Trait emotional intelligence predicts selfesteem and trait anxiety in adolescents

Abstract

Trait anxiety and self-esteem, as indicators of well-being, have been understudied in the literature that examines the relationship between emotional intelligence and well-being in adolescent development. Anxiety and self-esteem are emotion-based factors in adolescent personality and are expected to be related to Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI) as an adaptive emotion-based capacity. The objective of the study is to examine the unique contributions of TEI on trait anxiety and self-esteem in adolescents in the context of personality. The study involved 807 adolescents ages 16-19 from central Slovakia and examined the predictive relationship of TEI (as measured by the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, TEIQue-ASF) separately on self-esteem and on trait anxiety after considering broad based personality (as measured by the Freiburger´s Personality Inventory, FPI) and cognitive abilities (assessed by Amthauer´s Intelligence Structure Test, IST). The results showed that TEI has strong bivariate correlations with both trait anxiety (r =-.65) and self-esteem (r = .62) that maintained significance in the regression analyses. With trait anxiety as a dependent variable the explained variance by TEIQue-ASF factors above personality traits was 6%. With self-esteem as the dependent variable TEIQue-ASF factors explained a greater amount of variance (9%) with none of the personality traits as significant. The overall findings suggest that TEI is an important factor in adolescent well-being through its associations with lower trait anxiety and higher self-esteem.