Personality, well-being and health correlates of trait emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI), personality, alexithymia, life satisfaction, social support and health related measures were assessed in Canadian (N = 500) and Scottish (N = 204) groups. EI was found to be negatively associated with alexithymia and alcohol consumption and positively associated with life satisfaction and social network size and quality. The relative strengths of EI and personality as regression predictors of health-related outcomes were investigated for a subgroup of Scots (N range 99-111). The results of these analyses show that EI is more strongly associated than personality with social network size, but social network quality, life satisfaction, alcohol consumption, number of doctor consultations and health status are more strongly related to personality. More work is required to investigate the possible existence of other variables which, as with social network size are predicted better by trait EI than by personality. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.