The relationship between emotional intelligence and eating disorders or disordered eating behaviors: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Eating disorders are psychiatric disorders that have a significant negative impact on a person's physical and mental health. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been hypothesized to be negatively associated with disordered eating behaviors, however previous research on this hypothesis has shown contradictory results. Therefore, the current meta-analysis aimed at exploring the relationship between EI and disordered eating behaviors based on previous studies. Analysis of 20 studies using a three-level random-effects meta-analysis model revealed an overall negative association between EI and eating disorders, r = −0.17 (95% CI: −0.25, −0.08; p < .001), with a small effect size.Furthermore, subsequent moderator analyses revealed that the type of emotional intelligence (trait EI versus ability EI) helped explain the heterogeneity of the previous findings, with the association between trait EI and disordered eating (r = −0.23; 95% CI: −0.33, −0.13; p < .001) being significantly greater than the association between ability EI and disordered eating (r = −0.12; 95% CI: −0.22,. -0.03; p = .010), indicating that trait EI was more closely associated with disordered eating than ability EI. Overall, this study confirms the relationship between EI and disordered eating behaviors, suggesting that individuals with higher EI are less likely to have disordered eating behaviors.