Predicting traumatic stress using emotional intelligence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2003.07.009Get rights and content

Abstract

The study investigated whether emotional intelligence (EI) can predict how individuals respond to traumatic experiences. A random sample of 414 participants (181 male, 233 female) were administered a measure of EI along with the Impact of Event Scale—revised [IES-R; Weiss, D. S. & Marmar, C. R. (1997). The Impact of Events Scale—revised. In J.P. Wilson & T.M. Keane (Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 399–411). New York: Guilford Press], and the monitoring and blunting questionnaire [MBQ, Anxiety Stress Coping 7 (1994) 53]. The results showed that participants with higher NEIS scores report fewer psychological symptoms relating to their traumatic experiences, that monitors are more likely to have higher NEIS scores than blunters. Traumatic events had a greater impact on females than males, and males had higher EI than females. The implications of these findings for using EI as a predictor for individuals who may experience traumatic stress are discussed.

Introduction

A traumatic experience is one which, according to DSM (American Psychiatric Association (APA), 1994), is both life-threatening and will cause the individual to experience fear, horror, or helplessness. The range of symptoms includes re-experiencing, avoidance and emotional numbing, and hyperarousal. These symptoms are emotionally challenging to the individual, and people cope in different ways with such experiences.

Past research has indicated that there are a range of factors which affect whether an individual is likely to become traumatised by such experiences. These factors include trauma-related experience (nearness to the event, perceived threat of death or injury, expectedness, etc.) and also personal factors (neuroticism, IQ; McFarlane, 1992). Unfortunately, the research regarding these factors is not consistent, perhaps partly because PTSD is not linked directly with any particular general personality characteristic. There is a need to identify more specific factors. Heszen-Niejodek (1997) proposed an interactional approach and attempted to integrate individual factors and situational factors. Rentoul and Ravenscroft (1993) used the term ‘hardiness’ when referring to the type of characteristic necessary when working with the emergency services. They suggested testing people for hardiness to rule out vulnerable recruits at the selection stage. Regehr, Hill, and Glancy (2000) describe individuals vulnerable to traumatic stress as having external locus of control, a lack of self-efficacy and social and organisational support.

There is debate concerning the EI construct, as to whether it should be presented solely in terms of ability, or whether it should account for both ability and personality characteristics. An ability model of emotional intelligence (EI) was first presented by Salovey and Mayer (1990). This was later followed by mixed models (ability and personality characteristics), particularly those of Bar-On, 1997, Goleman, 1995.

Salovey and Mayer (1990) consider EI to contain four domains of ability: perception and expression of emotion, assimilating emotion in thought, understanding and analyzing emotion, and reflective regulation of emotion. Goleman (1995) proposed five key areas: knowing one’s emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself, recognising emotions in others and handling relationships. Bar-On (1997) also proposed five key areas: intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, adaptability scales, stress-management scales, and general mood. There is substantial overlap between these definitions, but there is not space to discuss in detail the merits of each. This article is concerned with the utility of EI.

EI measures have been used for a number of purposes, such as job selection, diagnosis, and evaluation. It has been suggested (Bloom-Lewkowicz, 1999, Goleman, 1995) that IE can be increased with tuition so, though it is often expressed as Emotional Quotient (to compare with Intelligence Quotient), it is not perceived as a fixed ability—which may be important if EI is a predictor of response to trauma. Davies, Stankov, and Roberts (1998) compared EI with cognitive abilities and personality and found that EI is highly related to personality, though this finding is not universally accepted (Mayer & Salovey, 1995).

Mayer and Salovey (1995) describe how the regulation of disturbed feelings and emotions can lead to poorer health if an individual does not process the relevant emotional information. This lack of processing is similar to denial and avoidance described in literature on traumatic stress (e.g. Creamer, 1995, Horowitz, 1986, Hunt and Robbins, 1998, Hunt and Robbins, 2001). For instance, Hunt and Robbins (1998) describe how people deal with traumatic stress through processing or avoidance. Individuals who process information deal with the traumatic memories through a process of narrative development, and the memories become easier to deal with. Individuals who use avoidance tend to keep clear of situations which remind them of the traumatic event and so do not deal with their traumatic memories, memories which may then return to active memory at some point in the future. Processing information is generally a more effective coping strategy than avoidance.

