A meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between emotional intelligence and health

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Abstract

A meta-analysis of 44 effect sizes based on the responses of 7898 participants found that higher emotional intelligence was associated with better health. Emotional intelligence had a weighted average association of r = .29 with mental health, r = .31 with psychosomatic health, and r = .22 with physical health. Emotional intelligence measured as a trait was more strongly associated with mental health than emotional intelligence measured as an ability. Comparison of three measures of perceived trait emotional intelligence, the EQ-i (Bar-On, 2000), the Assessing Emotions Scale (Schutte et al., 1998), and the Trait Meta Mood Scale (Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, & Palfai, 1995), showed that the EQ-i had a significantly stronger association with mental health than the other measures. The findings provide a basis for research aimed at determining the causal relationship between trait emotional intelligence and health.

Introduction

Emotional intelligence consists of the interaction between emotion and cognition that leads to adaptive functioning (e.g., Salovey & Grewal, 2005). The four-branch model of emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004) posits that emotional intelligence involves the interrelated abilities of (a) perception of emotion in the self and others, (b) using emotion to facilitate decision making, (c) understanding emotion, and (d) regulating emotion in the self and others. Bar-On’s (2000) mixed model proposes that emotional intelligence consists of emotional self-awareness as well as various skills or characteristics that may stem from the effective use or regulation of emotions, such as good interpersonal relationships, problem solving, and stress tolerance.

Mayer et al. (2004) argued that emotional intelligence is best conceived of as an ability, similar to cognitive intelligence. In line with this conceptualization they developed first the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999) and then its successor, the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2003), both maximal performance tests modelled after traditional cognitive intelligence tests.

Emotional intelligence has also been conceptualized as a trait (Neubauer and Freudenthaler, 2005, Petrides and Furnham, 2001), similar to personality characteristics such as extraversion or conscientiousness. A trait, or typical functioning, conceptualization and measurement of emotional intelligence can be applied to a mixed model definition of emotional intelligence such as the one proposed by Bar-On (2000), and operationalised through the EQ-i, to a narrower definition such as the one originally proposed by Salovey and Mayer (1990), operationalised through the Assessing Emotions measure developed by Schutte et al. (1998), or to aspects of this earlier Salovey and Mayer definition, operationalised through the Trait Meta Mood Scale (Salovey et al., 1995). Observer ratings, such as those provided by the Emotional Competency Inventory (Boyatzis, Goleman, & Rhee, 2000), as well as self-report measures have been used to assess trait emotional intelligence. It should be noted that developers of scales such as the EQ-i (Bar-On, 2000) do not necessarily describe their measures as trait measures, instead describing them as measures of skills or competencies.

Some research indicates that emotional intelligence may vary with age and gender. For example, Mayer et al. (1999) found that adults scored higher on an ability test of emotional intelligence than adolescents and that women have somewhat higher scores than men. Similarly, emotional intelligence assessed as a trait is higher for women (Goldenberg et al., 2006, Schutte et al., 1998, Van Rooy et al., 2005) and may increase slightly with age (Van Rooy et al., 2005).

A meta-analysis of research published before 2003 found that emotional intelligence overlaps somewhat with both cognitive intelligence and aspects of personality, but also has substantial separate variance (Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004). Further, this meta-analysis found the following predictive validity of emotional intelligence for various outcome realms: employment, .22; academic, .09; and other performance, .22.

These meta-analytic results indicate that overall emotional intelligence has promise as a predictor of various life outcomes. Mental and physical health was included with various other characteristics in the “other performance” category of the Van Rooy and Viswesvaran (2004) meta-analysis. There is now a much more substantial body of research investigating the relationship between emotional intelligence and mental and physical health functioning, warranting meta-analytic investigation of this area of study.

The adaptive perception of emotion, use of emotion to enhance cognition, understanding of emotion, and regulation of emotion may contribute to mental and physical health in various ways. Matthews, Zeidner, and Roberts (2002) pointed out that level of emotional intelligence may have implications for both mental disorders in which emotion plays a central role as well as disorders that relate to non-emotional features of emotional intelligence. Mood and anxiety disorders are examples of disorders that have maladaptive emotional state as core symptoms (Matthews et al., 2002). The better perception, understanding, and management of emotion of those with higher emotional intelligence may prevent development of maladaptive emotional states associated with mood and anxiety disorders. Research has shown that those with higher emotional intelligence do tend to have typically more positive mood and are better able to repair mood after a negative mood induction (Schutte, Malouff, Simunek, Hollander, & McKenley, 2002).

Lack of awareness of emotion and inability to manage emotions are key symptoms in some personality disorders and impulse control disorders (Matthews et al., 2002). Supporting a link between lower emotional intelligence and lack of awareness of emotional processes as well as impulse control problems, Schutte et al. (1998) found that lower emotional intelligence is associated with more alexithymia and less impulse control.

Despite these grounds for predicting that higher emotional intelligence would be related to better mental health, under certain circumstances higher emotional intelligence may have maladaptive consequences. Petrides and Furnham (2003) found that individuals with higher emotional intelligence reacted more strongly to mood induction procedures, including a negative induction. Such greater sensitivity to mood-related stimuli might for some individuals lead to greater distress under adverse circumstances.

Matthews et al. (2002) pointed out that medical disorders, especially ones with psychosomatic aspects, are often co-morbid with mood or anxiety disorders. Higher emotional intelligence is linked with aspects of better psychosocial functioning (e.g., Brown and Schutte, 2006, Salovey and Grewal, 2005, Schutte et al., 1998, Schutte et al., 2001), including intrapersonal factors such as greater optimism and interpersonal factors such as better social relationships. Some of these psychosocial factors, such as more social support and more satisfaction with social support for those with higher emotional intelligence (Brown & Schutte, 2006), may serve as buffers to physical illness. Further, those with higher emotional intelligence might be better able to follow through on commitments to health behaviour and show better medical compliance.

The purpose of the present meta-analysis was to:

  • 1.

    Obtain an estimate of the overall association between emotional intelligence and health for three types of health indicators: (a) physical, (b) mental, and (c) psychosomatic.

  • 2.

    Examine potential moderating factors of this relationship such as (a) operationalisation of emotional intelligence as an ability versus as a trait, (b) type of trait measure (Assessing Emotions Scale, EQ-i, or Trait Meta Mood Scale), (c) gender of participants, (d) age of participants (adolescents or adults), and (e) whether the participants were students or community members.

Section snippets

Literature search

We searched the PsycINFO and Pubmed databases from 28 February 2006 back to the earliest records for keywords (a) emotional intelligence or emotional competency, and (b) health, mental health and specific disorders terms. When an article did not have all the information needed for a meta-analysis, we wrote to the author listed for correspondence to obtain additional information. We also searched each relevant article as well as review articles and chapters focusing on emotional intelligence for

Results

Table 1 shows the effect size for each effect size analysis. Every effect size was in the direction of an association between emotional intelligence and good health. Table 2 reports the meta-analytic relationship between emotional intelligence and the three types of health indicators. The results show that mental, physical, and psychosomatic health all had medium effect sizes, with r ranging from .22 to .31, indicating that on average emotional intelligence explained between 5% and 9% of the

Discussion

A meta-analysis of 44 effect sizes based on the responses of 7898 participants found that higher emotional intelligence was significantly associated with better health. Notably, the 33 effect sizes for the relationship between emotional intelligence and mental health showed a weighted average association of r = .29, indicating shared variance between the two variables. Although the methodologies of the meta-analysis and the studies on which it is based do not provide evidence regarding causality,

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    These three authors contributed equally to the research.

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