Return to flip book view

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:SMART STRATEGY FOR HEALTHCONFERENCE PAPERSVOLUME 22024Foundation for DevelopingEmotional Intelligence PressCollection 2024

COLLECTIONEMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCESMART STRATEGY FOR HEALTHCONFERENCES PAPERSVOLUME 2FOUNDATION FOR DEVELOPINGEMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE2024

Authors@John Pellitteri@Antonina Kardasheva & Maria Radoslavova@Iliya Marinov@Irina AronReviewers:Maria Radoslavova, Ph.D.Antonina Kardasheva, Ph.D.Editor: Maria RadoslavovaCopyright 2024E-book published by Foundation for Developing Emotional Intelligence Publishing House, BulgariaISBN 978-619-92037-3-6

CONTENTJohn Pellitteri Emotional intelligence and health: A review of research 5 Maria Radoslavova, Antoanina Kardasheva Development and preliminary validation of the Emotional Capacity Assessment Scale /ECAS/ 11Maria Radoslavova A model of emotionally intelligent leading of organization transformation (Part 2) 37 Пост-травматичното стресово разстройство през призмата на концепцията за емоционалната интелигентност 53Дървото, което никога не се огъва. Размисли върху емоционалната резилиентност през призмата на случай от психотерапевтичната ми практика 68

5EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND HEALTH: A REVIEW OF RESEARCHJohn Pellitteri, PhDQueens College, City University of New YorkInternational Society for Emotional IntelligenceAbstractThe relationship between emotions and health has gained increasing interest in the emo-tion research literature (Kemeny & Shestyuk, 2008; Kubzansky & Winning, 2016; Leven-thal & Patrick-Miller, 2000). Particular focus has included the interactive relationships between emotions and health behaviors (Epel, Prather, Puterman & Tomiyama 2016) as well as emotions and stress in their trajectory across the life span (Chen & Miller, 2014; Consedine 2008; Ganzel, Rarick & Morris, 2016). A consistent nding is the role of emo-tion regulation in maintaining physical and mental health (Chen & Miller, 2014; Diefen-bach, Miller, Porter, Peters, Stefanek & Leventhal, 2008). Emotion regulation is a central factor in emotional intelligence (EI; Salovey, Detweiler-Bedell, Detweiler-Bedell & Mayer, 2008), thus the role of EI in promoting health has become an important area of research.Keywords: trait emotional intelligence, healthEmotional Intelligence models and measuresThe two major models of EI include traits and abilities. Trait EI is measured through self-re-port methods and tends to align with personality factors (Bar-On, 1996; Petrides, 2001). By contrast, EI abilities, measured by performance-oriented tests comprise sets of capac-ities and skills (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Both models, from dierent perspectives, relate to how emotions operate in individuals. When conceived as a personality trait, EI is struc-tural and a generally stable tendency in emotion-related behaviors and attitudes across contexts. From the ability perspective, EI is a set of skills and capacities that relate to the adaptive use of emotions as information. Major distinctions between the conceptual

6foundations of the two models are driven by the format of the measurement methods. It is important to consider what measures and models are included in analyses as each model is distinctly dierent. Each EI model has its respective tests comprised of their respective components. One of the two major EI trait measure is the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue; Petrides & Furhman, 2001) which includes four components: Well-Being, Sociability, Emo-tionality, Self-Control. The second major EI trait measure is the Emotion Quotient Inven-tory (EQi; Bar-On, 1996) that includes ve components: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Ad-aptation, Stress Management & General Mood. The major performance measure for the EI abilities model is the Mayer, Salovey Caru-so Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 2002) which assesses the four components: emotional perception, facilitation, knowledge, regulation. While the ability model, by denition, requires applying performance measures, two self-re-port measures of this model have been extensively used in the research literature. These measures are the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS; also known as the Assessing Emotions Scale; Schutte, Malou, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden, Dornheim, 1998) and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS; Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, & Palfai, 1995). As these are self-report formats, they do not measure EI abilities per se, but rather individu-als’ perceptions of their abilities which are viable predictive factors in the EI research. Meta-analyses on Emotional Intelligence and HealthTwo major meta-analytic studies have been conducted specically with studies on the relationships between EI and health (Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010; Schutte, Ma-lou, Thorsteinsson, Bhullar, & Rooke, 2007). Both studies included three general areas of health: physical (medical illness); mental (psychological/psychiatric) and somatic (fa-tigues / mixed mental & physical). The earlier of the two studies (Schutte et. al., 2007) found that higher EI was associated with better health. EI had a weighted average overall association with psychosomatic health (.31), mental health (.29) and physical health (.22). Most of the studies focused on mental health indicators and trait EI had higher associa-tions than measures of EI ability with regard to mental health. The eect size for the three major self-report EI measures across the studies were:

7Emotional Quotient-Inventory (EQi): .49 eect sizeSchutte EI Scales (SEIS) .28 eect sizeTrait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) .26 eect sizeThe ndings of the second meta-analytic study on EI and health (Martins, et. al., 2010) globally support the ndings of the Schutte, et. al. (2007) that higher EI is associated with health. The 2010 meta-analysis included more recently published studies including those using the TEIQue as well as non-English studies. Again, most studies focused on men-tal health indicators and trait EI had stronger associations than studies with EI abilities. The associations of EI overall with health indicators were stronger than the previous me-ta-analysis: mental health (.36), psychosomatic (.33) and physical (.27). Trait EI measure eect sizes (N = 105) were as follows: Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire -TEIQue (.50)Emotional Quotient Inventory -EQ-i (.44) Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scales -SEIS (.29) Trait Meta-Mood Scales -TMMS (.24) The ndings for the Martins, et. al. (2010) study were comparable to the Schutte et. al. (2007) study but found that the recently added TEIQue had the highest eect size as an EI measure. In sum, both trait and ability EI models have positive associations with health with the for-mer exhibiting more notable strengths. The contribution of higher EI on health appears to operate through better coping capacity /lower stress, higher reported well-being, and better social support from others. These mediators would be inuenced by both trait and ability EI. Emotion regulation and healthThe meta-analytic studies on EI are supported by studies in the general emotion research literature, particularly work involving emotion regulation, which is a major component of EI across all models. Berking and Wupperman (2012) and Sloan, Hall, Moulding, Bryce, Mildred, and Staiger (2017) provided systematic reviews of emotion regulation studies and found that decits in emotion regulation (i.e. poor ability to adapt and cope with chal-lenging emotions) are related to a variety of psychological disorders such as depression, borderline personality disorder, substance use disorders, eating disorders, somatoform

8disorders, and other psychopathology symptoms. The reviews indicate how the capacity and /or tendency to regulate and control one’s emotional states aligns with coping, stress management, and resilience thus reducing the debilitating psychological eects of stress that cause or exacerbate psychiatric conditions. Excessive stress has been linked to phys-ical disease such as cardiovascular disorders and eective emotion regulation strategies reduce the accumulated physiological eective of stress responses that include activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) acti-vations (Chen & Miller, 2014). This underscores the importance of developing the compo-nents of emotion regulation whether operating from an EI ability or trait model. In summary, overall EI is associated with health and is more particularly related to mental over physical health. Emotion regulation, a central component of EI, is likely a central mechanism predicting the association with health. Implications are that EI interventions should focus on developing emotion regulation capacities. Holistic views of individuals include all domains of health and well-being. Continued research should examine the EI-health relationship more closely and in interaction with other health-related factors. ReferencesBar-On, R. (1996, August). The era of EQ: Dening and assessing emotional intelligence. Poster session presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Asso-ciation, Toronto, Canada.Berking & Wupperman (2012) Emotion regulation and mental health: recent ndings, cur-rent challenges, and future directions. Current Opinions Psychiatry, 25(2), 128-34. Chen, E. & Miller, G.E., (2014). Early-life socioeconomic status, emotion regulation, and the biological mechanisms of disease across the lifespan. In J.J. Gross, (Ed.), Handbook of Eemotion regulation 2nd ed. (pp. 586-595). Guilford. Consedine, N.S., (2008). Health-promoting and health-damaging eects of emotions. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 3rd ed. (pp. 676-690). Guilford. Diefenbach, M.A., Miller, S.A., Porter, M., Peters, E., Stefanek, M., & Leventhal, H., (2008). Emotions and health behavior: A self-regulation perspective. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 3rd ed. (pp. 645-660). Guilford. Epel, E., Prather, A.A., Puterman, E., & Tomiyama, A.J., (2016). Eat, drink and be sedentary:

9A review of health behaviors’ eect on emotions and aective states, and implications for interventions. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions 4th ed. (pp. 685-706). Guilford. Ganzel, B., Rarick, J.R.D., & Morris, P.A., (2016). Stress and emotion: embodied, in con-text and across the lifespan. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 4th ed. (pp. 707-735). Guilford. Kemeny, M. & Shestyuk, A., (2008). Emotions, the neuroendocrine and immune systems, and health. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 3rd ed. (pp.661-675). Guilford. Kubzansky, L. D., & Winning, A., (2016). Emotions and health. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 3rd ed. (pp. 613-633). Guilford. Leventhal, H. & Patrick-Miller, L., (2000). Emotions and physical illness: Causes and indi-cators of vulnerability. In M. Lewis & J.M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 2nd ed. (pp. 523-537). Guilford. Martins, A., Ramalho, N., & Morin, E. (2010). A comprehensive meta-analysis of the rela-tionship between emotional intelligence and health. Personality and Individual Dierenc-es, 49(6), 554–564. Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. Sluy-ter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (pp. 3–31). Basic Books. Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002). Mayer- Salovey- Caruso Emotional Intelli-gence Test (MSCEIT) user’s manual. Multi- Health Systems.Petrides, K. V., (2001). A psychometric investigation into the construct of emotional intel-ligence (Doctoral dissertation). University College London. Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A., (2001). Trait emotional intelligence: Psychometric investi-gation with reference to established trait taxonomies. European Journal of Personality, 15 (6), 425 – 448.Salovey, P. Detweiler-Bedell, B. T., Detweiler-Bedell, J. B., & Mayer, J.D., (2008). Emotional intelligence. In M. Lewis, J.M. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions 3rd ed. (pp. 533-547). Guilford.

10Salovey, P., Mayer, J.D., Goldman, S. L., Turvey, C., & Palfai, T.P. (1995). Emotional at-tention, clarity, and repair: Exploring emotional intelligence using the Trait Meta- Mood Scale. In J.W. Pennebaker (Ed.), Emotion, disclosure, & health (pp. 125 – 154). American Psychological Association. https:// doi.org/ 10.1037/ 10182- 006.Schutte, N.S., Malou, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D.J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C.J., & Dorn-heim, L. (1998). Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Dierences, 25 (2), 167–177. https:// doi.org/10.1016/ S0191- 8869(98)00001- 4.Schutte, N. S., Malou, J. M., Thorsteinsson, E. B., Bhullar, N., & Rooke, S. E. (2007). A me-ta-analytic investigation of the relationship between emotional intelligence and health. Personality and Individual Dierences, 42(6), 921–933.Sloan, E., Hall, K., Moulding, R., Bryce, S., Mildred, S. & Staiger, P.K. (2017). Emotion reg-ulation as a transdiagnostic treatment construct across anxiety, depression, substance, eating and borderline personality disorders: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Re-view 57, 141-163. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2017.09.002

11DEVELOPMENT AND PRELIMINARY VALIDATION OF THE EMOTIONAL CAPACITY ASSESSMENT SCALE / ECAS/Maria Radoslavova and Antonina KardashevaFoundation for Developing Emotional Intelligence, Soa, BulgariaAbstractThis paper aims to describe preliminary results on the development of the Emotional Capacity Assessment Scale (ECAS) for the need for fundamental and applied research in Bulgaria. We suppose that emotional capacity is one of the sources of emotional intelli-gence ability. This self-report measure is based on the four-branch model of emotional intelligence (EI) ability suggested by Mayer and Salovey (1997). Emotional capacity (EC) includes statements that present the emotional capabilities of perceiving, facilitating, and understanding emotions and two subscales of behaviors for managing own and others’ emotions. The preliminary results from Exploratory and Conrmatory Factor Analyses showed that the ECAS subscales have acceptable construct and discriminant validity. All subscales have high internal consistency. We suggested some directions for additional empirical validation of the EC scale. Keywords:, emotional capacity (EC)IntroductionEmotional intelligence has been extensively measured by using various scales because of the belief that it has a crucial adaptive potential and enables eective individual thinking and behavior. The early study on emotional intelligence through the self-report Trait Me-ta-Mood Scale (TMMS, Mayer & Gaschke, 1988) assessed the self-reection emotional processes – attention to own moods, mood clarity, and mood repair – which have dierent patterns of correlates, such as cardio-vascular and hormonal processes, empathy, coping strategies, social anxiety, depression, rumination, self-esteem, and satisfaction with so

12cial interactions (Salovey et al., 2002). Emotional intelligence is related to a wide range of psychological constructs, e.g., reinterpreting of events with a focus on self-arming attributions (Gohm & Clore, 2002), knowledge of emotions, task orientation (Warwick & Nettelbeck, 2004), positive mood and self-esteem, pessimism, alexithymia, depression (Schutte et al, 1998), PTSD (Hunt & Evans, 2004), perception of stressful events, appraisal of the event as a threat, and coping responses (van Heck & Oudsten, 2008), health support (Extremera & Fernàndez-Berrocal (2002), social relations (Lopes et al., 2003), life satis-faction and psychological well-being (Austin et al., 2005; Brackett & Mayer, 2003), hope-lessness and suicidal thoughts (Ciarrochi et al., 2002), work engagement (Brunetto et al., 2012), managerial competences (Clarke, 2010; Ugoani et al., 2015). Salovey & Mayer (1990, p. 189) broadly dened EI as “the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this informa-tion to one’s thinking and actions” that are related to own cognitions, motivation, behav-ior, and personality functioning. The four-branch model (Mayer & Salovey, 1997) includes the ability to accurately perceive and express emotion, use emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions, and the most complex ability to manage emotions. Each branch incorporates a set of less complex skills that enable the achievement of emotional and personal growth. Reviewing the research on this model, Mayer et al. (2008) concluded that the branches are highly reliable and their total scores, as measured by MEIS and lat-er MSCEIT, correlate moderately with one another, and very low with personality traits. Based on MSCEIT’s low convergent validity, high discriminant and predictive validity, and low incremental validity, the authors emphasized that the overuse of the term “emotional intelligence” for labeling various mental processes and personality constructs should be limited only to the study of the four-branch emotional abilities. This opinion is reasonable because many instruments operationalize EI as behaviors, attitudes, and psychological states not as emotion-related mental processes.For validating instruments of assessing emotional intelligence, Matthews et al. (2004) encouraged studies to suggest clear concepts and valid methods, to test mediators and moderators of the intercorrelations between EI and other constructs and causal models of experimental and longitudinal data (Zeinder et al., 2009); as theories could be revised after obtaining new empirical results, construct validation as an endless process. The key question is whether a test measures the EI construct and how it relates to the criteria that the theory predicts (Zeinder et al., 2012, p. 42). The key criteria for validating EI instru-ments are choices of theoretically relevant variables, representative samples, the appro-

