Emotional Intelligence, Big Five Traits and Emotional Creativity in latent personality profiles

Abstract

Studies in the last decade that examined the relationship among the traits that form a personality profile, identified both the relationship between emotional intelligence and the Big Five traits or focused on arbitrarily identified mediators and moderators in the system of measured traits. However, our current understanding of the associations between Big Five traits and emotional creativity (a trait related to emotional intelligence) is lacking. Thus, the objective of the study was to identify latent profiles which represented homogenous subgroups of individuals based on measured personality traits; and to compare the results from a variablecentered approach and the person-centered approach (latent profile or class analysis). Design: a total of 527 students participated in the study (395 women and 135 men, Min 17, Max 43, M = 19.2, SD = 2.9), 402 were administered the complete assessment battery. The latter included 1) the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI), 2) the Trait Emotional Intelligent Questionnaire (TEIQ), 3) and the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI). The study shows that the traits of the Big Five as expected were positively associated with all the subscales of emotional intelligence. The analysis of latent profiles identified 4 distinct classes that do not appear when correlation analysis was used in a variable-centered analysis. Specifically, it was the properties of emotional intelligence that were the main group of discriminating variables when establishing personal profiles. Among the Big Five traits, Emotional Stability and, among the all emotional creativity components, Efficiency were the strongest discriminating factors; the maximum contribution to the identification of personal profiles was made by the traits of emotional intelligence.