The Role of Emotional and Meta-Emotional Intelligence in Pre-adolescents' Well-Being and Sociometric Status.

Antonella D’Amico,Alessandro Geraci

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.749700

Abstract

The study examined the relationships among emotional and meta-emotional intelligence, well-being, and sociometric status in 105 pre-adolescents. Emotional and meta-emotional intelligence were measured using the Intelligenza Emotiva: Abilità, Credenze e Concetto di Sé Meta-Emotivo (IE-ACCME) test (D’Amico, 2013), allowing to measure ability emotional intelligence (EI), emotional self-concept, meta-emotional knowledge, meta-emotional ability in self-evaluation, and meta-emotional beliefs. Meta-emotional dimensions refer to the awareness of individuals about their emotional abilities and to their beliefs about the functioning of emotions in everyday life. Eudemonic well-being and sociometric status were, respectively, measured using the well-known Psychological Well-Being (PWB) scale by Ryff’s (1989) and registering the levels of acceptance/rejection from peers (Moreno, 1960). Results demonstrated that: pre-adolescents’ meta-emotional beliefs are positively associated to eudemonic well-being: pre-adolescents with higher levels of ability EI, meta-emotional knowledge and meta-emotional self-evaluation are more accepted by others while those that overestimate their emotional abilities are more refused by peers. These results evidence that meta-emotional variables may play a crucial role in well-being and sociometric status, encouraging future studies on this issue.

Highlights

IntroductionEmotional intelligence (EI) is an umbrella term that includes different theoretical models and measurement methods (see Zeidner et al, 2008; Brackett et al, 2011) that have been classified in different ways (O’Connor et al, 2019)
Emotional intelligence (EI) is an umbrella term that includes different theoretical models and measurement methods that have been classified in different ways (O’Connor et al, 2019)
The specific aim of this study is to investigate if pre-adolescents with high levels of emotional and meta-emotional intelligence experience high level of well-being, and if they are more accepted and less rejected by peers

Summary

Introduction

Emotional intelligence (EI) is an umbrella term that includes different theoretical models and measurement methods (see Zeidner et al, 2008; Brackett et al, 2011) that have been classified in different ways (O’Connor et al, 2019). The different theoretical approaches to EI correspond to different measurement methods: Mayer and Salovey (1997) argued that, since EI is a form of intelligence, it should only be measured by performance test like MSCEIT (Mayer et al, 2002) or STEM and STEU (MacCann and Roberts, 2008) requiring individuals to solve emotional tasks or problems. A further group of assessments tools (Schutte et al, 1998; Brackett and Mayer, 2003; Brackett et al, 2006) have been defined as self-reported ability EI (Gutiérrez-Cobo et al, 2016) since they use self-report methodologies but are focused only the Mayer and Salovey ability model of EI and do not include personality traits or competencies related to emotions

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