13priateness of the scoring system, the interrelations of EI elements among themselves, and their relations with other variables that are predicted by theory (Maul, 2012).The purpose of the present paper is to introduce a self-report Emotional Capacity Assess-ment Scale (ECAS) for use in the Bulgarian population. First, we illustrate some reliable and valid instruments that measure EI ability as assessed by performance and self-report scales. Second, we describe our approach and assumptions in developing the emotional capacity scale and the results of our pilot study. Third, we discuss the psychometric quality and ideas for further development and validation of this scale.Self-report methods for assessing emotional intelligence as an abilityThe self-report EI ability scales have dierent assessment focuses. First, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS, Lane, et al., 1990) measures the awareness of specic-ity and complexity of own and others’ emotions in dierent situations. These aspects of awareness correlate stronger with cognitive development tests than with emotion scales. Second, the Rotterdam Emotional Intelligence Scale (REIS, Pekaar, et al., 2018) measures self- and other-focused emotion appraisal and regulation of own and others’ emotions, which correlate weakly to each other. The Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale in-cludes self- and other-focused emotion appraisal, regulation, and use of emotions that had dierent intercorrelations in various samples (WLEIS, Wong & Law, 2002).Third, the Assessing Emotions Scale (AES, Schutte et al., 1998) is based on the concept of EI as a compound of interrelated individual beliefs, cognitive appraisals, and other pro-cesses. The BEIS-10 scale (Davies et al., 2010), a short version of AES, contains ve dimen-sions: an appraisal of own emotions and others’ emotions, regulation of own and other’s emotions, and emotion utilization, which correlate moderately to strongly with one an-other, but each emotional process was measured by two statements that have various intercorrelations with the other dimensions.Fourth, the Self-report Emotional Intelligence Scale (SREIS; Brackett et al., 2006) SREIS’s includes self-evaluations of the four branches of emotional intelligence abilities. The scale in three studies had a low or lack of connection between MSCEIT and weak to medium cor-relations with personality and intelligence variables. Individuals with lower SREIS scores overestimated their MSCEIT performance, whereas the individuals with high SREIS scores underestimated their MSCEIT performance but are not more accurate in their self-ratings. Similarly, the Emotional Self-Ecacy Scale (ESES, Kirk et al., 2008) assessed individuals’

14condence in applying four-branch abilities but the total score correlated weakly with MS-CEIT. Other versions of this scale present somewhat dierent dimensions – identifying and understanding own emotions, dealing with others’ emotions, using, and managing own emotions, and perception of own and others’ emotions – that have moderate inter-correlations and do not correlate with MSCEIT score (ESES; Pool & Qualter, 2012). Fifth, other scales extend the four-branch model of EI. The Multidimensional Emotional Intelligence Assessment assesses seven dimensions – recognition of own emotions, regu-lation of emotion in the self, recognition of others’ emotions, regulation of others’ emo-tions, nonverbal emotion expression, and empathy, and four proximal EI outcomes – in-tuition-reason, creative thinking, mood redirected attention, and motivating emotions. The dimensions comprise three higher-level EI factors: orientation in self, others, and emotional sharing (Tett et al., 2005). The Prole of Emotional Competence (PEC, Brasseur et al., 2013) includes ve competencies with intra- and inter-personal dimensions: identi-fying (perceiving and identifying emotion), expressing (expressing emotions in a socially accepted manner), understanding (grasping the causes and consequences of emotions and distinguish triggering factors from causes), regulating (adjust stress or emotions when they are not appropriate to the context), and using (considering emotions to im-prove reection, decisions, and actions). The competencies are strongly intercorrelated at the intrapersonal level and moderately to strongly at the interpersonal level. MacCann & Roberts (2008) oered a test of two cognitive processing of emotions STEU – emotion understanding and STEM – emotion management, which correlated dierently depend-ing on the applied scoring procedures and samples. STEU and STEM had connections with personality and clinical symptoms. Elfenbein & MacCann (2017) suggested six narrow EI abilities: perception, expression, emotion attention regulation, understanding, and reg-ulation of own and others’ emotions. Given the varying positive interrelations between these abilities, they concluded that the EI construct is valid and represents mental emo-tion-related processes.The study has not achieved much progress in testing whether ability performance and self-report measures assess dierent EI aspects (O’Conner et al., 2019) having low to zero correlations (Paulhus et al., 1998). The above-presented instruments are not directly com-parable, which prevents their integration into a common construct (Conte, 2005). Helpful approaches are testing mediators and moderators of EI on experimental and longitudinal data (Matthews et al., 2004), analyzing the group dierences in normative social behav-iors, integrating the domain knowledge linked to cognitive and emotional intelligence,

15specifying the role of cultural factors that impact the learning of skills and specifying the adaptive functions of EI (Zeinder et al., 2001). Construct validation of ability and self-re-port EI measures can be done by in-depth examining their relations with self-ecacy and achievement motivation (Mayer et al., 2008), dierentiating skills that underlie the reg-ulation of own and others’ emotions (Davies et al., 2010), specifying the focuses of per-ceiving of own and others’ emotions due to various cognitive appraisals, communication content, or automatic defense mechanisms. In addition, self-report emotional intelligence aects personality traits, attitudes, and be-haviors like core self-evaluation, resilience, and life satisfaction not the EI ability (Mayer et al., 1999; O’Boyle et al., 2011; Di Fabio & Saklofske, 2014; Siegling et al., 2015). The moderate to insignicant correlation of performance-based and self-report scales with emotion perception and management (Ciarrochi, 2002) raises the question of how some branches aect other branches of emotion processing. These ideas can enable construct validation of emotional intelligence by reecting cognitive and emotional processes that could determine emotional mastery. Webb (2013) compared empirically three types of measuring EI: MSCEIT performance ability, the proxy self-report measure SREIS, and the self-report mixed measure of EQ-i. The ability performance score is connected only to the elements of the full IQ scale and the SREIS score – only to verbal competencies. EQ-i cor-relates much higher than SREIS with personality traits and emotional well-being. This fact may be due to dierent focuses of attention, types of performing emotional-related tasks versus habitual perception of own abilities, psychological states, tendencies, and biases in self-descriptions. Three risks are essential to validate the content of EI scales. First, the abstract formula-tions of items can hinder the factor analyses to establish dimensions of the EI construct. Second, the choice of distal variables limits the analysis of the predictive validity of EI. For example, psychological well-being has a complex structure and results from many factors in the personal life course. Third, using composite total scores of EI ability does not allow obtaining of clear results regarding the construct and criterion validity, because it is not possible to assess the individual contribution of each emotional capability to the outcome variables given their interdependence in various circumstances, e.g., perception of situa-tions precedes and may activate any other EI skill that can explain why in various studies making decisions by using emotions and understanding aect the other branches in the factor analyses.

16The validation of instruments depends signicantly on the statistical analyses applied. For example, when re-analyzing the empirical data obtained by Warwick et al. (2010), Anton-akis & Dietz (2011) concluded that ignoring the stepwise regression assumptions, sub-groups with extreme scores analyses, and measurement did not conrm the incremental validity of AEIM as an ability EI measure. Maul (2017) noted that validating instruments by estimating the overall reliability or measurement precision by Cronbach’s alpha, ex-ploratory and conrmatory factor analyses, and correlations between instrument scores and external variables could be misleading without clear denitions of psychological attri-butes and beliefs about the existence and measurability of those attributes as hypotheses that could be revised. In three surveys Maul found that scales that include meaningless statements were extremely highly reliable (α = 0.92 to α =0.96), the conrmatory factor analysis explained 88 to 98 percent of the common variance of variables and correlated weakly with the Big Five personality traits.SuggestionsWe develop the rst Bulgarian self-report scale, the Emotional Capacity Assessment Scale (ECAS) to help research and practical work in the country. The scale is based on the con-cept of self-ecacy suggested by A. Bandura. Self-ecacy is dened as the perceived capabilities to act in the necessary way to attain desired outcomes in specic situations (Bandura, 1997); self-ecacy helps people to adapt to situational demands by being motivated to set higher goals, invest greater eort, and persist when facing diculties. Self-ecacy beliefs are dynamic because of the learning from experience and using proxy indicators of eective performance (Bandura, 1997), especially when people have personal control over their experiences and life (Bandura, 2001). Self-ecacy judgments, whether accurate or faulty, inuence the choice of activi-ties and environmental settings. People perform activities when they judge themselves as capable of mastering, have personal control over their behavior, and can change coping behaviors, stress reactions, resign and feel despondent to failure, experiencing self-de-bilitating feelings of proxy control and illusory inecaciousness, achievement strivings, growth of intrinsic interest, and career pursuits (Bandura, 1982). Further research was focused on studying domain-specic self-ecacy beliefs that are related to emotional regulation. Such beliefs can evoke a positive cognitive appraisal of challenge, instead of a threat, that triggers curiosity, trying hard to achieve the desired outcomes, expecting satisfaction, etc. (Bandura et al., 2003). Self-ecacy, along with optimism, hope, and re-

17silience, is perceived by individuals as a positive psychological capacity that reexes the belief that something can be done about emotions (Azab et al., 2018). We prefer to use the term ‘emotional capacity’ because this term is more easily understood by Bulgarians in fundamental and applied studies.Caprara et al. (2008) emphasize that self-ecacy beliefs determine the choice of personal self-regulative standards, no matter whether people think in a facilitating or debilitating manner, the amount of eort they invest, how much they persevere when facing dicul-ties, and their vulnerability to stress and depression. They oered the Regulatory Emotion-al Self-Ecacy Scale (RESE) which includes three emotional self-ecacy capabilities: to express positive emotions in response to success or pleasant events, to ameliorate neg-ative emotions resulting from adversity or frustrating events, and to avoid being over-whelmed by negative emotions. A cross-cultural study conrmed the three capabilities and found they correlate with self-esteem, the balance of positive and negative aect, aggression, experienced anxiety/depression problems, and enacting prosocial behavior. Additionally, emotional self-ecacy is related to various personality characteristics and psychological states through mediating states, it aects the stability of ego-resilience over time (Molloni et al., 2015) and prevents moral disengagement (Tabarez & Palacio, 2020). Emotional self-ecacy enhances directly and through psychological well-being and aective balance the self-esteem evaluation, which in turn contributes to happiness (Dogan et al., 2013) and the experiences of depression, anxiety, and tension through acti-vating interpersonal adaptability and self-acceptance (Zhang et al., 2022), and motivates doing workouts to strengthen mental health (Xu & Du, 2021). These ndings conrm the dynamic interplay among the self-referent thoughts of ecacy, aect, and behavior and study the adaptive potential of emotional self-ecacy in processing emotionally laden information and behavior. Our scale includes emotional self-ecacy beliefs that exemplify the four-branch EI ca-pabilities. People have unique cognitive and emotional schemas about their emotional capacity and use them unconsciously as lters in emotional processing in dierent situ-ations. Their awareness of their emotional capabilities may vary in accuracy and adap-tive potential. Uncertainties, such as being in a new context, performing a new role, and interacting with unfamiliar people, evoke more often cognitive appraisal of threat and insecurity or biased emotional capacity that can cause ineective thinking and emotional maladaptation to environmental demands or opportunities.

18The emotional capabilities in our scale could be integrated into two emotional groups as those outlined by Mayer & Salovey (1997): “experiential” (perceiving and facilitating of emotion in self and others) and “strategic” (understanding and managing emotions of self and others). We suggest that dierent connections of beliefs of these groups could be ac-tivated depending on the content of processing of situational information: e.g., experien-tial emotional capacities can enrich emotional understanding (knowledge) and facilitate the planning and deploying emotion management approaches, but strategic capacities can extend and modify the experiential capabilities. This assumption may be manifested in weak to moderate correlations among the ve capabilities we mentioned above. The statements of ECAS judgments could extend emotional intelligence research in several directions. First, it can deepen the study of the sources of applying EI abilities. Self-perceptions may not be particularly accurate due to social desirability and impression management (Roberts et al., 2001), but if self-perceptions of emotional skills are accurate, they can predict actual skills and abilities (Brackett & Geher, 2006), because self-judgments more directly determine individual experiences and psychological well-being (Smieja et al., 2014). In an interview on EI behaviors, we found that managers justify their everyday interaction with subordinates by their beliefs about eective leadership and the beliefs about the resulting subordinates’ emotions (Radoslavova & Kardasheva, 2022). Second, in contrast to performance tests that require much strong task focus and cogni-tive processing of emotional information in imaginable situations, self-report measures naturally activate attention focuses on the items’ content, introspections, and recalling facts, thoughts, and emotions about present and past that determine the answers to the items. Also, while performance tests assess emotional abilities by referring to experts’ or other participants’ opinions, emotional capacity is a self-referred assessment that applies to work, educational, and other real-life contexts where participants do many activities and generalize the level of their emotional capabilities. These dierences can explain why performance ability and EI self-report measures have low or zero correlations. Ability and trait models contribute complementary to EI research; self-report measures describe individual experiences that cannot be assessed through performance tests but help for a better understanding of how EI inuences individual success (Neubauer & Freu-denthal, 2005). Both types of methods, however, need testing to uncover how they pre-dict outcomes in dierent life areas (Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004).Based on the system model of personality (Mayer, 1998), Brackett and al. (2004) assumed

19that the EI branches mediate the correlation between other variables and the following areas of the personality system: the “knowledge works” (mental models, intellectual abil-ities, cognitive styles), the “energy lattice” (motives, emotions, and emotional styles), the “role-playing” (social functions, roles, skills), and the “executive consciousness” (aware-ness, coping strategies, and self-awareness). In this preliminary study for validating ECAS, we focus on two personality areas. In the knowledge area, we expect weak or zero cor-relations between emotional self-capacity and negative and positive expectations about personal life (hypothesis 1). The energy lattice manifested as the perceived everyday life as meaningful and interesting based on personal life goals is weakly correlated with emo-tional capacity (hypothesis 2). If our results are in line with these hypotheses, our scale would have discriminant validity. Trait anxiety is also an energy lattice element. The scales of trait anxiety and emotional capacity have dierent focuses of assessment: trait anxiety reects the individual ten-dency to frequently experience intense negative emotions whereas emotional capacity is the individual belief of having emotional capabilities to do successful things. We expect the two scales to correlate weakly because highly anxious individuals may try to manage their emotions most probably with inconsistent eectiveness (hypothesis 3). If empirical results are in line with this hypothesis, we can conclude that ECAS has concurrent validity.A longitudinal study found that the abilities of perception, facilitation, and managing oth-ers’ emotions were improved in a training program whereas the self-ecacy beliefs about these abilities were not improved (Pool & Qualter, 2012). As understanding and managing emotion continues to increase across the lifespan like other cognitive abilities (Mestre et al., 2016), emotional capabilities may become better developed with age because of per-sonal life experience (hypothesis 4). If the results of our study are in line with this assump-tion, we may conclude that ECAS subscales have discriminant validity. Most researchers have not tested the eect of social desirability on emotional intelligence. The test of social desirability (Crown & Marlow, 1960) includes very few emotion-related items that may reect an intentional tendency for creating a socially acceptable self-im-age but also an unintentional tendency of self-defense. Unless these two aspects are not empirically dierentiated, the using of a social desirability test for validating other psycho-logical methods is limited to establishing discriminant validity of the EI self-report scale. For more precise testing of the predictive validity of EI measures, Harms & Credé (2010) advised researchers to use more proximal measures of personality characteristics, for ex-

20ample, personal goals, motivations, and choice of activities instead of the Big Five person-ality traits. For this reason, we will not include the Big Five traits that include generalized personality tendencies related to emotions. For validating ECAS, we consider emotional biases in perception, thinking, and memory can have an essential impact on the accuracy of emotional capacity. We assume that the emotional biases scale is correlated positively to the scales of emotional capabilities (hypothesis 5).The empirical results on EI gender dierences are inconsistent and the speculations about the reasons for such dierences have not been systematically tested. We will explore whether gender moderates the relations between emotional capacity and life expecta-tions, the meaning of life, and trait anxiety to test the ECAS discriminant validity. Item generation We created an initial pool of 90 items that presented the emotional capacity beliefs about perceiving, using, and understanding emotions, as well as the two subscales of own be-haviors for managing of own and others’ emotions because we assume that people apply dierent capabilities for themselves and when interacting with other people. To prevent the risk of overestimating the reliability values of the scales, we formulated each state-ment of the scale only positively or negatively. In contrast to self-report scales that include generalized statements, most statements of ECAS describe specic situations to direct participants’ attention and thoughts on specic circumstances. To test the content validity, and the dimensions of the emotional self-ecacy concept, four judges who are familiar with the denition of the ve emotional capabilities reviewed and categorized the items into each group. Two judges were not psychologists and have heard about emotional intelligence in the media or from people around; for categorizing the items, we provided them a denition of each emotional capability. The other two judg-es were trained and internationally certied experts in emotional intelligence. We asked the judges to categorize what they currently know and can do regarding their and others’ emotions, and to dierentiate the behaviors for managing emotions in various situations, e.g., to prevent and soften negative emotions, a transition from negative to positive emo-tions, and increasing positive motions. The nal item pool consisted of ten items each one representing one capability.

