Poster #202 - Believe Your Emotional Intelligence (EI) Matters: Moderation Effect of EI Between Stress and Depression in Adolescents

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Stress is closely related to depression in adolescents, and emotional intelligence (EI) has been proven not only to be negatively associated with depression (e.g. Wang, 2002a; Extremera, Fernández-Berrocal, Ruíz-Aranda, & Cabello, 2006; Fernández-Berrocal & Extremera, 2016 etc.), but also to moderate relations between stress and depression (e.g. Ciarrochi et. al, 2002). Adolescence is a period when individuals are not only vulnerable to stressful events (e.g. Liu, Liu, Yang et al., 1997), but also susceptible to problems caused by their own puberty development process (Arain et al, 2013), in which substantial physiological, psychological and social development are experienced (e.g. Lin, 2005; Arain et al, 2013). Because stressful events impact individuals from external environment, such stress is best described with stress exposure model (Hammen, 2006), and is thus exogenous; On the other hand, stress generation model (Hammen, 2006) assumes that individuals can, by interactions with the outer environment, produce stress that is cast onto themselves and provide active precipitation of stressful events and circumstances (Rudolph, Hammen, Burge et. al, 2000). Because problems induced by puberty do not occur from external environment, but instead produced by adolescents themselves, the stress generation model properly fits mechanism of such stress, which is endogenous. We hypothesized that EI moderates the relationship between exogenous/endogenous stress and adolescent depression, and that endogenous stress has stronger predictive power than exogenous stress. Middle school students (N=8,337) participated in a cross-sectional study and reported exogenous stress (measured by ASLEC; Liu, Liu, Yang et al., 1997), endogenous stress (measured by self-developed items; Li, Wu & Shen, 2018), self-reported EI (measured by a translated version of Schuette Emotional Intelligence Scale; Schuette et al.,1998) and depression (measured by SISMSS; Li, Yu, 2006). The study revealed several main findings: First, both exogenous stress and endogenous stress positively predicted depression in adolescents, in which endogenous stress explained nearly four fifth of the total variance explained. Emotion appraisal both in self and others was positively associated with depression. Conversely, emotion management and utilization had a negative association; Second, self-reported EI moderated the relationship between exogenous/endogenous stress and depression. Specifically, exogenous stress was associated with greater levels of depression among individuals high in appraisal of self’s and others’ emotions. Endogenous stress was associated with greater depression levels among those low in emotion management and utilization and those high in appraisal of self’s emotions. These results stressed the necessity of research focus on endogenous stress, and provided guidelines in adolescent EI cultivation in that both the actual emotional ability and the perception of such ability should be focused on in order to protect adolescents from depressive mood.

Authors

• Mengtong Li, Fudan University
  Presenting Author

• Guohong Wu, Department of Psychology, Fudan University, China
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiaoru LI, lixiaoru2000@hotmail.com
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiaoxu Li, Department of Psychology, Fudan University, China
  Non-Presenting Author