-queSF questionnaire and those that measure anxiety and depression (HAD) (rs between and -.408) except for the relationship between Sociability and Anxiety that proves insignificant statistically.
Table nr. 2 Spearman correlations* between TEI dimensions, Perceived
stress (PSS 14) and HAD scales
+/- Positive or negative correlations
*All correlation significant at .01 or .05 level
Global trait EI correlates negatively with perceived stress, and Emotionality (r = -.410) and Sociability (r = -409) have the highest contribution. Consequently, as long as the respective subjects express what they feel about others and they manage to empathize with those with whom they interact, as long as they feel well in a social context, stress perception will be low.
a) Descriptive analysis
A descriptive analysis is shown in table 1. When we compare it to the original reference of the test (Petrides, 2009), we observe that the subjects obtain moderate scores in the case of Global Trait EI and of the factors they make it up.
A Mann-Whitney U test was run to determine if there were differences between male and female students in the medians scores of TEI dimensions, perceived stress and HAD scores.
Distributions of the scores for males and females were similar - scores were not statistically significantly different among genders, except for the TEI self control, which was statistically significantly higher in males (Mdn = 5.00) than in females (Mdn = 4.50), U = 1483, z = , p = .034
The average score on the perceived stress scale is 20,61 +/-6,82. In comparison, the average score obtained by the author of the scale in a sample which is representative for the general population of the USA for the same age group was of 21,1 +/-7,2 (Cohen & Williamson, 1988).
Table nr.1 Averages scores on scales
Inventory
Dimenssion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
TEIque-SF
1. Global score
2. Well Being +
3. Self Control
4. Emotionality
5. Sociability
PSS 14
6. Perceived stress –
HAD
7. Anxiety
8.Depression
Variables M
S.D.
Min./Max.
TEIque-SF
1. Global score
5.06
.65
3.40/6,56
2. Well Being
5.42
.94
2.33/7,16
3. Self Control
4.80
.92
2.50/7,00
4. Emotionality
4.89
2.37/8,00
5. Sociability
5.04
.91
2.66/7,00
PSS 14
6. STSP
20.61
6.88
4.00/45,00
HAD
7. Anxiety
7.31
3.20
1.00/17,00
8. Depression
5.07
3.30
0.00/17,00
Conclusions
TEI, with all its facets specifically related to the affect, correlates negatively with perceived stress, with anxiety and depression. It suggests that the subjective nature of emotional experience is essential in the perception of stress. There is a high correlation between perceived stress, anxiety, and depression among students.
The research corroborates previous research on the importance of TEI within health factors and it establishes a clear negative relation between TEI and stress as well as between TEI, anxiety, and depression.
Subjects with high TEI are less affected by stress and this is due to the fact that they communicate their feelings, they have fulfilled personal relationships, they perceive themselves as being in contact with their own emotions, and they are able to control them.
TEI is an important concept in the study of individual differences regarding stress, anxiety and depression. TEI is a useful construct when it comes to capture individual differences regarding students’ reaction to stress.