"Emotional Intelligence: some empirical answers and its role in the school adaptation in a sample of High School´s students"
Mestre Navas, José Miguel (Departamento de Psicología. Universidad de Cádiz)
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Guil Bozal, María del Rocío ( Departamento de Psicología. Universidad de Cádiz)
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Gil-Olarte Márquez, Paloma ( Departamento de Psicología. Universidad de Cádiz)

ABSTRACT

Current research on Emotional Intelligence (EI) needs to address three
questions: what is the predictive validity of EI in relation to personal
and social adjustment? Do ability and trait perspectives of EI represent
different or complementary constructs? And is EI really a novel construct
or a new label for an old concept? This paper seeks to address these
issues, which are crucial to establish EI as a worthy field of
psychological investigation and theorizing. Results indicate that the
ability model of EI (Mayer and Salovey, 1997) has predictive validity and
explains adaptation in educational contexts. Depending on the criteria
used, the MSCEIT (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) can
explain more variance in outcomes than measures based on trait models of
EI (Petrides & Furham, 2000). Ability and trait
models describe different concepts, and it is unclear whether these are
complementary. Defined as a trait, but not as a set of abilities, EI is
closely associated with social competence.