21MethodSample Two hundred and eighteen Bulgarians (78 females and 140 males) participated in the study with an average age of 26.6 (SD = 9.62) ranging from 18 to 62 years. To reduce the sampling error, the sample was nonhomogeneous and included 69 undergraduate students and 149 employees in dierent industries. The employees varied in their educational background: 152 participants had secondary school degrees, 2 participants had two-year college asso-ciate degrees, and 60 participants – had undergraduate degrees.ProcedureWe recruited the participants of the study among applicants for working abroad in dif-ferent occupations. They voluntarily lled in the questionnaires in groups of 10 to 20 per-sons in the following order: rst, the questionnaire on emotional capacity and then the personality scales for measuring the life meaning, life expectations, and trait anxiety. The sessions for completing the questionnaires lasted 35 to 45 minutes.Measures 1. Emotional Capacity Assessment Scale (ECAS): perceiving emotions in self and others, us-ing emotions for solving problems and decision making, understanding emotions, manag-ing own emotions, and managing others’ emotions. The nal version of the scale consists of 46 items, for example, “When I see a person, I can instantly say what his emotional state is”, and “I can emotionally charge others by praising them for good deeds.” Respondents rate their capacity in applying their emotional capabilities on a ve-point scale of frequen-cy where 1 means ‘never’, 2 – ‘rarely’, 3 – ‘sometimes’, 4 – ‘frequently’, and 5 – ‘always’. Essentially, the highest two scale points portray dispositional emotional processing. 2. Scale for assessment of long-term life goals (Velichkov, 2005). The scale includes 10 items, which describe experiences of active interest in the things that happen around us, feelings of growth and development, and meaning of the everyday activities focused on long-term personal life goals. The experiences manifest coherence and meaning in an individual life. An example is “What you are going to do in the future? - (a) only boring everyday routine versus (b) interesting and fascinating things” with a seven-point scale of choice among the two options. The scale is homogenous with Cronbach’s α = 0.78.

223. Questionnaire for optimistic and negative life expectations (Velichkov & Radoslavova, 2005). This method assesses generalized, dispositional expectations of positive or neg-ative life events and accomplishments on a ve-point scale of agreement varying from 1 – ‘completely disagree’ to 5 – ‘completely agree’, e.g., “I think every problem sooner or later is resolved favorably”. The questionnaire consists of 10 items for assessing optimism and 7 items for measuring negative life expectations with Cronbach’s α = 0.79 and α = 0.78 accordingly. The two subscales have weak correlation, r = -.18, p < .01. Our previous data showed that these scales were not correlated.4. Bulgarian adaptation of Spielberger’s STAI test for trait anxiety (Paspalanov & Stetinski, 1989). Trait anxiety is the individual proneness to experience feelings of tension, worry, apprehension, nervousness, and body symptoms across many situations that are relat-ed to the perceived threat, for example, “I worry too much over something that doesn’t matter.” We chose this type of anxiety because it is more relevant to emotional capabil-ities than Big Five personality traits. The questionnaire includes 20 items answered on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 – ‘rarely” to 4 – ‘almost always.’ The internal consistency of the scale is Cronbach’s α = .85.5. Biases in managing own emotions. We developed an 8-item scale to test whether such biases aect the emotional capacity scores. Respondents evaluate the frequency of expe-riencing tendencies on a ve-point scale ranging from 1 – ‘never’, 2 – ‘rarely’, 3 – ‘some-times’, 4 – ‘frequently’ to 5 – ‘always.’ The scale includes two biases: rst, the maintaining positivity by optimism and positive emotional memories (4 items with α = .62) and second, the tendency of negativity that includes regret aversion, expected concerns, memories of negative emotions (4 items with α = .74). The total score of the bias scale has Cronbach’s α = .72. The validation procedure is theory-based. To assess the construct validity and the internal consistency of the subscales, we used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and conrmato-ry factor analysis (CFA). For testing the internal consistency of the subscales, we applied Cronbach’s α. To explore the discriminant validity of the scale, we did ANOVA and Student T-test analysis to check for age and educational dierences in the subscales’ scores. We also calculated correlations between participants’ scores of the subscales of emotional capabilities with the scales for measuring the long-term life goals, the optimistic and neg-ative expectations, and the trait anxiety and then we calculated partial correlations be-tween these variables as controlled (moderated) by participants’ gender.

23ResultsConstruct validityWe assessed the construct validity by applying two-factor analyses. First, we conducted an EFA to test whether the items reect latent variables. The analysis yielded seven factors with ve factors presenting the ve emotional capabilities and two factors that included the cross-loading weights of two capabilities. The seven factors explained 38.9 percent of the common variance of the items. Bartlett’s test of sphericity measuring the probability that the correlation matrix includes signicant correlations among variables in a dataset that allows conducting workable factor analysis was acceptable: χ2 = 1585, p < .952. The KMO statistic estimated a high possibility of factorizing eciency; the primary proportion of variance among variables had a common variance is 0.70 to 0.89. The cumulative per-cent of the variables is 65% of the variance and the oblimin rotation of the factors yielded zero to low intercorrelation among the factors. Sarmento & Costa (2019) point out that the results from EFA can imply that a reduced number of unobserved latent variables are reected in the variations of a high number of observed variables. As the EFA extracted all ve emotional capabilities of the hypothesized model, the next step was to do CFA and test the following models of ECS: (a) a single-factor solution; (b) a ve-factor solution (the ve capabilities), and (c) a two-factor solution based on dis-tinguishing experiential capabilities (perception and facilitation of emotions) vs strategic capabilities (understanding and management of emotions). The values of the goodness-of-t CFA indicators are presented in Table 1.Table 1. Goodness-of-t measures of the CFA models of emotional capabilitiesModels RMSEA 90% CISRMR RM-SEALow-erUpper CFI TLI AIC BIC(a) Single factor 0.19 0.09 0.08 0.09 0.55 0.53 2522 2568(b) Five factors 0.83 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.79 0.78 2432 2481(c) Experiential vs Stra-tegic EC*0.010.04 0.010.19 0.99 0.99 1158 1202Note: EC – emotional capacity

24All indexes of the rst and the second theoretical models – the single factor of emotional capacity s and the ve separate emotional capabilities – are signicantly discrepant with the observed data (χ2 = 9573, p < .001). The values of SRMR, which are not related to the χ2 statistic of these models, meaning that the standardized residuals between the observed and the hypothesized covariances are high and do not have a good t. These models vary on RMSEA values, so the ve-factor model is somewhat closer than the single model but still is not a good t for the data. The low values of the incremental t indices CFI and TLI mean that these models cannot be improved much. In contrast, all goodness-of-t indexes of the third model – experiential (perceiving and using emotions) and strategic (understanding and management of emotions) capabilities have acceptable values: low SRMR and RMSEA, and high CFI and TLI conrming the predictive accuracy of the model. The values of AIC and BIC indexes are much lower and show that the model has predictive potential in using new data. Hence, the third model ts well with the data and describes a plausible integral structure of experiential and strategic emotional capabilities, which is concordant with the four-branch abilities framework. Based on CFA results, we calculated the reliability of the ECAS scales. Their descriptive characteristics and the coecients of internal consistency are presented in Table 2. The Shapiro-Wilks p-value of the rst three scales is signicantly dierent from the normal distribution, so further data analyses should be seen cautiously. The average values of the scales exceed the theoretical mean value in contrast to the lower mean value of managing own emotions. All α coecients of the emotional self-ecacy scales have high internal consistency and allow to study of the individual dierences in emotional capabilities. The emotional biases subscale has a lower coecient of consistency, which may be due to the various tendencies in both types of biases correlating r = .58, p <. 001. This result means that in various circumstances individuals can show contradictory biases or combine them. Examples of activating these biases are presented in Table 2.

25Table 2. Descriptive statistics and internal consistency of the EC scales (N = 218)Subscales of emotions Num-bers of itemsα Mean SD Skew-nessCorrelation with the total ECAS scorePerceive 8 .81 3.56 .50 -0.53 .71Use 9 .84 3.89 .62 -0.65 .84Understand 10 .81 3.30 .47 -0.54 .83Manage own emotions 11 .82 2.73 .61 0.12 .44Manage others’ emo-tions7 .88 3.79 .70 0.04 .80Biases - Manage own emotions8 .72 3.08 .54 .08 .48Note:The intercorrelations between the scales of emotional capacity placed in Table 4 are pre-dominantly moderate. The correlation between the scales for managing emotions and their intercorrelations with the rest ECAS scales is weak. The two scales of emotion man-agement reect behavioral capabilities in contrast to the other three scales of cognitive capabilities. Table 3. Intercorrelations between the subscales of emotional self-ecacy capabilitiesScales Perceive Use Under-standManage own emo-tionsManage others’ emotionsPerceive -Use .53*** -Understand .54*** .74*** -Manage own emotions .08 .17*** .21*** -Manage others’ emotions .51*** .61*** .60*** .12 -

26Biases - Manage own emo-tions(a) Positivity(b) Negativity.09.06.28***.29***.03.49***.33***.14*.40***.22***.82***0.34***.34***.05.31***Note: *** - p < .001The correlations of the scales of positive and negative emotional biases dier in their im-pact on the emotional capacity subscales. Whereas positive emotional processing seems to enhance very strongly only one capability, managing of own emotions, negative pro-cessing weakens all emotional capabilities. These coecients are positive but conrm in-consistently Hypothesis 5. Therefore, the dierent eects of the studied emotional biases could signicantly determine the validation processes of our scale. Discriminant validity of the scales of emotional capabilitiesAs the estimated CFA model illustrates discriminant validity if dierent factors do not ex-cessively correlate with each other higher than 0.85 (Kline, 1998), the low intercorrela-tions among the factors show discriminant validity of our scale of emotional capacity. The Student T-values reveal that emotional capabilities scores vary depending on partic-ipants’ demographics. Only the scale of managing own emotions has higher scores in fe-males than males (T = 2.75, p < .01). The one-way ANOVA analysis found that only the scale of emotions perception score increased with participants’ age (F = 3.41, p = 0.008). To test the eect of education on our subscales, we excluded two participants with asso-ciate degrees and did a Student T-test that revealed a stronger eect of education on the scores of emotional capacity: professionals with bachelor’s degrees that work in dierent occupations believe they are more capable than students to accurately perceive emotions (T = 2.62, p < .01), use emotions (T = 2.86, p < .005), and manage others’ emotions (T = 2.67, p < .01). Demographic characteristics contribute more substantially to the personality systems we targeted. Females are more anxious (T = 3.71, p < .001), less optimistic (T = 3.28, p = .001), and have less meaningful lives than malеs (T = 3.62, p < .001). These results are in line with Hypothesis 4. Participants’ education and age aect all personality scores. The subjects who are 19 to 20 years old show signicantly more intense anxiety (F = 4.78, p < .01), lower optimistic

27expectations (F = 6.22, p < .003), higher negative expectations for their life (4.34, p < .01), and perceive life as less meaningful than the participants who are 30+ years old (F = 5.51, p < .005). The higher participants’ education, the lower their trait anxiety is (T = 4.10, p < .001) negative life expectations (T=3.09, p < .002), the higher the optimistic expectations for life (T = 3.13, p < .002) and the meaning of their lives (T = 3.18, p < .002). In the further analysis, we need to control participants’ age and education as modera-tors in calculating partial correlations between the emotional self-ecacy capabilities and personality areas. The coecients between respondents’ scores of the subscales and the personality measures can be seen in Table 5. Table 4. Zero-order and partial correlations between the ECS scales and the cognitive and emotional concepts when controlling demographicsECAS Subscales Optimistic ex-pectationsNegative ex-pectationsMeaningful life Trait anxietyPerceive Е* .34; .30; .27 -.08; .-06; .03 .20; .17; .06† -.17; -.13; .05†Facilitate Е .25; .24; .21 -.02; .03; .01 .21; .20 .19 -.12; -.14; -.12Understand .24; .24; .22 -.06; -.05; .03 .23; .21; .15 -.16; -.17; -.09†Manage own E .03; .25†; -.17† .26; .01†; .34 -.20; .09† .49† .33; -.02†; .07†Manage others’ E .25; .25; .22 -.14; -.15; .12 .18; .17; .15 -.10; -.11; .55†Note:values in the columns display zero-order correlations between each capability and the personality variables, the values in the middle – the partial correlations when con-trolling for age, and the values in the right columns – the partial correlations when As expected, the correlations between emotional capabilities and personality systems are signicant and very low. This is true for all knowledge work system variables – the opti-mistic and pessimistic expectations (conrming hypothesis 1) and the perceived everyday life as meaningful and interesting resulting from personal long-term life goals (conrm-ing hypothesis 2). Participants’ age moderated a little only the scales of managing their own emotions changing the size of Pearson’s zero-order correlations of emotional capa-bilities with cognitive variables. More signicant is the moderating eect of participants’ educational level, which probably means that professional knowledge and skills may lead to more eective management of own emotions. Therefore, the subscales have discrimi-

28nant validity.Of special interest are the correlations between the emotional capabilities with trait anxi-ety, the energy lattice system, and both scales including emotional experiences: emotion-al capabilities present cognitive processing of emotions and trait anxiety – the tendency to experience intense emotions. The connections between trait anxiety and the capabilities of perceiving, facilitating, and understanding emotions with expectations about life are not signicant thus manifesting that ECAS subscales have discriminant validity (support-ing hypothesis 3). Exceptions are rst, the low zero-order correlation of trait anxiety with the score of managing own emotions, and second, the moderate partial correlation with the capability of managing others’ emotions with increasing the educational level. These connections need further study of some common mechanisms that can aect these two aspects of emotional processing, which in turn clarify the process of criterion validation of the emotional capacity scale. DiscussionThe purpose of the present paper was to test the psychometric attributes of ECAS instru-ment, which we suggest for application in Bulgaria. We presented tentative results on the validity and reliability of the scales for measuring the ve emotional capabilities derived and extended empirically from the ability model of emotional intelligence.We found the ECAS scale has acceptable face validity as the judges had a high agreement on grouping the items of the scale into the ve theoretically dened emotional capabili-ties. An additional test of content validity is needed to analyze the suitability of the scale items.The ECAS has acceptable construct and discriminant validity. The results of the conrma-tory analysis are in line with the model of integrating the experiential component (percep-tion and facilitation of emotions) and strategic component (understanding and managing own and others’ emotions). Consequently, this model may adequately present the con-cept of emotional capacity, but we can strengthen the situational context in a few state-ments that can increase the construct validity of our emotional capacity questionnaire. The neuroscience-backed model of emotional intelligence (Davidson, 2012), which in-cludes six emotional abilities could be a relevant alternative for a deeper understanding of individual emotional processing and construct validation of emotional capacity measures. From the statistical point of view, a poor t of a CFA model does not necessarily mean a

29poor measurement method or poor choice of scales. Sarmento & Costa (2019) point out that the results reecting the potential for improving the model in the conrmatory factor analysis (CFI index) vary a lot on various factors, such as consistency between the model, the hypotheses to be tested or changed, the variables loading on each factor, violation of the requirements of multivariate normality, the range of goodness-of-t parameters, the processing of outliers and missing data. We illustrated the discriminant validity of ECAS in alternative ways. The rst one was the low correlation of the subscales scores with the scores of the knowledge and energy lat-tice personality systems. The second way was the statistically signicant individual dier-ences in the scores of subscales depending on the participant’s sex, age, and educational level. The next step is to test the possible eects of personality traits like social desirabili-ty, and self-presentation. All ECAS subscales have high internal consistency with values exceeding α = .80. Hence, these subscales and the total score of emotional capacity can be used for research and practical purposes, especially if they show in our next study similar coefficients of consistency reliability along with further analysis of all validities. In addition, we need to conduct a study on test-retest reliability to analyze the stability of the emotional capacity construct over time and to test again the inter-rater reliability.Our preliminary version of measuring emotional capacity seems to be a reasonable way in the search of individual factors for applying EI abilities, which can signicantly extend the potential of the popular scale oered by Caprara & Gerbino (2001), which incorporates only strategies for managing own emotions. In addition, our instrument oers specic approaches to managing own and others’ emotions. For testing the divergent validity, ECAS scores should be correlated with the Bulgarian short version of TEIQ, which is the only questionnaire that was adapted for studying trait emotional intelligence in our country. There are two approaches to test the criterion-related validity of ECAS. First, predictive validity can be examined by correlating emotional capacity and motivation to achieve success in dierent areas, such as goal setting, persistence of behavior to achieve desired results individual or team task performance and satisfaction level, cognitive and emotion-al appraisals of unfamiliar circumstances, etc. This approach is consistent with the four personality systems we described and used in this study. Second, incremental validity can be tested by examination of the moderating or mediating eects of emotional capabili-

