Individual difference correlates of health-related behaviours: Preliminary evidence for links between emotional intelligence and coping

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2006.08.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Associations amongst personality, coping, health locus of control, emotional intelligence (EI) and health behaviours were examined in a group of 364 Canadian students. Consistent associations with health behaviours were found for Conscientiousness, with the correlation pattern for other measures being more variable. EI, coping and health locus of control scales were intercorrelated, and a scale-level factor analysis suggested the extraction of a superordinate Coping/EI factor. This was found to mediate the relationship between personality and both taking regular exercise and healthy diet strategy. These findings suggest that associations between coping and EI, and the ways in which EI can act as a coping resource, should be investigated further.

Introduction

There is considerable evidence for the existence of associations between personality and health behaviours. Within the framework of the five-factor model of personality, the most consistent associations have been found for Agreeableness (A), Neuroticism (N) and Conscientiousness (C). A recent meta-analysis (Bogg & Roberts, 2004) found positive and negative associations between C-related traits and a wide range of positive and negative health behaviours (e.g. exercise, diet, alcohol consumption, smoking). A similar pattern of associations is shown by A, whilst N shows the opposite pattern (e.g. Bermúdez, 1999, Booth-Kewley and Vickers, 1994). N is also associated with the reporting of unfounded health symptoms (e.g. Watson & Pennebaker, 1989). For Extraversion (E) and Openness (O), associations with health behaviours have also been found, but with less consistent effect direction. Thus whilst E and O associate positively with wellness behaviours, including taking exercise for E and healthier eating for O, they also associate positively with risk behaviours such as smoking and alcohol consumption (Bermúdez, 1999, Booth-Kewley and Vickers, 1994, Goldberg and Strycker, 2002, Vollrath and Torgersen, 2002).

Other dispositional variables are also of interest in relation to health. In the present study we focus on three of these: coping, health locus of control and emotional intelligence (EI). The rationale for these choices was to explore whether the use of EI in studies of health behaviour can provide new information and insights, and to examine the associations of EI with two constructs which, as discussed below, have been widely used in health research. There is evidence for EI/health behaviour associations, but the issue of associations between EI and other health-related dispositional measures is currently under-researched. Many dispositional variables have been found to be associated with health, for example positive affect and optimism (Pressman and Cohen, 2005, Scheier and Carver, 1992); in the present study we however chose to focus on two widely studied constructs which relate to the way in which individuals appraise and deal with health-related issues.

A number of links between coping and health have been established. Emotion-focussed coping has been found to be related to distress and worry (Matthews, Schwean, Campbell, Saklofske, & Mohamed, 2000), chronic diseases (Maes, Leventhal, & de Ridder, 1996), chronic pain (Katz, Ritvo, Irvine, & Jackson, 1996), substance abuse (Wills & Hirky, 1996), and depression, anxiety and somatic symptom reporting (Beasley, Thompson, & Davidson, 2003). Task-focussed coping tends to be negatively associated with, for example, distress and disengagement (Matthews et al., 2000) and to be positively associated with health-promoting behaviours and outcomes such as treatment adherence (Christensen, Benotsch, Wiebe, & Lawton, 1995), and rate of recovery from surgery (Rosenberger, Ikovics, Epel, D’Entremont, & Jokl, 2004). It should however be noted that the effectiveness of a particular coping strategy is context-dependent, with degree of control over the situation acting as a moderator (Christensen et al., 1995, Folkman and Moskowitz, 2000).

Health locus of control (Wallston, Wallston, & DeVellis, 1978) relates to the idea that perceived degree of control over health will be a determinant of health behaviours. Internal locus relates to perceptions of having control oneself, whereas external locus relates to perceptions that external factors control the outcome, with chance and powerful others (medical professionals) being identified as the important health-related external factors. The expectation is that internal locus will associate positively, and the two external components negatively, with health-enhancing behaviours. Studies of associations between health locus of control and health behaviours has produced mixed findings, with the expected associations not always being found. A recent large-scale cross-national study has however demonstrated that positive health behaviours are positively associated with internal health locus and negatively associated with chance health locus (Steptoe & Wardle, 2001). Small sample sizes in previous studies (reviewed by Steptoe & Wardle, 2001) combined with small effect sizes appear to be implicated in the earlier lack of consistent findings.

There is increasing interest in the associations of EI with health and well-being. EI covers individual differences in emotional capabilities, both intrapersonal (e.g. stress management) and interpersonal (e.g. perceiving emotions). Several ways in which EI might be associated with health behaviours can be identified. Interpersonal EI would be expected to lead to better interactions with health professionals and thus to a greater tendency to seek help and follow advice (Ciarrochi & Deane, 2001); high interpersonal EI individuals may also be better equipped to resist peer pressure toward behaviours such as smoking and alcohol consumption, which might account for negative associations found between EI and these behaviours (Austin et al., 2005, Trinidad and Johnson, 2002, Tsaousis and Nikolaou, 2005). Associations between EI and lower levels of negative emotions have also been reported, with EI being found to be negatively related to psychological distress and depression (e.g. Dawda and Hart, 2000, Slaski and Cartwright, 2002, Tsaousis and Nikolaou, 2005). EI has been found to be positively related to health-related quality of life, life satisfaction and social network factors (Austin et al., 2005, Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal, 2002).

