The profile of emotional competence: Adaptation and psychometric properties in a sample of Portuguese first-year university students.

Abstract

Research in the emotional intelligence scientific field has been increasing due to the relevance of the construct for life outcomes. In addition, the term “intelligence” has been replaced by “competence”, due to its potential of development. Following a new theoretical perspective that aims to conciliate ability and trait models of EI, the Profile of Emotional Competence (Brasseur, Grégoire, Bourdu, & Mikolajczak, 2013) aims to assess five dimensions of emotional competence: identification, comprehension, expression, regulation, and use of emotions, divided into intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional-related competencies. The present study investigated the applicability of the PEC in a sample of first-year university students (N = 571). Although the results did not entirely replicate the original factor structure, support for the identification of the ten dimensions and two subscales of EC was found. In general, the dimensions of the PEC demonstrated good internal consistency and moderate convergent validity with personality. The EC subscales and dimensions showed concurrent validity with greater adaptation to higher education, positive affectivity and lower negative affectivity, and increased health behaviors, self-esteem, self-efficacy, satisfaction with life, and happiness, replicating results from previous validations. The regulation of own emotions and the interpersonal dimension stood out as the promising dimensions of the PEC. This paper contributed with a self-report measure of EC translated and adapted for the Portuguese culture with interesting psychometric properties. Limitations and directions for future investigations studies are discussed.