The role of emotional intelligence in the maintenance of adolescent dating violence perpetration

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been proposed as a protective factor for dating violence perpetration (DVP) based on the findings of a few cross-sectional studies. Given the lack of previous longitudinal research, this study aimed at studying the protective role of EI components against DVP one year later considering gender effects. The sample consisted of 542 adolescents (52.2% females) with a mean age of 16.36 years (SD = 0.86) at baseline. Participants completed measures of EI (attention, clarity, and repair) at T1 and DVP at T1 and T2. Results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that the strongest predictor of DVP was previous level of aggression. EI moderated the maintenance of DVP over time. Specifically, those adolescents with a higher competence of clarity showed a lower perpetuation of DVP. The other two components of EI (attention and repair) displayed a gender-specific effect. In particular, a lower perpetuation of DVP was found for girls with higher scores on emotional attention, and for boys with higher scores on emotional repair. Since adolescents' EI predicts DVP, preventive interventions should address the improvement of attention, clarity, and repair of their emotions, considering EI gender specificities.