30ties on the interrelations among various thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Particularly, this type of validity could be tested by developing an approach like the Cascadian model (Joseph & Newman, 2010), where emotional capacity is simultaneously a dependent and independent variable. We believe these directions for future research can broaden the empirical evidence for the utility emotional capacity concept and the psychometric properties of ECAS in search-ing for eective and maladaptive patterns of emotional processing. ReferencesAntonakis, J., & Dietz, J. (2011). Looking for validity or testing it? The perils of stepwise regression, extreme-scores analysis, heteroscedasticity, and measurement error. Person-ality and Individual Dierences, 50(3), 409-415.Austin, E. J., Saklofske, D. H., & Egan, V. (2005). Personality, well-being, and health cor-relates of trait emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Dierences, 38, 547–558. Azab, C., Clark, T., & Jarvis, C. B. (2018). Positive psychological capacities: the mystery ingredient in successful service recoveries? Journal of Services Marketing, 32(7), 897-912.Bandura, A. (1997). Self-ecacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman Bandura, A. (1982). Self-ecacy mechanism in human agency. American psycholo-gist, 37(2), 122.Bandura A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psy-chology, 52, 1– 26. Bandura, A., Caprara, G. V., Barbaranelli, C., Gerbino, M., & Pastorelli, C. (2003). Role of aective self-regulatory ecacy in diverse spheres of psychosocial functioning. Child de-velopment, 74(3), 769-782.Brackett, M. A. Rivers, S. E., Shiman, S., Lerner, N. & Salovey, P. (2006). Relating Emotion-al Abilities to Social Functioning: A Comparison of Self-Report and Performance Measures of Emotional Intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91 (4), 780–795. Brackett, M. A., & Geher, G. (2006). Measuring emotional intelligence: Paradigmatic di-versity and common ground. In J. Ciarrochi, J. P. Forgas, & J. D. Mayer (Eds.), Emotional intelligence and everyday life (pp. 27–50). New York: Psychology Press.

31Brackett, M. A., & Mayer, J. D. (2003). Convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of competing measures of emotional intelligence. Personality and Social Psychology Bul-letin, 29, 10, 1147–1158. DOI: 10.1177/0146167203254596Brackett, M. A., & Salovey, P. (2006). Measuring emotional intelligence with the Mayer-Sa-lovey-Caruso emotional intelligence test (MSCEIT). Psicothema, 18, 34-41.Brackett, M. A., Lopes, P. N., Ivcevic, Z., Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (2004). Integrating emotion and cognition: The role of emotional intelligence. In Motivation, Emotion, and Cognition (pp. 189-208), RoutledgeBrasseur S., Gregoire, J., Bourdu R, & Mikolajczak, M. (2013) The Prole of Emotional Competence (PEC): development and validation of a self-reported measure that ts di-mensions of emotional competence theory. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62635. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062635Brunetto, Y., Teo, S. T., Shacklock, K., & Farr-Wharton, R. (2012). Emotional intelligence, job satisfaction, well-being, and engagement: explaining organisational commitment and turnover intentions in policing. Human Resource Management Journal, 22(4), 428-441. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-8583.2012.00198.x Caprara, G. V., Di Giunta, L., Eisenberg, N., Gerbino, M., Pastorelli, C., & Tramontano, C. (2008). Assessing regulatory emotional self-ecacy in three countries. Psychological as-sessment, 20(3), 227.Ciarrochi, J., Deane, F. P., & Anderson, S. (2002). “Emotional intelligence moderates the re-lationship between stress and mental health.” Personality and individual dierences 32(2), 197-209.Clarke, N. (2010). Emotional intelligence and its relationship to transformational leader-ship and key project manager competences. Project management journal, 41(2), 5-20.Conte, J. M. (2005). A review and critique of emotional intelligence measures. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 433-440.Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psy-chopathology. Journal of consulting psychology, 24(4), 349.Davies, K. A., Lane, A. M., Devonport, T. J., & Scott, J. A. (2010). Validity and reliability of a Brief Emotional Intelligence Scale (BEIS-10). Journal of Individual Dierences, 31(4),198–208. DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000028

32Di Fabio, A. & Saklofske, D. H. (2014). Promoting individual resources: The challenge of trait emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Dierences, 65 (2014) 19–23. Dogan, T., Totan, T., & Sapmaz, F. (2013). The role of self-esteem, psychological well-be-ing, emotional self-ecacy, and aect balance on happiness: a path model. European Sci-entic Journal, 9(20), 31-47.Elfenbein, H. A. & MacCann, C. (2017). A closer look at ability emotional intelligence (EI): What are its component parts, and how do they relate to each other? Social and Personal-ity Psychology Compass, 11(7): e12324, DOI:10.1111/spc3.12324Extremera, N., & Fernndez-Berrocal, P. (2002). Relation of perceived emotional intelli-gence and health-related quality of life of middle-aged women. Psychological Reports, 91, 47–59, 47-59.Gohm, C. L., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Four latent traits of emotional experience and their involvement in well-being, coping, and attributional style. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 495-518. Gowing, M. K. (2001). Measurement of individual emotional competence. In C. Cherniss, & D. Goleman (Eds.), The emotionally intelligent workplace: How to select for, measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations (pp. 83–131). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Harms, P. D., & Credé, M. (2010). Remaining issues in emotional intelligence research: Construct overlap, method artifacts, and lack of incremental validity. Industrial and Orga-nizational Psychology, 3(2), 154-158.Hunt, N., & Evans, D. (2004). Predicting traumatic stress using emotional intelligence. Be-havior Research and Therapy, 42, 791–798. Joseph, D. L. & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-anal-ysis and cascading model, Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), Jan, 54-78. http://dx.doi.org.jpllnet.sfsu.edu/10.1037/a0017286Kirk, A., Schutte, N. S., & Hine, D. W. (2008). Development and preliminary validation of an emotional self-ecacy scale. Personality and Individual Dierences, 45(5), 432–436.Lane, R. D., Quinlan, D. M., Schwartz, G. E., Walker, P. A., & Zeitlin, S. B. (1990). The levels of Emotional Awareness Scale: a cognitive developmental measure of emotion. Journal of Personality Assessment, 55(1-2), 124-134.

33Lopes, P. N., Salovey, P., & Straus, R. (2003). Emotional intelligence, personality, and the perceived quality of social relationships. Personality and individual Dierences, 35(3), 641-658.MacCann, C., & Roberts, R. D. (2008). New paradigms for assessing emotional intelligence: theory and data. Emotion, 8(4), 540-551.Matthews, G., Roberts, R. D., & Zeidner, M. (2004). Seven Myths About Emotional Intelli-gence. Psychological inquiry, 15(3), 179-196.Maul, A. (2012). The validity of the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) as a measure of emotional intelligence. Emotion Review, 4(4), 394-402. Maul, A. (2017). Rethinking traditional methods of survey validation. Measurement: Inter-disciplinary Research and Perspectives, 15(2), 51-69.Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: new ability or eclectic traits? American psychologist, 63(6), 503-517.Mayer J. D., Caruso, D., & Salovey, P. (1999). Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence. Intelligence 27: 267–298. Mayer, J. D., & Gaschke, Y. N. (1988). The experience and meta-experience of mood. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 102–111.Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey, & D. Sluy-ter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Implications for educators (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books. Mayer, J. D., Roberts, R. D., & Barsade, S. G. (2008). Human abilities: Emotional intelli-gence. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 507–536.Mestre, J. M., MacCann, C., Guil, R., & Roberts, R. D. (2016). Models of cognitive ability and emotion can better inform contemporary emotional intelligence frameworks. Emo-tion Review, 8(4), 322–330. doi: 10.1177/1754073916650497 Milioni, M., Alessandri, G., Eisenberg, N., Castellani, V., Zuanò, A., Vecchione, M., & Caprara, G. V. (2015). Reciprocal relations between emotional self-ecacy beliefs and ego-resiliency across time. Journal of Personality, 83(5), 552-563.Neubauer, A. C., & Freudenthaler, H. H. (2005). Models of emotional intelligence. In R. Schultz & R. D. Roberts (Eds.), Emotional intelligence: An International Handbook (pp. 31–

3450). Cambridge, MA: HogrefeO’Boyle, J. R., E. H., Humphrey, R. H., Pollack, J. M., Hawver, T. H., & Story, P. A. (2011). The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), 788–818. DOI: 10.1002/job.714 O’Connor, P. J., Hill, A. & Kaya, M., & Martin, B. (2019). The measurement of emotional Intelligence: A critical review of the literature and recommendations for researchers and practitioners. Frontiers in Psychology, 10: 1116. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01116 Paspalanov & Stetinski (1989). Manual for Testing Individual Anxiety through Bulgarian Ad-aptation of the scale developed by Charles Spielberger. Institute of Psychology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (in Bulgarian)Paulhus, D. L., Lysy, D. C., & Yik, M. S. M. (1998). Self-report measures of intelligence: are they useful as proxy IQ tests? Journal of Personality, 66 (4), 525-553. Pekaar, K. A., Bakker, A. B., van der Linden, D., & Born, M. P. (2018). Self- and other-fo-cused emotional intelligence: Development and validation of the Rotterdam Emotional Intelligence Scale (REIS). Personality and Individual Dierences, 120. 222–233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.045 Pool, L. D. & Qualter, P. (2012) The dimensional structure of the emotional self-eca-cy scale (ESES), Australian Journal of Psychology, 64(3), 147-154, DOI: 10.1111/j.1742-9536.2011.00039.xPool, L. D., & Qualter, P. (2012). Improving emotional intelligence and emotional self-e-cacy through a teaching intervention for university students. Learning and individual Dif-ferences, 22(3), 306-312.Radoslavova, M. & Kardasheva, A. (2022). Application of leadership schemas in organiza-tion settings: Does emotional intelligence matter? Paper presented at the 8th Internation-al Congress of Emotional Intelligence, August 31-September 2, Palermo, Italy.Roberts, R. D., Zeidner, M., & Matthews, G. (2001). Does emotional intelligence meet tra-ditional standards for an intelligence? Emotion, 1(3), 196–231. Salovey, P., & Mayer J. D. (1990) Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Per-sonality 9(3), 185– 211. Salovey, P., Stroud, L. R., Woolery, A., & Epel, E. S. (2002). Perceived emotional intelli-

35gence, stress reactivity, and symptom reports: Further explorations using the trait me-ta-mood scale. Psychology and Health, 17(5), 611–627. Sarmento, R. P., & Costa, V. (2019). Conrmatory factor analysis--a case study. arXiv pre-print arXiv:1905.05598.Schutte, N. S., Malou, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., Dorn-heim, L. (1998). Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Per-sonality and Individual Dierences, 25(2), 167–177.Siegling, A. B., Saklofske, D. H., & Petrides, K. V. (2015). Measures of Ability and Trait Emo-tional Intelligence. In Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Constructs, (pp. 381-414). Elsevier Inc. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386915-9.00014-0 Smieja, M., Orzechowski, J., & Stolarski, M.S. (2014) TIE: An Ability Test of Emotional In-telligence. PLoS ONE, 9(7): e103484. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103484 Tabares, A. S. G., & Palacio, N. M. D. (2021). The protective role of empathy and emotion-al self-ecacy in predicting moral disengagement in adolescents separated from illegal armed groups. Anuario de Psicología Jurídica, 31(1), 127-136.Tett, R. P., Fox, K. E., & Wang, A. (2005). Development and validation of a self-report mea-sure of emotional intelligence as a multidimensional trait domain. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(7), 859-888. Ugoani, J., Amu, C., & Emenike, K. O. (2015). Dimensions of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership: A correlation analysis. Independent Journal of Management & Production (IJM&P) v, 6.Van Heck, G. L., & Oudsten, B. L. D. (2008). Emotional intelligence: Relationships to stress, health, and well-being. In Emotion Regulation (pp. 97-121). Springer, Boston, MA.Van Rooy, D. L., & Viswesvaran, C. (2004). Emotional intelligence: A meta-analytic inves-tigation of predictive validity and nomological net. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 71–95. Velichkov, A. & Radoslavova, M. (2005). Method for assessment of optimism and negative expectations. In: Radoslavova, M. & Velichkov, A. Methods for Psychodiagnostics, (pp. 27-32), Pandora Prim (in Bulgarian)Velichkov, A. (2005). Test for assessment of long-term motivation. In: Radoslavova, M. &

36Velichkov, A. Methods for Psychodiagnostics, (pp. 41-44). Pandora Prim (in Bulgarian)Warwick, J., & Nettelbeck, T. (2004). Emotional intelligence is…? Personality and individual dierences, 37(5), 1091-1100. Warwick, J., Nettelbeck, T., & Ward, L. (2010). AEIM: A new measure and method of scor-ing abilities-based emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Dierences, 48(1), 66–71. Webb, C. A., Schwab, Z. J., Weber, M., DelDonno, S., Kipman, M., Weiner, M. R., & Killgore, W. D. (2013). Convergent and divergent validity of integrative versus mixed model mea-sures of emotional intelligence. Intelligence, 41(3), 149-156.Wong, C. S., & Law, K. S. (2002). The eects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: An exploratory study. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(3), 243-274.Xu, Z., & Du, J. (2021). A mental health informatics study on the mediating eect of the regulatory emotional self-ecacy. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 18, 2775-2788.Zeidner M, Kloda I., & Matthews, G. (2013). Does Dyadic Coping Mediate the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Marital Quality? Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5), 795–805.Zeidner, M., Matthews, G., & Roberts, R. D. (2001). Slow down, you move too fast: emo-tional intelligence remains an “elusive” intelligence. Emotion, 1(3), 265–275. Zeidner, M., Matthews, G., & Roberts, R. D. (2009). What we know about emotional intelli-gence: How it aects learning, work, relationships, and our mental health. MIT press.Zhang, X., Yue, H., Sun, J., Liu, M., Li, C., & Bao, H. (2022). Regulatory emotional self-e-cacy and psychological distress among medical students: multiple mediating roles of in-terpersonal adaptation and self-acceptance. BMC Medical Education, 22(1), 1-9.

37A MODEL OF EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT LEADING OF ORGANIZATION TRANSFORMATION Maria RadoslavovaDepartment of Management, San Francisco State University, San FranciscoAbstractIn the rst part of this article, we reviewed empirical data on the eects of the EI ability processes and managing emotions of organization members through empathy and con-tagion during organization transformation. We summarized a wide range of emotionally intelligent strategies to commit members to a radical change. In this part of the article, we add to our model other elements like knowledge of emotional characteristics during or-ganization transformation, ideas about emotionally intelligent change leadership based on neuroscientic research, and some psychological factors of members – mediators and moderators – that determine the eect of change leader’s emotional inuence. Finally, we describe a case study to illustrate successful emotionally intelligent leadership of rad-ical organizational change.Keywords-ship, radical organization change Characteristics of emotions during organization changeWe suggest that change leaders can inuence emotionally members if they monitor and sense the emotionally charged situations and events, i.e., the circumstances that evoke typical and more intense emotions of members during the change. Such knowl-edge can assist leaders’ understanding, forecasting, and use of emotions for planning their

38emotional inuence attempts directed to preventing obstacles, problem-solving, creat-ing a positive vibe during a turnaround, and ultimately achieving change goals. Below we outline several features of members’ emotions and hypotheses regarding emotionally intelligent change leadership. Complexity. During turnarounds, managers at all levels of the organization hierarchy re-port stressors of limited personal control, uncertainty, work overload, lack of information about the change goals, lack of time to absorb the ow of change and learn new behaviors, which trigger frustration, irritation, tiredness (Smollan et al., 2010). Hence, change leaders can manage members’ emotions by timely solving technical and communication problems and supporting members to change their mindsets and behaviors. Valence. At the workplace, members usually experience more frequently happiness, sat-isfaction, enjoyment, enthusiasm, frustration, aggravation, and rarely – the strong emo-tions of terror, horror, agony, panic, misery, despair, and ecstasy (Fisher, 1997), but during a turnaround, they most frequently report intense negative emotions, such as frustration, fear, anger and irritation, anxiety than happiness, condence, gratefulness and proud (Kiefer, 2002). Members experience an equal number of negative and positive emotions (Matheny & Smollan, 2005). Negative emotions are seen as a cue of improper action plans that threaten the change’s success (Spoor & Kelly, 2004). Hence, negative emotions are an important source of information, and leaders can consider them in planning their emo-tional inuence on members. Intensity. The Model of Aective Adaptation posits that adaptation is a process of attend-ing to self-relevant but poorly understood environmental events, which cause intense emotions. When people explain these events and understand them, their emotions be-come less intense – due to the activation of automatic and conscious processes for reduc-ing physiological arousal – and integrating them into their knowledge (Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). In this respect, the uncertainty intensication hypothesis – the individual’s tenden-cy to experience strong aective reactions to events – was empirically supported because of curiosity about uncertain situations (Bar-Anan et al., 2009). This fact can explain the idea of Salovey et al. (1999) that highly resilient people can learn from life’s setbacks and use this knowledge to cope more eectively. So, during a major organization change, leaders need to reduce the level of sta uncertainty by clarifying what, when, and how will be done, what changes in skills and work habits must be made, and what results are seen as successful.

