Relationships between quality of life and emotional personality traits: roles of gender and aging

Abstract

It is known that health status and emotional reactions and their regulation are closely associated. Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the abilities to perceive and understand emotional information and use it to adapt. By considering that women use more emotion regulation strategies in adaptation than men, present investigation aimed to explore the role of gender and aging in the relationships between self-reported different aspects of EI including self-rating of reaction on emotional stimuli and quality of life (QL). The groups of healthy older women (63.7 years, n=78) (OW) and young (18.1 years) women (n=76) (YW) and men (n=57) (YM) were involved in the study. The Russian versions of EI (IPIP) and SF-36 were used. The computer-based emotion measuring was designed to analyze individual self-rating stimulus set of the IAPS. The varied patterns of correlations between the components of EI and QL were obtained in the groups differenced by gender and age. YW had higher scores of EI than YM, and “negative expressivity†negatively correlated with integral mental health in women but positively in men. Emotional reactivity according IAPS was positively related to EI in YM but differently associated with components of EI in women. Integral level of physical health was lower in OW whereas psychic health did not differ significantly in OW and YW. Indices of “mental health†and “viability†were higher in OW than YW. A ratio of “positive expressivity†to “negative expressivity†was universal predictor of high QL. This work was supported by the RFHR grant 15-06-10052.