Recent research has shown that cultural, linguistic, and sociodemographic peculiarities influence the measurement of trait emotional intelligence. Assessing trait EI in different populations fosters cross-cultural research and expands the construct’s nomological network. In mental health, the trait EI of clinical populations has been scarcely researched. Accordingly, the present study examined the relationship between trait EI and key sociodemographic variables on Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire datasets with mental healthcare patients from three different Spanish-speaking countries. Collectively, these datasets comprised 528 participants, 23% (...) from Chile, 28% from Peru, and 49% from Spain. The sociodemographic variables we used for trait EI comparisons were gender, age, educational level, civil status, and occupational status. Analyses involved Multigroup Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling and analysis of covariance. Our results revealed significant between-country differences in trait EI across the studied sociodemographic variables and interactions between these variables. Measurement invariance across the datasets was attained up to the scalar level regarding gender and education, although analyses on age, civil status, and occupation displayed non-invariance. The resultant psychometric evidence supports the suitability of the TEIQue-SF for the accurate cross-cultural assessment of trait EI in mental health settings. It also highlights the importance of incorporating trait EI into extant psychotherapeutic frameworks to enhance non-pharmacological treatment efficacy. (shrink)

Emotional intelligence is an emerging field since the 1990s due to its important outcomes for employees. This study is a psychometric meta-analysis examining the links between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, job performance, and job stress of employees. In this meta-analysis, carefully selected studies on emotional intelligence since the origin of the concept in 1990 were included along with studies examining its outcomes. For this analysis, three streams of emotional intelligence, consistent with previous meta-analyses, were (...) considered: ability, self-report, and mixed emotional intelligence. This meta-analysis is an attempt to add to the literature by analyzing the relationships between emotional intelligence and selected employee outcomes over a period of time beginning in 1990. The three streams of emotional intelligence were separately analyzed to examine their relationship with employee outcomes. These outcomes were included in the study based on select research studies. Our study results showed that emotional intelligence and its three streams were positively related to organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and job performance and negatively related to job stress. (shrink)