39Dynamics. A longitudinal study found that some emotions are more dynamic during a change: uncertainty, joy, and resignation occur at each point of the change process, anxi-ety, and excitement – before the change and three months later, and frustration and cyn-icism – in the middle of the process and three months later. Giaever & Smollan, 2015). Emotions variety and dynamics during a personal transition in the organization change are related to the primary and secondary appraisals, self-perceptions and ecacy, and time perspectives considered (Fisher, 2012). Castillo et al. (2018) suggested a six-step emotional model of individual change - including (a) denial and anger, (b) bargaining, (s) depression, (4) revising, (5) deserting, and (6) acceptance - found individual dierences in transition between the rst four stages. Thus, to manage members’ emotions, change leaders need to establish typical patterns of members’ emotional changes and nd those of that help conduct smooth behavioral changes. Neuroscience-based ideas about the organization change leadershipThe Model of Inspirational Inuence highlights the role of EI skills in conducting a radical change in three steps: (1) the leader becomes aware of their own and others’ emotions that can result from particular situations, (2) the leader observes their emotions and builds res-onance through managing own emotions, empathetic listening and mimicking the verbal and non-verbal emotional messages from others, and (3) the leader attunes to member’s needs and the situations for managing their emotions to inspire members to act (McClel-lan et al., 2017). Boyatzis & McKee (2006) summarize that a leader attends with care to own and others’ emotions to use them for changing the organization in three ways: (a) engaging members’ emotions, passions, and dreams about the organization’s future and inspiring them for achieving the vision and goals in collaboration and by coaching employ-ees to work the best they can; (b) empathizing to tune with members’ thoughts on why and what to do; (c) showing excitement and energy through emotional contagion to help them become resilient to obstacles and adapt to various requirements. Also, Boyatzis & McKee (2011) suggest two approaches for leaders to become contagious and inspire peo-ple to learn, work at their best, be innovative, and adapt to work: (a) to use EI skill-based techniques and scan members and authentically express positive emotions because their real feelings are fast and unconsciously transmitted, and (b) to coach members with com-passion to help them stay open and learn, and to engage them to contemplate with hope the desired future or core values and the organization purpose instead of discussing spe-cic performance aspects. All these models present the cognitive-emotional-behavioral

40amalgam of leading changes.Luman (2019) explains that people oppose organizational change because of their work and life habits that the brain automatically activates and creates shortcuts to individual perceptions, emotions, and behaviors. These shortcuts often ensure successful adaptive behavior, but in organizational change, people are required to shift their habits and learn new ones. It takes a lot of energy to build new neurological connections, and time for rep-etition of the new behaviors. People’s thoughts cause apathy, anxiety, or worries, that in turn motivate or prevent them to learn new skills. For this reason, people need secure con-text and time to build new routines. To ensure a learning-supportive environment, leaders need to evoke (a) cognitive processing – clarifying to people what behavior is expected and helping them to work things out and experiment with new behaviors, and (b) emo-tional processing – reducing the threats, following the progress, rewarding, celebrating achievements, and other behaviors. These ideas are conrmed by the psychological stud-ies on major organizational changes that we described earlier in this paper.The EI ability was found to have complex neural correlates. It is in the default mode net-work (DMN), which is involved in social-emotional processing. Some empirical data pro-vide more ideas about emotionally inuencing members in change leadership. First, a common nding is that the neural activity is higher when people see, and judge faces that express intense positive and negative emotions than neutral facial expressions. It seems that eective emotional inuence could be focused on managing foremost the intense emo-tions of organization members because leaders can recognize and easily interpret strong emotions. Second, several studies exemplify the association between cognitions and emotions. For example, high EI ability is related to low spontaneous neural activities in several areas of DMN in response to perceived emotions, which enables understanding and manage-ment of emotions and with several areas in the cognitive control network that is involved in controlling emotional processing, understanding others’ emotions, beliefs, appraisal, and reappraisal processes (Pan et al., 2014), and with areas that are engaged in respond-ing to the valence of perceived others’ emotions, and the areas of controlling emotional processing and cognitive appraisals (Quarto et al., 2016). High EI ability is linked to more active brain regions that process sensations and memorize them; the lower EI is related to activating an attention network that generates sensory-motor information about grasp-ing the important “data” for knowing how to use objects. The DMN and the attention

41networks are overlapping, and their typology determines the EI ability (Ling et al., 2019). Cognitive reappraisal is an interaction between cognitive thinking and the control net-work with the systems that are involved in emotional responses (Pesoa, 2009). Therefore, given the high interconnectivity of the neural networks of EI ability and the processes of attention, control, and memory, we suppose that emotional inuence may combine cogni-tive and emotional aspects in managing the intense emotions of employees in achieving the desired behaviors and outcomes. Nicolle & Goel (2013) point out that the key role of emotion and reasoning is based on the interplay of the highly processed sensory information resulting from the association of cortices that informs about the current external and internal environment, which is as-sociated with the amygdala, cingulate, insula, inferior parietal cortex, and striatum, all commonly implicated in emotional experiences and their behavioral eects, and the lim-bic structures – thalamus, hypothalamus, and brain stem which are integral to executing visceral responses in the body, as well as neurochemical changes in the brain. Given these complex interconnections, we assume that the change leaders to inuence a turnaround need to realize that personal feelings are related to body changes that are associated with physical and emotional well-being, to provide relevant facts about the current and future work context, and to convey emotions and their behavioral consequences.The above-presented ndings lead to two conclusions. First, taken together, the elements of emotional inuence can strengthen members’ emotions, acceptance, and sustainable commitment to improving the system. The inuence in leading a turnaround can be ef-fective if it meets the basic needs of the members, such as competency, certainty, be-longing, respect, control, and achievement, which in turn strengthens the acceptance of change. Emotional inuence is in line with the broad-and-build model (Fredrikson, 1998), which posits that whereas negative emotions narrow thinking about the range of actions, positive emotions broaden the thinking about coping and drive people to build physical, intellectual, and social resources to use when needed. Second, the elements of emotional inuence in leading strategic changes have not been systematically studied. All sugges-tions about the impact of the change leaders’ EI ability on the reactions of members may be mediated by various psychological factors.during radical changesA variety of psychological factors may determine the success of change leaders’ emotion-

42al inuence on members during a radical organizational change. Here we mention some examples as illustrated by studies. In presenting the change vision as a desired system sta-tus, executives express and try to instill in members ambition, communicate passion, and hope for success, but members may experience mixed emotions that result from mem-bers’ sense of mastery, personal identity, personal sense of purpose, motives, and orga-nization goals (Moran & Brightman, 2001), perceived congruence of the expected chang-es and their beliefs (Lawson & Price, 2003), sense-making of the demands and personal beliefs, expectations and the reasoning about their behaviors and outcomes (Basford & Schaninger, 2016). To induce dissatisfaction with the status quo, leaders share facts and reasons for their dissatisfaction, but employees feel fear, anxiety, uncertainty, dejection, contentment, and enthusiasm depending on their cognitive appraisals of the facts they hear (Gaubatz & Ensminger, 2017) and the threats to their identity or resources, compe-tency, self-condence, and fear about the future (de Jager, 2001). In creating a positive emotional climate addressing the aspects of group processes that produce frustration and optimism, leaders’ empathy for members is mediated by perceptions and thinking of the shared activity (Humphrey, 2002). Members who want to perform well and have sucient cognitive resources and time to imply what is coming from the leader’s emotions and per-form better their tasks (Van Kleef et al., 2012). Leaders drive various emotions of partic-ipants but only members high on trait positive aectivity develop a strong aective and normative commitment to change and support it (Seo et al., 2012). Members with irratio-nal beliefs about the organizational change intend to oppose the change, especially those who experience negative emotions (Bovey & Hede (2001). Members with low EI attend to the leader’s feelings, not to the message content and mirror his feelings, and experience stress (Paninchukunnath, 2008). Sex dierences moderate members’ reactions, e.g., men experience more frequently strong emotions than women (Fisher, 1997) but women are better at recognizing non-ver-bal emotional expression than men (Thompson & Voyer, 2014). Emotions are more con-tagious when members have high emotional arousal and seek stronger stimulation, for example, women experience long-lasting moods, respond to the stimuli more personally, and generalize the facts they face than men (Härtel & Page, 2009). Taken together, these results reveal that rst, predominant hot, ego-relevant aspects among cognitive mediators, and second, the individual processing of emotions determine the success of leaders’ emotional inuence in the change leadership.

43Case study describing the EI leading a major change in the organizationThe case study exemplies how change leaders uniquely involve emotions in making a large-scale organizational change and provides data for clarifying the rationale of the de-cisions that senior executives of Asda Group make as presented by Webber (1998). We apply the Eight-step Model of Leading Change (Kotter, 1995) that is widely used as a road-map for transforming organizations across the world. Kotter & Cohen (2002) rened the model by incorporating the soft side of change, denoted as a “see, feel, change”, mean-ing that members attend to others’ behaviors, and experience dierent emotions that motivate them to shift their minds and behaviors. The story of Asda’s transformation is presented below.Asda was one of the most successful retailers in the UK grocery industry selling high-quality foods, clothes, and gas at the lowest prices in the industry. In 1980, the new CEO changed the rm’s strategy from low cost to dierentiation with upscale oerings of many product categories and higher prices. He made bad decisions: acquiring many unproductive super-stores in the saturated markets and introducing many non-food businesses, over-paying the deals, using an ineective distribution system, building a new luxury headquarters, buying cars for the senior managers, and renovating many stores. Asda lost traditional customers and failed to bring in new customers. This led to high store overcapacity, slow growth of the sales volume, a steady stock price fall, low reputation, and low employee morale, leading to bankruptcy. To respond to the economic crisis in 1990-1991, the CEO sold some businesses and stores and laid 600 employees. Archie Norman was named the CEO of Asda because of his high reputation for saving large-sized companies. Archie start-ed to lead the change right away, and together with the guiding teams, changed radically Asda in ve years, following the steps of change leadership outlined by Kotter & Cohen:1. Create a sense of urgency. Archie stopped the outow of all unnecessary expenditures and invited consultants to evaluate the operations and improve problem-solving. To cre-ate change receptivity, he assigned a psychologist to assess employees’ motivation, pes-simistic attitudes, fears, anger, and lack of initiative. Due to the low reputation of Asda, most of the employees accepted the need for change very soon. 2. Pull together a guiding team. Archie assigned the “Top Team”, including three VP direc-tors with leadership skills – credible communicators, visionary, community-sensitive, and motivated for success – who made all decisions about the direction and execution of the change working with Archie in synergy. The VP A. Leighton was task-oriented, and Archie

44was people-oriented. They both participated in all company events. 3. Create a clear, simple, uplifting vision and strategies. The top team formulated the vision of Asda as the best-value fresh foods and clothes. 4. Communicate the vision through simple, heartfelt messages. The top team communi-cated the new vision to reduce the fear, anger, anxiety, distrust, and pessimism to induce relief, fate, and optimism regarding the vision and to start making steps to change. The team members modeled behaviors aligned with the vision and acted as they say, reward-ed members who suggest relevant ideas, and provided feedback on the alignment of peo-ple’s actions and the vision. The team assigned the Renewal Team including executives and consultants; every member made decisions in some area. This cross-functional team designed a three-year Recovery Plan for the change and let all stakeholders know this. 5. Empower action. Archie laid o senior and middle-level managers who did not accept the change, removed several layers of Asda’s structure and hundreds of store positions, decentralized the decision-making, created ‘risk-free zones’ for managers to test their ideas for changing the stores, and building technical, risk-taking and collaboration skills, introduced practices for organization-wide communication and trust: an open-oce plan for department-wide face-to-face communication, “Tell Archie” for informing about prob-lems, eliminated the reserved parking lots for managers, and introduced Monday Night soccer games of members’ and directors’ teams that played every week and met for pizza, beer and chatting. 6. Create short-term wins in task performance. Members initially solved easy problems and worked on a few projects to support the vision and achieve visible, meaningful, and quick results. In collaboration, managers did not fear speaking up and solved problems. Non-managerial sta’s suggestions for improvement were rewarded nancially. 7. Maintain momentum. The leaders quickly renew 40 stores but celebrated early, excluded the consultants, and ignored in decision-making the regional managers who opposed the change, causing delay and spending more resources. The Renewal Team created another three-year program to build a “personality” of each store, meaning to become lively, local, friendly, and responsive to customer needs, which meant less hierarchy, more teamwork, and regular feedback, employees to be treated as adults and continuously trained to build new skills and learn about the business context. 8. Make change stick. The organization-wide communication and the culture of equality

45were extended. The change leaders listened to stakeholders’ issues and collaborated with them. The Renewal team created the “Asda Way of Working” initiative to use everyone’s talents in management and assigned more than 20 problem-solving groups of internal and external stakeholders, created various learning practices, and conducted employee and customer feedback surveys and meetings. The teams led the redesign of Asda by joining technical and EI skills through the whole process with people’s needs and emotions in mind. They acted as transformational lead-ers by systematically monitoring the emotional tone in formal and informal gatherings, empathizing, and managing emotions to facilitate the changes in members’ minds and work behaviors. Asda turned back to a low-cost business strategy, signicantly optimized the organization structure and processes, created humane social norms and open com-munication, set up an action-oriented store-based culture and positive emotional climate, and installed a mindset of innovation and achievement, group and intergroup coopera-tion. Asda became a learning organization that built a wide stakeholder support network. Members were strongly committed to the whole ve-year process empowered by partici-pation in making many change-related decisions and building new skills. The change lead-ers displayed a caring attitude toward employees, recognizing and infusing condence, respect, optimism, trust, and hope. As a result, Asda became a highly productive organi-zation, oering high-quality products and services, and satised sta and customers. DiscussionThe purpose of this article was to apply the concept of emotional intelligence in leading organization turnarounds. We described a case of how senior executives can help a com-pany become competitive and adapt to the environment and develop people’s minds and skills by paying attention to and understanding members’ emotions and concerns and using this information in problem-solving. Hence EI is a hot intelligence that can signi-cantly enable the leading of radical organizational changes. Major changes are stressful and emotionally charged due to the long-term simultaneous changes in organizational structure, functions, processes, cultural mindsets, and behav-ioral norms. EI adept executives recognize members’ emotions, understand the complex reasons, meanings, and consequences of emotions in facing uncertainties, pressures, and conicts, and use this information for making decisions and through empathy and contagion involve people in collective eorts to learn new mental and behavioral skills

