Does Emotional Intelligence Matter in Tough Times? A Moderated Mediation Model for Explaining Health and Suicide Risk amongst Short- and Long-Term Unemployed Adults

Abstract

This study contributes to knowledge on psychosomatic research by examining a moderated mediation model in which emotional intelligence (EI) is related to mental health, physical health and suicide risk through perceived stress, in samples of short-term (n = 364) and long-term (n = 594) unemployed individuals. The moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationships between perceived stress and mental and physical health and suicide risk was tested. The results showed that emotional intelligence was positively associated with mental and physical health and negatively associated with perceived stress and suicide risk. The proposed model only predicted mental health and suicide risk in the long-term unemployed sample. This suggests that emotional intelligence may act as a buffer against the negative impact of unemployment-related stress on mental health and suicide risk when unemployment is prolonged. Therefore, interventions targeting both the promotion of mental health and the prevention of suicide risk via the promotion of emotional abilities may consider length of unemployment.

Quality of Life and Job Loss during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mediation by Hopelessness and Moderation by Trait Emotional Intelligence

“…Although there is strong evidence for the associations of hopelessness and trait EI with health outcomes (e.g., [34,55]), their combined roles in the relationship between a…”

“…Although there is strong evidence for the associations of hopelessness and trait EI with health outcomes (e.g., [ 34 , 55 ]), their combined roles in the relationship between a major critical life event (i.e., job loss) and QoL remained unexplored until now. Our results suggest a need to consider trait EI as a potential psychological resource that might mitigate the impact of stressful life events and subsequent negative cognitive and emotional reactions, such as hopelessness, over QoL.…”

Perceived procedural justice and psychological flourishing among mental health professionals in Macao: a moderated mediation model

“…Emotion regulation may also alleviate the negative influence of emotional exhaustion on psychological flourishing because people with better emotion regulation are more resilient and adaptive (Gross & Muñoz, 1995 ; Troy & Mauss, 2011 ). Emotion regulation has been consistently reported to moderate the negative impacts of various stressors (e.g., unemployment-related stress and family-work conflicts) on certain specific wellbeing indicators (e.g., job satisfaction and suicide risk; Gao et al, 2013 ; Mérida-López et al, 2019 ). Emotional intelligence, as a whole, has also been found to buffer the negative impact of personal workplace-experience (e.g., bullying) on employees’ psychological flourishing in higher education institutions (Nel, 2019 ).…”

Predicting Job Satisfaction in Military Organizations: Unpacking the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Teamwork Communication, and Job Attitudes in Spanish Military Cadets

“…This instrument consists of 16 items measuring four aspects of EI: Self-Emotion Appraisal, SEA, Others' Emotion Appraisal, OEA, Use of Emotion, UOE, and Regulation of Emotion, ROE. However, as in prior studies, we used the overall score in our analyses as we were interested in the global EI score (Law et al, 2004;Mérida-López et al, 2019). Items (e.g., "I am quite capable of controlling my own emotions" or "I always encourage myself to try my best") were rated using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).…”