Trait emotional intelligence and attentional bias for positive emotion: An eye tracking study

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) may promote wellbeing through facilitation of adaptive attentional processing patterns. In the current study, a total of 54 adults (43 females, mean age = 25 years, SD = 10 years) completed a Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI) scale and took part in three eye-tracking tasks, where they viewed (1) faces with different emotions (happy, angry, fearful, neutral), (2) 16-face crowds with varying ratios of happy to angry faces, and(3) 4 visual scenes (physical threat, social threat, positive social, neutral). Findings showed that higher TEI was associated with more attention to positive emotional stimuli (happy faces, positive social scenes), relative to negative and neutral stimuli. An attentional preference for positive rather than negative emotional stimuli may be one way that TEI affords protection from stressors to promote mental health.Trait emotional intelligence and attentional bias for positive emotion: An eye tracking study

Are Emotionally Intelligent People More Creative? A Meta-Analysis of the Emotional Intelligence–Creativity Link

“…The second theoretical explanation emphasizes the affective links between EI and creativity. As revealed by Parke et al [13] and Lea et al [30], people with high EI are more competent in sustaining and using positive affect, a well-documented affective state that can stimulate creativity [31,32] through its effect of expanding the scope of idea generation [33] and fueling the persistence of idea exploration [34]. People with high EI are also more capable of channeling negative affect into change-oriented thinking processes-such as considering possible solutions to improve the dissatisfying situations-and, thus, generating creative solutions [35,36].…”

Editorial: Trait Emotional Intelligence: Foundations, Assessment, and Education

“…Trait EI is the construct that empirical and meta-analytical evidence has consistently demonstrated to have greater criterion validity (for a summary, see Pérez-González and Qualter, 2018). In fact, Trait EI is consistently positively and significantly related to the most relevant areas of interest for prosperity and happiness in life across the life span, such as well-being, health, romantic and social relationships, leadership, psychosocial adjustment, academic performance, or job performance, and job satisfaction (e.g., Andrei et al, 2016;Keefer et al, 2018;Lea et al, 2018;Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2019;Sarrionandia and Mikolajczak, 2019;Piqueras et al, 2020).…”

What Does Your Gaze Reveal About You? On the Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking

“…Besides the Big Five traits and curiosity, gaze metrics were found to be associated with various other personality traits, including emotional intelligence [54], indecisiveness [36], the tendency to ruminate [21], trait anxiety [42], sexual compulsivity [87], boredom susceptibility [70], and general aggressiveness [6]. Eye tracking has even been used to investigate people's attachment styles in interpersonal relationships (e.g., secure, withdrawn, fearful, enmeshed) [81].…”