46on the way of improving the organization. In an interview with BCG, Archie highlight-ed the importance of observing and listening to people’s shared thoughts and emotions and listening to employees’ and customers’ needs while keeping in mind the vision of the change thereby reducing the uncertainty as a key stressor in conducting major changes (Norman, 2013). Archie’s people orientation and A. Leighton’s process orientation were complementary in prioritizing and solving a wide range of organizational challenges be-cause each of them was aware of the benets of their synergy for Asda’s well-being. Ar-chie and the team combined the hard and soft approaches (Theories E and O) in changing Asda, which conrmed the idea of Beer & Nohria (2000) that radical changes should join the task-oriented and people-oriented practices in the change process. When executives navigate turnarounds through positive emotional inuence, members are motivated to participate meaningfully in the transformation, learn new work skills, show respect, col-laborate, build trust, and timely solve problems. Though the eight-step model (Kotter & Cohen, 2012) was criticized for lack of research support and insucient analytical tools for conducting changes (Appelbaum et al., 2012; Rajan & Ganesan, 2017), allowed us to construct the hallmarks of the EI ability use in building positive social climate at each step of Asda’s change process. Indeed, the eight-step model is a general itinerary for change leadership rather than a universal recipe for a successful turnaround. Empirical ndings are in line with the hypothesis of Bradberry & Greaves (2003) that the four branches of EI skills have additive eects and strengthen individuals’ mental func-tions and behaviors. The interpreting of the recognized members’ emotions and implying their thoughts and opinions are a background for understanding their aective reactions to the ongoing change, managing their own and others’ emotions, and making informed decisions and vice versa, managing members can be instrumental in better discriminating and understanding of emotions and making decisions. Combining the mental EI skills can enhance the emotional reasoning of change leaders in getting feedback from members about the successful and challenging aspects of the change process and choosing behav-iors to improve the organization.LimitationsThe described connections between EI skills and job attitudes that have emotional com-ponents, such as satisfaction with job, superiors, and organization, well-being, change-re-lated cynicism, organization commitment, and job involvement, are not conclusive be-cause of two reasons. First, each attitude has complex compounds, and second, work

47attitudes are distal reactions and depend on many factors. The fact that a manager’s EI evokes stronger job satisfaction only in members with low EI (Sy, et al., 2006) is import-ant because job satisfaction and other attitudes are systematically used for measuring the level of change success. Hence, more specic research on how leaders’ EI impacts job attitudes is needed. Managers’ and members’ interactions are habitual, and it is reason-able to assume that moods and attitudes shape the emotional patterns of the sta. The multi-level framework for analysis of aect in an organization (Ashkanasy, 2003a, 2003b) might deepen the study on the connections between change leadership and members’ emotional experiences during a major change.Another issue is that much empirical data are based on correlating the composite score of EI ability and leaders’ behaviors in changing organizations. This approach does not allow us to understand the unique impact of each EI branch on the productive leading of radical changes. Future researchThe value of the model of EI change leadership suggested in this article can produce many hypotheses to be tested in future studies. The knowledge about emotions is a common background of the EI mental processes and contributes to each of them. It helps change leaders nd sensible ways to strengthen employee motivation and commitment to or-ganization-wide change and to build an emotional resonance among managers and em-ployees. The model allows answering questions, such as how change leaders support the emotional adaptation of members, facilitate individual and team emotional commitment to strategic organization change, help individuals and teams build EI skills for coping with the challenges they face during a change and others by applying alternative theoretical models.The review of the empirical ndings revealed that change leadership succeeds if the EI leader acts as a role model of the desired changes and is empathetic and creates positive resonant emotions with members. By modeling enthusiasm, condence, and caring, a leader can cause a positive and trusting context where employees feel safe and inspired and commit to long-term system improvements. In general, employees respond positive-ly when a leader states and acts to satisfy their fundamental needs and conrm their be-liefs, so hot cognitions could contribute to creating resonance among organization sta. The eects of the negative emotional resonance, as well as comparing the motivational

48potential of positive and negative emotions to encourage people to solve problems during changes have not been studied yet. The multilevel model of emotion (Huy, 1998) that combines the aspects of individual emotional intelligence and the organization’s emo-tional capability in conducting transformation has not been consistently supported. The process model of employee emotion management (Kaplan et al., 2014) including prereq-uisites and outcomes of the leader’s strategies to manage employees’ emotions could ap-ply to organizational changes. Another area for future research is to study mediators and moderators that can prevent or augment the eciency of emotionally intelligent change leadership.In addition, the potential of emotional ability in leading positive organizational change, in contrast to identifying and solving problems for improvement, applies members’ emo-tions in group and public discussions as key information sources about the past and current organization capacity. By applying the 4-D model at a team and company level, all internal and external stakeholders are change agents with a say in the conversations (Cooperrider & Sekerka, 2006) for changing organization strategy, culture, and operations (Meinert, 2013) and making individual and team changes (Cameron & Plews, 2012). We hope these suggestions may encourage further research on the role of emotional intelligence in lead-ing major organizational changes. ReferencesAshkanasy, N. M. (2003a). Emotions in organizations: A multilevel perspective. In F. Dansereau & F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Research in multi-level issues (Vol. 2, pp. 9–54). Ox-ford, UK: Elsevier/JAI Press.Ashkanasy, N. M. (2003b). Emotions at multiple levels: An integration. In F. Dansereau and F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Research in multi-level issues (Vol. 2, pp. 71–81). Oxford, UK: Elsevier/JAI Press.Bar-Anan, Y., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert. D. T. (2009). The feeling of uncertainty intensies aective reactions. Emotion, 9(1), 123-127.Basford, T., & Schaninger, B. (2016, Nov). The four building blocks of change. MacKinsey on Organization Culture and Change, 7-15. Beer, P., & Nohria, N. (2000). Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 86-95.

49Bovey, W. H., & Hede, A. (2001). Resistance to organizational change: The role of cognitive and aective processes. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 22(8), 372-382.Boyatzis R. E., & McKee, A. (2006). Inspiring others through resonant leadership, Business Strategy Review, 17, (2), 15-19.Boyatzis, R., McKee, A. (2011). Neuroscience and leadership: The promise of insights. Ivey Business Journal. Retrieved from researchgate.net.Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2003). The Emotional Intelligence. Quickbook, TalentsmartCameron, K., & Plews, E. (2012). Positive leadership in action: Applications of POS by Jim Mallozzi, CEO. Prudential Real Estate and Relocation, Organizational Dynamics, 41, 99-105. Castillo, C., Fernandez, V., & Sallan, J. M. (2018). The six emotional stages of organization-al change, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 31(3), 468-493.Cooperrider, D. L., & Sekerka, L. E. (2006). Towards a Theory of Positive Organizational Change. In J. V. Galos (Ed.). Organization Development. A Jossy-Bass Reader, (pp. 223-238). Jossy-Bassde Jager, P. (2001). Resistance to change: A new view of an old problem. The Futuristic, 35, 24-27.Fisher, C. D. (1997). Emotions at work: what do people feel and how should we measure it? School of Business Discussion Papers. Paper 63. Retrieved from http://epublications.bond.edu.au/discussion_papers/63Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of Genetic Psychology, 2(3), 300–319. Gaubatz, J. A., & Ensminger, D. C. (2017). Department chairs as change agents: Leading change in resistant environments. Educational Management Administration and Leader-ship, 45, 141-163. Giaever, F. & Smollan, R.K. (2015). Evolving emotional experiences following organiza-tional change: A longitudinal qualitative study. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 10(2), 105-123. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/QROM-11-2013-1185Härtel, C. E. J., & Page, K. M. (2009). Discrete emotional crossover in the workplace: the role of aect intensity. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 24 (3), 237-253.

50Humphrey, R. H. (2002). The many faces of emotional leadership. The Leadership Quarter-ly, 13, 493–504.Huy, Q. (1999). Emotional capability, emotional intelligence and radical change, Academy of Management Review, 24(2), 325 -345.Kaplan, S., Cortina, J., Ruark, G., LaPort, K., & Nicolaides, V. (2014). The role of organiza-tional leaders in employee emotion management: A theoretical model. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), 563-580.Kiefer, T. (2002). Understanding the Emotional Experience of Organizational Change: Evidence from a Merger, Advances in Developing Human Resources. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422302004001004Kotter, J. (1995 Mar-Apr). Leading change: Why transformations fail, Harvard Business Re-view, 59-67.Kotter, J., & Kohen, D. (2012). The Heart of Change: Real Stories of How People Change Their Organizations. Harvard Business Review Press.Lawson & Price (2003, Jun). The psychology of change management, McKinsey Quarter-ly, Retrieved from: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-in-sights/the-psychology-of-change-managementLing, G., Lee I., Guimond, S., Tandon, N., Nawaz, U., Öngür, D., Eack, S., Lewandowski, K., Keshavan, M., & Brady Jr., R. (2019). Individual variation in brain network topology is linked to emotional intelligence. Neuroimage, April 01, 189: 214–223. doi:10.1016/j.neuro-image.2019.01.013.Luman, G. (2019). Making organizational change happen – Does what we now know from neuroscience have any impact? Development and Learning in Organizations, 33(4), 5-8.Matheny, J. A., & Smollan, R. K. (2005). Taking change to heart: Exploring emotions experienced through change events, In N. M. Ashkanasy, W.J. Zerbe, & C.E.J. Härtel, (Eds.). The Eect of Aect in Organizational Settings (Research on Emotion in Organizations, Vol. 1), (pp. 173-210). Emerald Group Publishing Ltd, Bingley. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1746-9791(05)01108-9McClellan, J., J., Levitt, K., & Diclementi, G. (2017). Emotional intelligence and positive organizational Leadership: A conceptual model for positive emotional inuence. Journal

51of Behavioral and Applied Management, 17(3), 197-212.Meinert, D. (2013). Positive momentum. The appreciative inquiry process can help compa-nies build on their strengths. HR Magazine, June, 68-74.Moran, J. W., & Brightman, B. K. (2001). Leading organizational change. Career Develop-ment International, Bradford, 6(2/3), 111-119.Nicolle, A. & Goel, V. (2013). What is the role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in emo-tional inuences on reason, Emotion and reasoning, In I. Blanchette (Ed.), Emotion and Reasoning, Psychology Press.Norman, A. (2013). Archie Norman shares lessons from 25 years of turnarounds. An inter-view by Boston Consulting Group, March 25th, 2013. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFjurgfIkHMPan W., Wang T, Wang X., Hitchman G, Wang L., & Antao, C. (2014) Identifying the Core Components of Emotional Intelligence: Evidence from Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluc-tuations during Resting State. PLoS ONE 9(10): e111435. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111435Paninchukunnath, A. (2008). The emotional mind of business leaders. ASBM Journal of Management, 1(1), 68-79.Pessoa, L. (2009). Cognition and emotion, Scholarpedia, 4(1), 45-67. doi:10.4249/scholar-pedia.4567Quarto T, Blasi G, Maddalena C, Viscanti G, Lanciano T, Soleti E, et al. (2016) Association between Ability Emotional Intelligence and Left Insula during Social Judgment of Facial Emotions. PLOS ONE, 11(2): e0148621. doi:10.1371/journal.Rajan, R., & Ganesan, R. (2017). A critical analysis of John P. Kotter’s change management framework. Asian Journal of Research in Business Economics and Management, 7(7), 181-203. Salovey, P., Bedell, B. T., Detweiler, J. B., & Mayer, J. D. (1999). Coping intelligently: Emo-tional intelligence and the coping process. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.). Coping: The psychology of what works. (pp. 141-164). Oxford University PressSeo, M., Taylor, S., Hill, S. N., Zhang, X., Tesluk, P. E., & Lorinkove, N. M. (2012). The role of aect and leadership during organizational change. Personnel Psychology, 65, 121–165.Smollan, R. K., Sayers, J. G. & Matheny, J. A. (2010), Emotional responses to the speed,

52frequency and timing of organisational change, Time and Society, 19(1), 28-53.Spoor, J. R., & Kelly, J. R. (2004). The Evolutionary Signicance of Aect in Groups: Com-munication and Group Bonding. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 7 (4), 126-137.Sy, T., Tram, S., & O’Hara, L. A. (2006). Relation of employee and manager emotional intel-ligence to job satisfaction and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68(3), 461-473.Thompson, A. E., & Voyer, D. (2014). Sex dierences in the ability to recognise non-verbal displays of emotion: A meta-analysis. Cognition and Emotion, 28 (7), 2014, 1164-1195. Van Kleef, G. A., Homan, A. C., & Cheshin, A. (2012). Emotional inuence at work: Take it EASI. Organizational Psychology Review, 2(4), 311–339.Webber, J. (1998). Asda (B), 9-498-007, Harvard Business School PublishingWilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). Explaining away a Model of Aective Adaptation. Per-spective on Psychological Science, 3(5), 370-386.

53доц. д-р Илия Маринов, д.м.Военно-Медицинска АкадемияБългарияУчастието в операции и мисии извън територията на страната е сериозно предизвикателство за индивидуалното справяне на военнослужещите. Освен индивидуалните личностови ресурси, военната подготовка и военновременните стресови фактори, социалните взаимодействия също са от особена значимост в хода на справянето с неблагоприятните условия на мисия. Отсъствието на семейната и приятелската среда, обичайните социално-буфериращи системи и чувствата, които се провокират по време на военните мисии представляват рискови фактори по отношение развитие на стресова симптоматика и посттравматично стресово разстройство (ПТСР). Това определя фокуса на настоящия материал върху промените, които настъпват у военнослужещите по отношение личностните им характеристики в резултат на неуспешно преработване на заливащата емоционално значима информация в условия на мисии. Тези характеристики ще определим като предиктори за развитието на ПТСР, като в основата им стоят занижените ресурси и способности за саморефлексия, разбиране и преработване на емоционалните стимули. Ключови думи:Емоционалните ресурси и способности на личността имат ключова роля за справяне на индивида в условия на застрашаваща, непрестанно динамика и враждебна

54обстановка. Способностите за разбиране на собственото емоционално състояние, на чувствата на околните, диференцирането на чувствата и съобразяването на собственото поведение спрямо цялостния афективен контекст представлява ключова способност при справяне със стресогенни фактори във високорискова среда. На психологически език бихме нарекли този комплекс като чувстване и мислене за емоционалното ни състояние и адаптивно използване на чувствата в интеракциите с околните и цялостната ситуация. Тези способности се разглеждат под понятието „емоционална интелигентност“. До момента с термина „емоционална интелигентност“ се означават много различни теории и концепти – от умения и способности, през личностови черти, включително и диспозиции като оптимизъм, самоуважение и др. От множеството модели, водещи са три модела, които разглеждат емоционалната интелигентност като: умения и способности (Mayer-Sa-lovey), смесен модел (Goleman) и личностна черта (Petrides).Mayer & Salovey (1997) определят емоционалната интелигентност като способност за възприемане, осъзнаване и генериране на емоциите, така че да подпомогнат ми-словния процес, да бъдат разбирани емоциите и емоционалното познание, и да бъ-дат регулирани емоциите, за да се постигне емоционален и интелектуален растеж. Емоционалната интелигентност включва четири области: възприемане на собстве-ните и чуждите емоции; използване на емоциите за подпомагане на процесите на мислене; разбиране на емоциите, езика на чувствата и емоционалните сигнали, и управление на емоциите за постигане на желано намерение/цел. Всяка една от тези области описва множество способности, които оформят в цялост емоционалната интелигентност. Goleman (1995) отправя провокативното твърдение, че коефициентът на интели-гентност допринася до 25% за успеха в живота, а останалите проценти зависят от емоционалната интелигентност на индивида. В резултат на това Goleman отбеляз-ва, че „близо 90% от разликата“ между изключително добре справящите се в тру-дова среда и успехите на посредствените служители се дължат на емоционалната интелигентност (1998). Goleman включва четири основни емоционални и социални компетенции: самосъзнание; самоуправление; социално съзнание, и управление на отношенията [2000]. Четирите области са свързани с 80 групи от специфични компе-тентности за емоционалната интелигентност. Неговият модел е изцяло практически ориентиран и е често критикуван поради недостатъчната си изследователска осно-ва и дълбочина.

