The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Personality Disorder Symptomatology

Disturbances in emotion are associated with the most of the diagnostic criteria of the personality disorders, though the role of emotional intelligence in the diagnosis of personality disorders has been the subject of limited research. The present study was designed to investigate the relationships between trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) and personality disorder symptomatology in an undergraduate student sample. One hundred and twenty university students (28.3% male and 71.7 % female; M of age = 19.23, SD=2.45) were administered with (1) Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) (Petrides, 2009), along with (2) The Personality Disorder Questionnaire-4 (PDQ-4) (Hyler E. Steven, 1994). A multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect for group with individuals without any personality disorder symptomatology scoring significantly higher than individuals with some personality accentuations on most TEIQue facets. The results suggest that different components of emotional intelligence contribute to the development of different personality disorder symptomatology, but more research is required to replicate the results with the clinical population.