Emotional Intelligence and Attentional Bias for Threat-related Emotion Under Stress

Davis, Sarah K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4683-4807 (2019) Emotional Intelligence and Attentional Bias for Threat-related Emotion Under Stress. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 59 (3). pp. 328-339. ISSN 0036-5564 Online: 1467-9450

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Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) can buffer potentially harmful effects of situational and chronic stressors to safeguard psychological wellbeing (e.g., Mikolajczak, Petrides, Coumans, & Luminet, 2009), yet understanding how and when EI operates to promote adaptation remains a research priority. We explored whether EI (both trait and ability) modulated early attentional processing of threat-related emotion under conditions of stress. Using a dot probe paradigm, eye movement (fixation to emotive facial stimuli, relative to neutral) and manual reaction time data were collected from 161 adults aged 18–57 years (mean age = 25.24; SD = 8.81) exposed to either a stressful (failure task) or non-stressful (control) situation. Whilst emotion management ability and trait wellbeing corresponded to avoidance of negative emotion (angry and sad respectively), high trait sociability and emotionality related to a bias for negative emotions. With most effects not restricted to stressful conditions, it is unclear whether EI underscores ‘adaptive’ processing, which carries implications for school-based social and emotional learning programmes.

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