Miller (1987) proposed a similar model, with monitoring (processing) and blunting (avoidance). Miller suggested that individuals who used monitoring were vigilant and open to information provided by the traumatic event whereas those who use blunting tended to avoid relevant information. Van Zuuren and Wolfs (1991) suggested that monitoring is related to internal locus of control and how the individual is able to change a situation through problem-focused coping. In contrast, blunting is related to the individual feeling that they are not able to change a situation, i.e. external locus of control, and emotion focused coping. Van Zuuren and Wolfs (1991) found that individuals who use monitoring do not spend more time thinking about the event but do use problem-focused skills to help diffuse the situation. This would suggest that there may be a relationship between coping style and EI, with monitors having higher EI.

Previous research regarding sex differences has not provided consistent results regarding EI, personality characteristics, and the response to traumatic incidents, though there is some evidence that women may have higher EI (e.g. Charbonneaux & Nicol, 2002), be more neurotic (e.g. King, Barnardy, & Hauner, 2003), and experience greater levels of emotional distress after a traumatic event (e.g. Salcioglu, Basoglu, & Livanou, 2003); though these differences may relate to reporting style. This opens an interesting question regarding the relationship between EI and trauma. If women have higher EI then we can predict that they would experience fewer problems relating to trauma, though this goes against the evidence. The impact of moderating personal variables and coping may be of critical importance here.

There has been no research specific to the relationship between EI, coping and traumatic stress. If it is the case that EI is related to an individual’s response to traumatic events, then it is possible to use measures of EI in a variety of trauma-related situations, both after an event (those with lower EI scores are more likely to experience problems with coping) and during the selection of individuals for risky jobs such as firefighters and police officers.

The specific predictions of the study are that:

  • 1.

    There will be gender differences.

  • 2.

    Individuals who use a monitoring style will experience fewer trauma-related psychological symptoms than those who use a blunting style. This implies that monitors will have higher EI scores than blunters.

  • 3.

    Scores on EI will predict psychological symptoms resulting from a traumatic event. Participants with higher EI scores being less likely to experience such symptoms.

Section snippets

Participants

The questionnaire was administered to 442 participants. Twenty eight were removed from the final analysis as they had not fully completed the questionnaire. The remaining 414 participants consisted of 181 males and 233 females. The mean age of the sample was 36 years, with a range from 18 to 78. Participants were not selected on the basis of having experienced a traumatic event, though 298 recorded that they had experienced such an event.

Questionnaire

The present questionnaire consisted of two standardised

Results

The questionnaires were coded into SPSS and each research question was analysed separately. The majority (72%) of the respondents indicated that they had experienced a traumatic event. This is a very high figure, and may reflect the general nature of the question. There were no significant differences between those who reported a traumatic event and those who did not on the NEIS nor the MBQ. All analyses containing these two measures without the IES-R apply to all participants. Measures

Discussion

The results indicated that there was a very high level of reported traumatic experience among a sample of the normal population. Women scored higher on psychological symptomatology (in support of Horowitz et al., 1979), and men scored higher on emotional intelligence (contrary to the findings of Mayer, Caruso and Salovey, 2000, Ciarrochi, Chan and Caputi, 2000). There were no sex differences relating to coping strategy. There was a relationship between emotional intelligence and trauma-related

References (29)

  • M Creamer

    A cognitive processing formulation of posttrauma reactions

  • M Davies et al.

    Emotional intelligence: in search of an elusive construct

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1998)
  • D Goleman

    Emotional intelligence

    (1995)
  • I Heszen-Niejodek

    Coping style and its role in coping with stressful encounters

    European Psychologist

    (1997)
  • Cited by (61)

    • A neuro-cognitive process model of emotional intelligence

      2018, Biological Psychology
      Citation Excerpt :

      Further, while some positive correlations between self-reported trait EI and actual performance ability (e.g., faster emotion recognition in facial images; Austin, 2004) and other objective outcomes (e.g., job performance and health; Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010; O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2011) have been reported, observed relationships between trait and performance-based measures tend to be weak (r = 0.20 to 0.30; Brannick et al., 2009), and most other studies seeking to validate such measures of trait EI have tended to examine correlations with other self-report measures. For example, individuals that score higher on self-reported trait EI measures also score higher on self-report measures of social adjustment (Engelberg & Sjöberg, 2004), the ability to recover from a traumatic experience (Hunt & Evans, 2004), the personality dimensions of extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, and agreeableness (as well as reduced neuroticism; see van der Linden et al., 2017; Warwick & Nettelbeck, 2004) and overall positive mood (Schutte, Malouff, Simunek, McKenley, & Hollander, 2002; but see Spence, Oades, & Caputi, 2004). Such individuals also report lower work-related stress (Dulewicz, Higgs, & Slaski, 2003), and are also less likely to report symptoms diagnostic of some psychological disorders (Hemmati et al., 2004).

    • The impact of emotional intelligence in the military workplace

      2023, Human Resource Development International
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text