Emotional intelligence is related to which of the following Big Five personality dimensions

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI or trait emotional self-efficacy) is defined as a constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies (Petrides, Pita & Kokkinaki, 2007). The construct provides a comprehensive operationalization of the affect-related aspects of personality and lies wholly outside the taxonomy of human cognitive ability (Carroll, 1993). Trait EI essentially concerns individual differences in people’s self-perceptions of their emotional abilities.

Conceptually, an important advantage of trait EI theory is that it links the construct to mainstream scientific models in differential psychology, such as the Big Five and the Giant Three. These links are particularly useful when tackling novel research questions for which there is no prior empirical literature (e.g., Sánchez-Ruiz, Pérez-González, & Petrides, in press). Psychometrically, the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), as the main operationalization vehicle of trait EI theory, provides superior criterion and predictive validity relative to other EI questionnaires (see Freudenthaler et al., 2008, Gardner, in press).

Numerous studies have been conducted with the short form of the TEIQue showing that it correlates positively with orgasmic frequency in women (Burri, Cherkas, & Spector, 2009), general well-being and job satisfaction (Singh & Woods, 2008), relationship satisfaction (Smith, Heaven, & Ciarrochi, 2008), and adaptive styles of humor (Vernon et al., 2009), and negatively with communicative anxiety (Dewaele, Petrides, & Furnham, 2008), Machiavellianism (Alia, Amorima, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2009), and maladaptive styles of humor (Vernon et al., 2009). It has also been suggested that the TEIQue-SF has an inverted U relationship with reaction time (Austin, 2009) and that it mediates many of the links between personality and general health (Johnson, Batey, & Holdsworth, 2009).

The aim of this report is to examine the relationships between trait EI and the Big Five using the Dutch adaptation of the short form of the TEIQue. The study is important both from a psychometric perspective, given that there have been few systematic investigations of the TEIQue-SF and the Big Five, as well as from a cross-cultural perspective, since this is the first investigation of the TEIQue-SF in a Dutch sample. More particularly, we will be focusing on the zero-order correlations between the five trait EI scores (global trait EI, plus scores on the four factors of Emotionality, Self-control, Sociability, and Well-being) and the Big Five, as well as on multiple regression analyses aiming to determine the overall extent to which the Big Five can predict each of the trait EI variables. We expected that the strongest correlates of trait EI would be Neuroticism, followed by Extraversion and Conscientiousness and that over 50% of the variance in global trait EI scores would be accounted for by a linear combination of the Big Five factors.

Results

Two sets of analyses were performed on each of the two datasets obtained from the sample 1 and sample 2 subgroups. First, we calculated the zero-order correlations between the five trait EI variables and the Big Five personality dimensions. The second set of analyses involved regressing each of the five trait EI variables onto the Big Five personality dimensions. The aims were to ascertain the strongest personality predictors for the different aspects of trait EI and to obtain estimates of

Discussion

This report is the latest in a line of psychometric studies investigating the interrelationships between trait EI and the higher-order dimensions of personality (see also Petrides et al., 2007, Petrides et al., 2007, Veselka et al., 2010). It is also the first investigation of the TEIQue-SF in the Netherlands (for related research with Dutch children, see Mavroveli, Petrides, Rieffe, & Bakker, 2007). Our analyses replicated previous findings of extensive overlap between trait EI and the Big

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