Consideration of the relevance of constructs other than personality to health and health behaviours is confused by issues of construct overlap. Health locus of control is not strongly associated with personality (Auerbach & Pegg, 2002) but there have been consistent findings of associations between coping and personality (Matthews et al., 2000), in particular task-focussed coping is associated with high E, high C and low N, whilst for avoidance coping these associations are reversed (e.g. Cosway, Endler, Sadler, & Deary, 2000). When assessed by self-report rather than performance measures, as is usually the case in studies of EI/health/well-being associations, EI has been found to show consistent medium or large associations with personality (e.g. de Raad, 2005, Saklofske et al., 2003). An important issue with both coping and EI is therefore that of incremental validity over personality in predicting health behaviours, although this would appear to apply less to health locus of control.

Associations between EI and coping are also of interest. It has been suggested that EI can be regarded as a coping mechanism which facilitates ‘successful and efficient self-regulation toward desired ends’ (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 2000, p. 511), relating to the view expressed by Folkman and Moskowitz (2000) that coping research should cover positive as well as negative emotions and outcomes. There is currently little information available on EI/coping associations, and the possibility that EI, like coping, mediates the effect of personality on outcomes (e.g. Deary, Blenkin, Agius, Endler, & Zealley, 1996) has not been investigated.

The present study examined the associations amongst personality, coping, health locus of control, EI and health behaviours. The behaviours included in the study were: smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, exercise, self-assessed health status and number of recent doctor’s visits. In addition to correlational analyses, models in which potential mediators of the effects of personality (derived from a factor analysis of the EI, coping and health locus of control scales) were examined.

Although the study was primarily exploratory, the above literature review suggests the following hypotheses:

  • Positive health behaviours should be positively associated with C, A, EI, rational/task-focussed coping and internal health locus of control, and negatively associated with N, emotion-focussed coping and chance health locus of control, with a reverse pattern for negative health behaviours.

  • Self-assessed health should relate negatively to N, whilst number of doctor’s visits should relate positively.

Section snippets

Participants

The participants were 362 (104 male, 258 female) university students from western Canada. The mean age was 24.1 years, standard deviation 6.1 years.

Personality

The 40-item personality Minimarkers scale of trait-descriptive adjectives was used; this provides scores (eight items per dimension) for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Intellect/Openness/Imagination (Saucier, 1994). This scale has been validated in studies showing association patterns with other measures which are

Procedure

The study was described to the students in scheduled classes as an investigation of the relationship between personal factors and health behaviours. Those who agreed to complete the questionnaires during the remainder of the class were asked to also sign a consent form approved by the university’s ethics committee and were also advised that they could terminate their involvement at any time. Questionnaires were completed anonymously and there was no remuneration for participation. Three

Scale reliabilities and descriptive statistics

Table 1 shows the scale internal reliabilities. The Detached and Avoidance sub-scales of the CSQ were removed from the data analyses on account of low reliabilities The Health Locus of Control scales, which all had reliabilities marginally below 0.7 (range 0.66–0.69), were however retained because of the theoretical interest of examining the associations of these scales with health behaviours. Table 1 also shows descriptive statistics for all measures separately for males and females.

Discussion

This study examined the relationships amongst personality, coping style, health locus of control, EI and health behaviours. A number of hypothesised associations were found, but generally not with a high degree of consistency. The most consistent effect, as has been found previously (Bogg & Roberts, 2004), was for C, which correlated in the expected direction with smoking, taking regular exercise, alcohol consumption and healthy diet. The non-significant association of C with report of drinking

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the British Academy.

References (39)

  • N.S. Schutte et al.

    Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (1998)
  • D.R. Trinidad et al.

    The association between emotional intelligence and early adolescent tobacco and alcohol use

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2002)
  • M. Vollrath et al.

    Who takes health risks? A probe into eight personality types

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2002)
  • S.M. Auerbach et al.

    Appraisal and desire for control over healthcare: structure, stability and relation to health locus of control and to the ‘big five’ personality traits

    Journal of Health Psychology

    (2002)
  • R. Bar-On

    The emotional quotient inventory (EQ-i): Technical manual

    (1997)
  • J. Bermúdez

    Personality and health-protective behaviour

    European Journal of Personality

    (1999)
  • T. Bogg et al.

    Conscientiousness and health-related behaviours: a meta-analysis of the leading behavioural contributors to mortality

    Psychological Bulletin

    (2004)
  • S. Booth-Kewley et al.

    Associations between major domains of personality and health behavior

    Journal of Personality

    (1994)
  • A.J. Christensen et al.

    Coping with treatment-related stress: effects on patient adherence in hemodialysis

    Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

    (1995)
  • Cited by (189)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text