55Pérez et al. (2005) разглеждат емоционалната интелигентност като част от личностната структура на индивида и я определят като „констелация от себевъзприятия, които се намират в по-ниските нива на личностната йерархия и се измерват чрез въпросник за емоционална интелигентност като личностната черта” (Petrides, 2010).Независимо от призмата, през която се разглежда емоционалната интелигентност, на преден план излизат няколко конструкта, които изследователите приемат:възприятието и осъзнаването на собствените си емоции като аспект на себерефлексията – възможността за възприемане и диференциране на собствените емоции, както и умението за назоваването им е от първостепенна важност за по-нататъшно надграждане в емоционалните способности. Дефицитите в това отношение са свързани с неразбиране на вътрешните възбудни процеси, а оттам и неспособност за адаптивното им реагиране (актинг). Във високорискова среда емоционалната информация често е с изключително силен интензитет, а необходимостта от адекватно и бързо реагиране, особено на театъра на военни действия, често не позволява обръщане на вниманието към интрапсихичното. В резултат на това, емоциите, които не са възприети и диференцирани и се „усещат“ като амалгама от чувства, като вътрешна възбуда, която най-пряк о се разтоварва обикновено чрез поведението без да се осъзнават чувствата и емоциите;възприемане и разбиране на чуждите емоции – във взаимодействието с околните е важно да се проявява емпатия, за да бъде градивен междуличностния обмен;управление на емоциите , което е свързано с контрола на импулсите и способността да се отлага реагирането във времето чрез чисто мотивационни механизми. Тази способност е изключително важна, особено в комплексни, рискови и наситени със стимули ситуации;използване на емоциите в социалните взаимодействия, което се върху възприемане и осъзнаване на субективното емоционално състояние; да се премине през разбиране на емоционалното субективно на останалите участници в интеракцията и техните емоционални сигнали; да се достигне състояние на „мислене на емоциите“ и възприятие на цялостната афективна реалност, за да се осъществи най-адаптивен обмен и в социалните взаимодействия. Тази способност е много комплексна и следва да се има предвид, че овладяването й изисква използване на много личностни ресурси. Овладяването на междуличностните взаимоотношения предполага управление на емоциите на другите спрямо собствените емоции (Гитуни, 2003).

56Емоционалната интелигентност се отнася до преживяванията, разбирането и справянето в сложни ситуации, като включва по-скоро умения, отколкото знания, които индивидът постига, за да функционира емоционално адекватно (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000). Тя се отнася до способността за самоосъзнаване и сензитивност, за да се разграничат и разпознаят чувствата в дадена интеракция и да се удържи на порива импулсивно, автентично и автоматично реагиране в поведение и до повлияване без манипулация или злоупотреба, а чрез възприемане, учене, свързване, приоритизиране и действие, отдавайки дължимото на изпитваните емоции, вместо позоваване на логиката (Ryback,1998). Емоционалната интелигентност може да бъде развивана (Perkins, 1994; Sternberg, (1996).Множеството изследвания показват взаимовръзка на емоционалната интелигентност с психичното здраве, справянето със стреса и социалната успеваемост. Медицинските заболявания, особено психосоматичните, са коморбидни с разстройства на настроението [Мatthews et al., 2001). По-високите равнища на емоционална интели-гентност са свързани с по-добро психо-социално функциониране (Schutte et al. 2001; Salovey & Grewal, 2005; Brown & Schutte (2006), оптимизъм и междуличностни отно-шения. По-висока социална подкрепа и по-висока удовлетвореност от получаваната социална подкрепа, могат да служат като буфери в развитието на медицински забо-лявания при хората с висока социална интелигентност (Brown & Schutte, 2006). Личност с висока емоционална интелигентност може да се справи по-успешно с житейските предизвикателства и да контролира по-успешно своите емоции, които водят до по-добро психично и физическо здраве (Taylor, 2001). Емоционалната ин-телигентност е свързана с по-ниски равнища на стрес и оплаквания, като депресия, чувство за безнадеждност и суицидни идеации (Ciarrochi et al, 2002). Тревожността свързана с работната ангажираност и може да се прояви чрез панически преживявания, хипохондрични страхове, посттравматичен стрес или социална тревожност в работния процес. Тревожността може да доведе до избягващо поведение или механизми, например отсъствия от работа по медицински причини, напускане на работа или ранно пенсиониране. Изследване, проведено в Университета Отаго в Нова Зеландия, разкрива, че 45% от новодиагностицираните случаи на депресия или генерализирано тревожно разстройство са директно свързани със стрес на работното място. Приблизително 12% от хората, които изпитват стрес на работното място, без предишни епизоди на оплаквания от психични неразположения, преминават през първи епизод на депресия или тревожност на възраст до 32 години. Индивидите

57в среда на завишени изисквания към психичното справяне на работното място са 75-80% по-застрашени от развитие на депресивно или тревожно разстройство, отколкото тези, които изпълняват по-ниски изисквания (Martin, 2007). Сред димен-сиите на емоционалната интелигентност, способността за управляване на собстве-ните емоции е най-добрият позитивен ресурс и предиктор за справяне със стреса (Choubey et al., 2009). Неразвитите способности на емоционална осъзнатост и за управление на емоциите са ключови при някои личностни разстройства и разстрой-ства на контрола на импулсите (Мatthews et al., 2001). Ниската емоционална интели-гентност, липсата на осъзнатост за емоционалните процеси, както и проблемите с контрол на импулсите са взаимосвързани (Schutte et al. 2001). Резултатите от изследване на бойните стресори на военнослужещите, непосредствено завърнали се от операцията на Международните сили за поддържане на сигурността в Афганистан (ISAF), показват, че по време на мисия показват, водеща изявата на физическите стресори (характеристиките на средата) - 53,39%, когнитивните стресори - 44,67%, физиологичните стресори - 42,99%, емоционалните стресори - 34,76% изява, полевите стресори - 32,83%, и стресорите, свързани с отношението към мисията - 30,8%. Емоционалните стресори отразяват чувството за сигурност, че участниците ще се върнат от мисия живи и здрави (92.7%). Наличието на подкрепа от колегите е оценено е много значимо за военнослужещите; значителна част от тях нямат семейства и не се притесняват от сериозно нараняване и/или загуба на живота си или проблемите в общуване с партньора/семейството (Маринов и кол., 2011). Изглежда емоционалните стресори и естеството на субективната афективна динамика по време на мисия не са силно осъзнати поради активирането на психични съпротиви и защити.В съгласие с тази хипотеза, изследването на факторите влияещи върху ефективността на изпълнението на задачите и стресоустойчивостта на участниците в мисии сочи, че участниците имат тенденция към занижаване на риска с цел намаляване на тревожността и отричане на евентуалната пряка физическа опасност (Marinov et al., 2006). На базата на тези резултати, може да се направи извода, че участниците имат тенденция към занижаване на риска с цел намаляване на тревожността и отричане на евентуалната пряка физическа опасност. Налице са изследвания, които разглеждат риска и факторите на устойчивост при участниците в мироопазващи мисии. По-слабият психологичен дистрес след разгръщането на военните операции е свързван с редица фактори - себеоткриване, възможности за постигане и получаване на

58социална подкрепа, позитивното възприемане при завръщане в родината и в семейството и ограничаване на допълнителните жизнени стресори. При изследване на норвежки мисионери, служили в ООН в Ливан (Weisaeth et al., 1996) е документирано, че 15% от тези, които са отслужили пълния период на миси-ята по време на операциите, са развили ПТСР, а 25% от тези, на които е била прекра-тена службата поради дисциплинарни, социални или медицински проблеми също така развиват ПТСР (Litz et al., 1997). Изследване чрез многодименсионална скала на 3461 американски военнослужещи (мъже и жени) установява че приблизително 8% от американските мисионери в Сомалия покриват критериите за ПТСР пет ме-сеца след завръщането си в САЩ. Изследванията прогнозират, че освен тези, кои-то развиват пълната картина на ПТСР, много повече от мисионерите ще страдат от значими, но под нормата за съответната популация, нива на проява на симптомите на ПТСР. Merbaum & Hefez (1976) откриват, че и израелските и при американските войници с психиатрични разстройства имат повишени стойности по MMPI на скалите за шизофрения, депресия и психастения. Американците са показали по-силна психопатия и хипомания, а израелците – по-силна хипохондрия. Авторите правят заключение, че войници с психиатрични разстройства имат значително по-високи балове по скалите, показателни за наличието на болезнен емоционален дистрес, докато американците проявяват по-консистентни балове илюстриращи личностни разстройства като импулсивност, агресия и занижен поведенчески контрол. Най-чести травматични инциденти, на които са били подложени военнослужещите, са били атака или засада от противник, убиване на противник, виждане на мъртви тела и жертви сред цивилното население. Изследване на личностните характеристики и извеждане на предиктори за развитие на посттравматична стресова симптоматикаАспектите на социално-психологично функциониране и психична устойчивост на военнослужещите при участие в операции и мисии извън територията на страната придобиват особена значимост поради естеството на задачите, които изпълняват и обхвата на засегнатите индивиди по отношение личностни психологични характеристики, механизми за справяне на ниво индивидуални компетенции и уменията за адекватно и ефективно функциониране в среда с дългосрочни повишени изисквания.

59  Изследването охваща 272 военнослужещи с фокус върху личностните характеристики като предиктори за развитие на посттравматичен стрес при участие в операции/мисии извън територията на страната.  С цел изследване на личностните характеристики и извеждане на предиктори за развитие на посттравматична стресова симптоматика при военнослужещи, участвали в мисии извън територията на страната, се използва батерия от психологични въпросници с акцент на личностен профил, тревожно-депресивни и невротични тенденции, методи за изследване на личностnа твърдост, агресивни тенденции и социално-психологично функциониране - Методика за първоначална оценка на посттравматичната стресова симптоматика - МПОПСС (Радославова и Величков, 2005), Минесотски многофакторен личностен въпросник (Кокошкарова, 1984; Мечков, 1995), Поведенчески личностен въпросник за агресия на Бъс-Дюрки (BDI); Метод за изследване на социално-психологичното функциониране на личността на Лири (Божинова, 1978), и въпросник за изследване на перцепцията за контрол над социалните феномени като част от въпросника за Личностова твърдост (Велкова, 1998). Процедура на изследванетоЕтап 1. Изследването включва оценка на психичната пригодност на военнослужещи преди заминаване в мисии с висок риск извън територията на страната и изследване след завръщането им. Психичната пригодност е оценена преди заминаване в групов формат (до 20 човека едновременно) чрез следните четири психологически въпросника: (1) ММРІ, (2) BDI, (3) въпросника за социално-психологично функциониране и (4) Личностна твърдост.Етап 2. Първоначалната оценка на посттравматичната стресова симптоматика се провежда групово непосредствено след завръщане на военнослужещите от мисия отново със следните методи: (1) Минесотски многофакторен личностен въпросник МПОПСС, (2) Поведенчески личностен въпросник за агресия на Бъс-Дюрки (BDI), (3) Метод за изследване на социално-психологичното функциониране на личността разработен от Лири, (4) Въпросник за изследване на възприет контрол над

60социалните феномени като част от въпросника за личностна твърдост.Администрирането на психологичното изследване се извърши от обучен специалист психолог със задаване на времеви рамки за попълване на методите и даване на инструкция на изследваните лица. Времевият интервал между двете процедури бе 8-9 месеца.Непосредствено след завръщането си от мисия на силно рискова локация, изследваните лица бяха разделени на две групи – военнослужещи със стресова симптоматика и военнослужещи, които не са посочили стресова симптоматика – на основата на баловете им по Методиката за първоначална оценка на посттравма-тичната стресова симптоматика.  Сравнението на двете групи разкри, че стойностите на MMPI скалите Хх (Хипохондрия), Д (Депресия), Хи (Хистерия), Пп (Психопатия), Па (Параноя) и Пт (Психастения) нямат статистически значими разлики (р ≥ 0,05). Следователно лич-ностните характеристики нямат предиктивна тежест за развитие на стресова симп-томатика вследствие на участие в мисия извън страната. Значими са различията между двете групи по скала Ш („Шизоидия”): групата с на-личие на стресова симптоматика има значимо по-високи балове от групата в норма (Z= 2,22, p ≤ 0,05). По-високите стойности на тази скалата, бидейки в норма, гово-рят за усещане за отчуждение, неразбиране от околните, недостатъчни способности за контакт, егоцентрично поведение и склонност към аутистична мечтателност (Кокошкарова, 1984). Групата с наличие на стресова симптоматика има значимо по-високи стойности по скала Ма („Хипомания”) отколкото групата без наличие на такава симптомати-ка (t (270) = 1,98, p ≤ 0,05). Тази стойност на пръв поглед изглежда парадоксален, тъй като по-силната хипомания показва инстинкта към “живот” при стойности в нор-ма. От психологична гледна точка, високите стойности по тази скала но в рамките на нормата следва да се разглеждат освен като оптимистично мислене, общител-ност и способност за наслаждаване на радостите от живота, и като механизъм за отстраняване на фрустрацията, отричане на затруднения и тревога от всякакъв род,

61който е предиктор за развитие на стресова симптоматика в следствие на преживени трудности и/или критични ситуации.Очакваме, че хората, които са по-склонни към изолация и трудности в междуличностните контакти/емоционално капсулиране/, биха били и по-податливи към развитие на стресова симптоматика, отколкото хората, които са по-склонни към сключване на социални отношения, комуникативност и контактност. Тези предположения се потвърждават и от получените резултати – групата в норма група има по-ниски стойности по скалата Социална интроверсия (Си), отколкото групата с наличие на стрес, т.е. хората с по-силна склонност към социално и емоционално от-дръпване са по-податливи към развитие на стресови симптоми (t(270) = 2.56, p≤ 0.05).При съчетаване на Ш, МА и СИ като водещи в индивидуален профил (като код на профила в рамките на резултати в широка норма), характеристиките на личността може да включват следните модели на функциониране: незначителните фрустрации могат да доведат до поява на устойчиви и продължителни отрицателни емоции, а компенсацията се постига чрез дистанцирането/отдръпването; омаловажаване на опасността и отричане на затрудненията, както и на своя и чужда вина; надценяване на собствените възможности; затруднени междуличностни контакти; затруднени способности за продължително фиксиране на вниманието; своеобразно защитно поведение и др. Тези резултати частично съответстват на резултатите от изследването на Merbaum & Hefez (1976).При обобщения профил на групата с наличие на стрес, водещи са скалите на Психопатия, Психастения и Хипомания. Резултатите показват, че на първа позиция при изследваните лица предразположени към стресова симптоматика заемат скали-те на психопатия – при 27,3% от участниците в тази група, и хипомания – при други 27,3% от участниците от тази група. На втора позиция в най-типичния код за тази група е скалата на психастения – при 29,5% от участниците от тази група, докато останалите скали бележат по-ниски проценти. Тези резултати не са учудващи, имайки предвид, че по-високата психопатия изразява тенденции към неспазване на общоприетите норми и по-слаба обратна връзка и корекция на собственото поведение, докато по-високата психастения – тенденция за по-силна тревожност, “умственото предъвкване” на проблемните ситуации и теми, които изразяват затруднено справяне в трудни ситуации.

62 При сравняване на резултатите от двете групи не бяха открити статистически значими разлики по скалите „Независимо-доминиращ тип”, „Праволинейно-агресивен тип”, “Недоверчиво-скептичен тип”, „Покорно-стеснителен тип”, „Зависимо-послушен тип” и „Отговорно-великодушен тип” (всички стойности на t критерия имат стой-ности р ≥ 0,05). Следователно личностните характеристики, нямат предиктивна те-жест за развитие на стресова симптоматика при участие в мисия извън страната. Две от самооценъчните скали имат статистически значими разлики. Баловете по скалата “Властно-доминиращ тип” показват, че изследваните лица от групата в норма имат значително по-високи стойности, отколкото в групата с налич-на стресова симптоматика (t(270) = 2.27, p≤0,05). Военнослужещите с бързи реакции, висока активност, способност за бързо и леко вземане на решения, с тенденция за доминиране и организаторски способности са по-слабо предразположен към раз-витие на стресова симптоматика, отколкото военнослужещите с по-ниски балове на скалата. При рискова и застрашаваща ситуация за емоционалното функциониране на индивида е изключително важно субективното усещане за възможност да упраж-нява контрол над събитията и усещане за ефективност на собствените проактивни действия. Ниските стойности на властно-доминиращ тип са индикатор за предраз-положеност към развитие на стресова симптоматика, тъй като индивидът не може да излезе от ролята на жертва, на хаотичните и заплашващи събития.Втората статистически значима разлика между двете групи е тази на “Сътрудничещо-конвенционален тип” (t(270) = 2,29, p≤0,05). Резултатите разкриват, че колкото по-сил-но изразен този тип, т.е. колкото повече човек търси връзка и сътрудничество с околните, получава доверие и признание от тях, толкова по-малко е податлив на стрес – групата в норма има по-високи стойности по скалата, отколкото групата със стресова симптоматика. Двете групи не се различават значимо по скалите „Телесна агресия”, „Вербална агресия”, „Опозиционно поведение” и „Ревност и омраза” (всички р ≥ 0,05). Това оз-начава, че личностните характеристики, измервани чрез тези скали не са предикто-ри за развитие на стресова симптоматика. Останалите четири скали имат статисти-чески значими разлики.

