The Emotional Intelligence, Health, and Well-Being Nexus: What Have We Learned and What Have We Missed?
This paper reviews the claimed pivotal role of emotional intelligence (EI) in well-being and health. Specifically, we examine the utility of EI in predicting health and well-being and point to future research issues that the field might profitably explore. EI is predictive of various indicators of well-being, as well as both physical and psychological health, but existing research has methodological limitations including over-reliance on self-report measures, and neglect of overlap between EI and personality measures. Interventions focusing on emotional perception, understanding and expression, and emotion regulation, seem potentially important for improving health and well-being, but research on EI has not yet made a major contribution to therapeutic practice. Future research, using a finer-grained approach to measurement of both predictors and criteria might most usefully focus on intra- and inter-personal processes that may mediate effects of EI on health. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_8JZX1Uc4k.
Laboratory for Research in Personality, Emotions, and Individual Differences, University of Haifa, Israel. Zeidner@research.haifa.ac.il
Moshe
M
Zeidner
University of Haifa, IsraelUniversity of Cincinnati, USAEducational Testing Service (ETS), Philadelphia, USA.
Gerald
G
Matthews
University of Haifa, IsraelUniversity of Cincinnati, USAEducational Testing Service (ETS), Philadelphia, USA.
Richard D
RD
Roberts
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000592:standards*; D012106:Research; D012307:Risk Factors; D012919:Social Behavior
Five Factor Model of personality; emotional intelligence; health; inter- and intra-personal processes; well-being