Emotional intelligence, emotional regulation and personality styles/disorders

This research examines the relationship between emotional intelligence, emotional regulation and personality styles/disorders (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, passive-aggressive, self-destructive depressive and sadistic). 354 subjects (71.2% women) between 18 and 60 years old participated in the study. The “Personality Exploratory Questionnaire-III” (CEPER-III), “Trait Meta-Mood Scale” (TMMS-24) and “Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale” (DERS) were applied. Results show that most of the personality styles had different difficulties in the emotional regulation process, being higher in borderline and depressive styles. Borderline, depressive, dependent, avoidant, paranoid, passive-aggressive and self-defeating personality styles had deficits in emotional intelligence, while the histrionic and narcissistic styles showed a higher relationship with perceived emotional intelligence than the other styles. These results support that perceived emotional intelligence and emotional regulation are different concepts, but have a coherent relationship with every each personality style. This is a pioneer study analyzing perceived EI and emotional regulation in individuals with personality styles based in the criteria diagnostic from DSM-IV-TR for personality disorders.