انعطاف پذیری و تعادل عاطفی به عنوان میانجی بین هوش هیجانی خصلتی و رضایت از زندگی

The current study aimed to analyze the importance of trait emotional intelligence in life satisfaction and to extend the previous literature by investigating the potential mediating effects of resilience and affect balance in this relationship. To test the study hypotheses, self-report measures of trait emotional intelligence, resilience, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction were administrated to 263 undergraduates. Correlation analysis indicated that trait emotional intelligence was positively correlated with life satisfaction. Mediational analyses showed that trait emotional intelligence exerted its indirect effect on life satisfaction through the simple mediating effect of affect balance and the three-path mediating effect of resilience–affect balance. In addition, resilience played as a partial mediator between trait emotional intelligence and affect balance. Furthermore, multi-group analyses showed that the mediational model was not moderated by gender. Therefore, this study makes a contribution to the complex nature of the association between trait emotional intelligence and subjective well-being.

Currently, there are two main approaches to conceptualizing and measuring emotional intelligence (EI): trait EI (or trait emotional self-efficacy) and ability EI (or cognitive-emotional ability; Mayer et al., 2008, Petrides and Furnham, 2001, Petrides et al., 2007 and Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Trait EI is defined as a constellation of emotion-related self-perceptions and dispositions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies (Petrides et al., 2007 and Petrides et al., 2007), whereas ability EI is defined as a type of intelligence concerning actual emotion-related cognitive abilities (Mayer et al., 2008). Trait EI is typically assessed via self-report questionnaires (Petrides et al., 2007 and Petrides et al., 2007), whereas ability EI is best measured through maximum-performance tests (Mayer et al., 2008). Although they are two different constructs conceptually, methodologically and empirically, trait and ability EI are two complementary rather than oppositional constructs (see Petrides, 2011 for a recent review). In the present study, we followed the trait approach and used a self-report measure to assess EI.