International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue VII, July 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Literature Review of Emotional Intelligence and Mental Health

Mary Rachelle Reyes-Wapano, PhD
Xavier Ateneo, Cagayan De Oro City, Philippines

Abstract: The aim of this review paper is twofold: This paper reviews the concept of emotional intelligence and related terms such as emotion, intelligence, and emotional intelligence. A distinction will also be made between the different models of emotional intelligence, the one that emphasizes mental ability from those that combine mental abilities with personality traits. This paper maintains that the Mayer and Salovey definition of emotional intelligence lends itself to be model that can explain the adolescent emotional intelligence: that emotional intelligence as an ability to understand and regulate one’s emotions is an ability that can be learned and improved; that with age, an individual’s level of emotional competency progresses.
The second aim of this review is to show and examine the existing literature on the relationship of emotional intelligence and mental health. Specifically, this paper reviews the literature on the relationship between emotional intelligence and anxiety; relationship between emotional intelligence and depression; relationship between emotional intelligence and resilience; and relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy. This paper contends that emotional intelligence is negatively predicts anxiety and depression; and positively predicts self-efficacy and resilience.

I. Emotion Intelligence and Related Terms

Mayer and Salovey (2004) describe emotion as one of three or four sets of mental operations. Motivation, identified as the first set of mental processes, is activated as a response to physical drive such as hunger, thirst or sexual needs, which directs organism to satisfy its survival needs. They further proposed that emotions seemed to evolve among mammalian species to point to actual or perceived changes in the environment and to elicit responses to a changing environment,