ARE EMOTIONAL AWARENESS AND TRAIT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE INDEPENDENT CONSTRUCTS? AN EXPLORATION DURING CHILDHOOD

The present study sought to compare the two constructs of Emotional Awareness (EA) and trait Emotional Intelligence (EI) in a sample of Italian school aged children. EA has been defined as the ability of an individual to identify and describe one’s own emotional experiences and those of others (Lane & Schwartz, 1987). In order to measure EA in childhood, Bajgar and co-workers (2005) have recently created the Level of Emotional Awareness Scale for children (LEAS-C). Results of previous validation studies suggest that the reliability of the LEAS-C is acceptable and the interrater reliability is high. EA could be considered a central constituent of EI and LEAS has been defined as an attractive methodology for the measurement of EI as it combines characteristics of both the trait and the ability approach. However, to our knowledge, no studies have explored the relationships between EA measured using the LEAS-C and trait EI an umbrella construct for the emotion-related aspects of personality (Petrides et al., 2007). Five hundred and fourteen students (52.87 % females) ranging in age from 8 to 12 years (Mage = 10.08; SD = 1.38), recruited from primary and middle State Schools, were asked to complete the LEAS-C and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue-CF; Mavroveli et al, 2008; Cronbach α = .88). Pearson correlation revealed a low association (r = .14; p < .01) between the scores. This result seems to testify a relatively independence between EA and trait EI during childhood. From a theoretical point of view, this result is consistent with the different theorizations at the basis of the TEIQue, which provides a self-assessment of the emotional perceptions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies, and the LEAS, an emotion-based performance task. As trait EI takes into accounts emotion perception, regulation and management, which are central variables for children’s emotional experience, such construct might account for individual differences in a more comprehensive way than EA