Emotional intelligence and adjustment in college students

Research on Emotional Intelligence (EI) is increasing but few studies have used different methods and multiple informants to test the widespread assumption that EI predicts social adjustment and emotional well-being. The present study examined the convergent and criterion validity of the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS; Schutte et al., 1998) and the Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS; Salovey et al., 1990) in 124 college students in New York City. Convergent validity was assessed by examining associations between (a) self-reported emotion regulation ability and performance in a task that tests the ability to enhance and suppress negative and positive emotional expressions, and (b) self-reported ability to attend to emotions and attentional biases for emotional faces as measured with a modified dot probe task. Criterion validity was assessed by examining associations between EI subscales and peer ratings and self-report measures of psychosocial functioning.; Self-reported EI was found to be largely unrelated to behavioral measures of emotion-regulation abilities, confirming criticism that self-report measures of EI do not reflect actual abilities. Results from the attentional bias task pointed to the possibility that specific dimensions of perceived EI may be related to increased vulnerability to depression: People who reported high ability to attend to emotions were more likely to look at photographs of sad faces, mirroring attentional biases in depressed people revealed by previous studies using the same experimental paradigm. However, despite their overall lack of convergent validity, several EI subscales were significantly related to self-reported and friend-rated adjustment criteria and showed evidence of incremental validity. Self-reported emotion regulation ability predicted lower levels of concurrent depressive symptoms and general psychological distress and self-reported social skills predicted friend-rated quality of participants' current social interactions above and beyond dispositional optimism and openness to experience, respectively.; It is argued that EI subscales tap self-efficacy beliefs that have distal rather than proximal effects on adjustment. Social cognitive theory bears promise as a framework for future research on EI sociocultural, emotion-regulatory, and self-reflective processes may impact psychosocial functioning.