Emotional Intelligence and Day-To-Day Emotion Regulation Processes: Examining Motives for Social Sharing

There is growing interest in the emotion regulation processes that underlie the adaptive functioning of emotionally intelligent individuals. This study uses experience sampling to examine whether the emotional intelligence (EI) of undergraduate students (N = 84) relates to their day-to-day use of five emotion regulation processes over a five-day period. We also test whether EI predicts motives for one of the emotion regulation processes (social sharing). We measure both ability EI (the brief Situational Test of Emotion Management) and self-rated EI (the Self-Rated Emotional Intelligence Scale). Self-rated EI significantly predicts more social sharing, direct situation modification and reappraisal. Ability EI does not significantly predict any of the five regulation processes. Both ability and self-rated EI are significantly related to greater bonding and relief motives for social sharing. Self-rated EI is also related to recovery motives. These results suggest that it is the self-beliefs about one's emotional abilities, rather than emotion knowledge, which influence the emotion regulation processes people use in daily life.