63Двете групи военнослужещи се различават и в баловете на скалата „Индиректна агресия”: групата в норма показва значително по-ниски стойности по тази скалата от групата с наличие на стресова симптоматика (t(270) = 2,34, p ≤ 0,05). Тъй като тенден-цията за индиректната агресия е свързана с агресивно отреагиране чрез опосред-ствани обекти (т.е. агресията се насочва към междинни обекти, а не към източника на фрустрация – напр. затръшване на врати, чупене на предмети и т.н.), то високите резултати по скалата следва да се разглеждат като неспособност за зряло емоцио-нално отреагиране на агресивния заряд.По скалата „Агресивна раздразнителност”, по-висока е стойността на групата със стресова симптоматика отколкото на групата в норма (t(270) = 3.03, p ≤ 0.01). Тъй като по-изразените стойности на тази скала са индикатор за по-лесно раздразнение/не-способност за афективен дисконтинуитет на фрустриращи стимули и склонност към враждебни прояви вследствие слаба фрустрация, те разкриват податливост към стресова симптоматика в трудни и критични ситуации поради емоционална уязви-мост.Скалата „Агресивно недоверие” изразява недоверие към действията на околни-те и възприятие за целенасочена злонамереност в техните действия. Това пораж-да чувство за самота и патологична емоционална свързаност със света, в която ин-дивидът получава предимно болка, фрустрация и неразбиране. Както може да се очаква, групата без стресова симптоматика показва значимо по-ниски стойности на агресивно недоверие от групата със стресова симптоматика (Z = 2,25, p ≤ 0.05).Скалата „Вина след агресия” измерва тенденцията към самообвинения след проява на агресивни или враждебни поведения. Групата с наличие на стресова симптомати-ка има по-високи балове в сравнение с групата служители без такава симптоматика (t(270) = 2,23, p ≤ 0.05). Това се обяснява чрез субективното възприятие на индивида, че е разрушил „обекта“ и трудността за неговото репариране води до емоционалното усещане за загуба и възприятието, че поради деструктивността си той не заслужава да бъде приеман и „обичан“ от този „обект“. Въпросникът за личностова твърдост, оригинално разработен от Пол Бъртън и адаптиран и стандартизиран за Българската армия от Диана Велкова (1998),

64изследва способността хората за реагиране и справяне със стреса в трудни и критични ситуации. В този смисъл се очаква пряка зависимост между личностна твърдост и начина на справяне в критични ситуации, разглеждан като ниво на стресова симптоматика, измерван чрез МПОПСС.Резултатите на изследваните лица при кандидатстването им за мисия и за личностна твърдост непосредствено при завръщането им от мисия показват силна обратна взаимовръзка (r = -0,68, р < 0.01). Следователно колкото по-силна е личностната твърдост, толкова по-устойчив е индивидът спрямо стрес, изразен чрез наличие на стресови симптоми. Тези резултати от една страна потвърждават валидността на конструкта на личностовата твърдост, а от друга – потвърждават очакването, че хората, които имат усещане за контрол над събитията и гъвкаво справяне с проблемни или критични ситуации, имат по-ефективно емоционално осмисляне на стимулите, за да се справят със стрес. Справянето с последиците от нарушаването на личностното функциониране в контекста на посттравматичното стресово разстройство отнема изключителни ресурси. Последиците понякога са много трудно поправими – разпадане на семейното огнище, социална изолация стигаща понякога до „изпадане” от социума и силно нарушено и болезнено ежедневие за потърпевшите. Програмите за промоция на психичното здраве и специализираната подготовка на личния състав, колкото и ефективни да са за справяне в чисто професионален план, често не докосват обогатяването на вътрешния афективен свят. В „силовите” професии трудно се адресира темата за емоционалното преживяване и афективната проблематика, поради убеждението че „силата” и „устойчивостта” на личния състав не бива да се подлагат под съмнение. Резултатите от проучената литература и от представените изследвания описват много ясна картина на насоките, които трябва да бъдат поети с цел превенция на стресовата симптоматика при участие на военнослужещите във високорискови задачи. Личностните характеристики, които са предиктори на стресова симптоматика, показват необходимост от насочване на усилията на специалистите по психологично осигуряване към прилагане на превантивни програми за опознаване на емоционалния субективен свят, разпознаването и справянето не

65само със собствените преживявания, но и с преживяванията на околните. Резултатите ясно показват, че дори при нормално психологично функциониране на индивидите, неосъзнатата афективна динамика активира стресови симптоми. Ясното открояване на оттеглянето на емоционалните инвестиции от заобикалящите индивида колеги по време на мисия, не се компенсира сублимно, не се измества, не се трансформира. Индивидът е в застой на дефицит от афективен обмен, поради което т.нар. „възбуда” не намира пътища за оттичане, или успява да се изрази частично чрез раздразнителност и предметно опосредствана агресивност. В резултат на това вътрешно натрупване и неразпознаване на естеството на собствените емоции, чувствата престават да носят информация, тъй като вече амалгамирани, трудно биват диференцирани и разпознати. Всяка следваща фрустрация вече представлява недиференцирано натрупване на „негативна възбуда”. В зависимост от времетраенето, потока и интензитета на постъпващата емоционална информация, индивидуалните ресурси за адаптивно справяне се изчерпват и довеждат до развитие на стресова симптоматика. По-трайните последици при нормално функциониране биха могли да доведат не само до афективно отдръпване от околните, но и до недоверие, агресивно отреагиране и последващо чувство за вина спрямо тях – всяка изява представляваща затруднено реагиране на фрустрационния заряд. Клъстърът на тези последици се отнася и до слабата потребност от поддържане на ефективна комуникация, чувство за отчужденост, затруднения при междуличностните контакти, егоцентрично поведение и склонност към аутистична затвореност. Всички тези прояви са предиктори за развитие на стресови симптоми.Емоционалните ресурси на личността, емоционалната себерефлексия, способността „да мислим чувствата си” и чувствата на околните, както и по-нататъшното надграждане в емоционалните способности, са основата за адаптивно реагиране и управление на емоциите по градивен начин независимо от средата.  Mayer, J., Salovey, P. (1997). What is Emotional Intelligence?”In P. Salovery & D. J .Shyter (Eds.), Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence, New York: Basic Books.Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.Goleman, D. (1998). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 76, 93-102.

66Голман, Д. (2000). Емоционална интелигентност. КибеаPérez, J. C., Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2005). Measuring trait emotional intelligence. In R. Schulze & R. D. Roberts (Eds.), International Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. Cam-bridge, MA: Hogrefe & Huber.Petrides, K. V. (2010). Trait emotional intelligence theory. In Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 3, 136-139.Гитуни, М. (2003). Емоционалната интелигентност. “Просвета”Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2000). The subtlety of emotions. Cambridge, MIT Press.Ryback, D. (1998). Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work: Successful Leadership Is More than Just IQ, Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, MA.Perkins, D. (1994). Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence, The Free PressSternberg, R.J. (1996). Successful Intelligence, Simon - Schuster.Matthews, G., Zeidner, M., & Roberts, R. D. (2002). Emotional intelligence: Science and myth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Bobik, C., Conston, T., Greeson, C., Jedlicka, C., et al. (2001). Emotional intelligence and interpersonal relations. Journal of Social Psychology, 141(v. 4), 523–536.Salovey, P., & Grewal, D. (2005). The science of emotional intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 281–285.Brown, R. F., Schutte, N.S. (2006). Direct and indirect relationships between emotional intelligence and subjective fatigue in university students. Journal of Psychosomatic Re-search, 60, 585–593.Taylor, G. J. (2001). Low emotional intelligence and mental illness. In J. Ciarrochi, J.P. For-gas (Eds), Emotional intelligence in everyday life: A scientic enquiry, Taylor and Francis, 67–81.Ciarrochi, J., Deane, F.P., Anderson, S. (2002). Emotional intelligence moderates the rela-tionship between stress and mental health. Journal of Personality and individual dierenc-es, 32(2), 197-209.

67Martin J., (2007). Now the proof: Work stress does make people mentally ill. The New Zea-land Herald – News Website (www.nzherald.co.nz/health/ news/artical.)Choubey, A. K., Singh, S. K., & Pandey, R. (2009). Role of Emotional Intelligence in Stress and Health. Indian Journal of Social Science Researches, 6(1), 122-134.Маринов, И., Миткова, А., Бахнева, А. (2011). Бойните стресори и влиянието им върху ефективността на изпълнението на задачите на участниците в мисии извън страната В „Морски научен форум”, том 5. Изд. „Никола Й. Вапцаров“, Варна., 199-204.Marinov, I., K. Daskalov, А. Mitkova (2006). “Psychosocial factors, inuencing the eective-ness of duty performance and stress resistance among mission‘s participants”; 11th Balkan Military Medical Committee.Weisaeth, L., Mehlum, L., Mortensen, M. (1996). Peacekeeper stress: New and different? National Center for PTSD Clinical Quarterly, 6, стр.12-15.Litz, B.T., Orsillo, S.M., Friedman, M., Ehlich, P., Batres, A. (1997). Post-traumatic stress disorder associated with peacekeeping duty in Somalia for U.S. military personnel. Amer-ican Journal of Psychiatry, 178-184.Merbaum, M. Hefez. A. (1976). Some personality characteristics of soldiers exposed to extreme war stress. Journal of Consulting Clinical Psychology, 44, 1–6.Радославова, М., А. Величков. (2005). Методи за психодиагностика. Пандора Прим Кокошкарова, А. (1984). Психологично изследване на личността в клиничната практика. София.Мечков, К. (1995). Медицинска психология, Велико Търново.Божинова, Д. (1978). Особености на личността и на взаимоотношенията в половата двойка при пациенти с психогенно фиксиране на половите разстройства – психологични изследвания. Дисертация за присъждане на научна степен „Кандидат на медицинските науки”, Медицинска академия.Велкова, Д. (1998). Използване на въпросника за Личностова твърдост „РН” в армията. B Сборник от научни доклади и съобщения: Предизвикателствата на човешките отношения, Изд. МО, 186-192.

68Ирина Чонгарова-Арон, д-рПловдивски университет «Паисий Хилендарски»Център за езици и междукултурна комуникацияKingston University, London. Kingston Business School Abstract Resilience has been a very popular concept in the last three decades. In my work as a ther-apist, I follow a broad denition of individual resilience as the capacity of the individual to prepare for, recover from, and reintegrate in the face of adversity. In this paper, I bring a case study from my psychotherapy practice to look at the development of my patient’s emotional intelligence where her resilience was a resource in enhancing her life satisfac-tion and improving her quality of life. Ключови думи:Заглавието на този текст заимствах от пациентката ми Мис P., 45 годишна жена, която дойде при мен на психотерапия в една от Психологическите служби на британската Национална здравна система (NHS) в Лондон. Когато й предложих да ми разкаже за себе си, тя започна с думите: “Аз съм дървото, което никога не се огъва”. Mис P. беше жена с привлекателна външност, много успешна в професионалната си кариера, но разочарована и неудовлетворена от интимните си отношения с мъжете. В живота ѝ наскоро се беше появил човек, с когото тя се чувстваше добре и когото не искаше да загуби. Това беше повода да поиска психологическа помощ и в течение на 3 месеца тя идваше при мен веднъж седмично, винаги точна, винаги навреме.За да опише най-важното качество на своя характер Мис P. още при първата ни среща използва английската дума resilience, която няма еднословен еквивалент

69в българския език. В зависимост от контекста тя може да бъде преведена като устойчивост, издържливост, гъвкавост, адаптивност, твърдост, сила на характера... В някои български психологически изследвания този лингвистичен въпрос се решава чрез транслитерация като се въвеждат термините  (за черта на личността) и (за процеса) (Chervenkova et al., 2010).През последните три десетилетия понятието  привлече вниманието на изследователите в различни области - образование и възпитание, здравеопазване, психотерапия, социална и организационна психология… Говори се за резилиентността като индивидуална черта и като характеристика на организации и култури. Емпиричните изследвания на този конструкт подхождат към него от различни страни и изледват негови различни характеристики – генетични, епигенетични, демографични, културни, икономически и социални. (Soгwthwick et al., 2014).В моята работа като психотерапевт и като инструктор в тренинги по резилиентност за държавни служители във Великобритания, аз се фокусирам върху индивидуалната резилиентност. Индивидуалната резилиентност се дефинира като личностна черта или като способноста на индивида да се адаптира позитивно в рискови и кризисни ситуации (Liu, Wang & Lü 2013, Soгwthwick et al., 2014, Infurna & Luthar 2018). В моята практика използвам много широко определение на резилиентността, което е информирано от обучението ми по използване на съвременни технологии за биологична обратна връзка (биофийдбек) в HeartМath Institute. Дефиницията на ре-зилиентността като способност и включва не само реакцията на индивида в момент на криза, но и етапа на подготовка/тренинг за ефективна адаптация, а също така фа-зата на реинтеграция (Resilience Advantage 2014, 5). В този смисъл резилиентността може да бъде разглеждана като процес, в който личността взаимодейства със средата по специфичен начин, осигуряващ нейното оцеляване, в някои случаи развитие и израстване (Soгwthwick et al., 2014, 7). При определяне на резилиентността се присъединявам към онези изследователи, които избягват бинарен подход (наличие/отсъствие на резилиентност) и разглеждам резилиентността като континуум, който който може да присъства в различна степен в различни области на живота на индивида (Pietrzak & Southwick, 2011; Infurna & Luthar, 2018). Пример за това са хората, които се адаптират много успешно към стреса в работна или академична среда, но не съумяват да се адаптират добре в

70сферата на личните си отношения. Освен това, се разграничават и различни сфери на резилиентност – физическа, ментална, емоционална, духовна (Resilience advan-tage 2014, 7).Мис Р. беше доказала многократно, че умее да се справя в сложни ситуации, че не се предава и че не се огъва под напора на предизвикателствата в личния си и в професионалния си живот. Беше разбрала обаче, че тези й качества не можеха да й осигурят качеството на живот, за което тя вече мечтаеше. Какво и пречеше да съхранява отношенията си с мъжете?Когато попитах как са проявявали емоциите си към нея родителите и, тя отговори: “Ние сме англичани и не проявяваме емоците си”. В гласа и имаше нотка на гордост. Установихме, че тя има много малък набор от думи, с които да опише емоциите и усещанията си, че се затруднява да ги локализира в тялото си и не може освен гняв, тъга, радост, страх. Трудно й беше дори да признае, че изпитва страх – толкова привързана беше към идеята, че е безстрашната желязна лейди. Ситуациите на радост за нея бяха свързани с професионалната и среда, с успехи, с признанието на постиженията и от другите.Никак не беше лесно да открием контекст, в който Мис Р. си позволяваше да се  Спомням си усещанането си за пробив в нашата работа, когато открих колко свещен за нея беше ритуалът на пиенето на чай. Мис Р ставаше с половин час по-рано сутрин, за да може да запари любимия си чай, който пиеше ритуално в тишината на своята кухня. Помолих я да ми опише вкуса, цвета, температурата на чая. Докато говореше за този ритуал, тя се промени – лицето и се отпусна и олекна, на устните и се появи усмивка, тя се увлече да ми разказва за чашата, от която пиеше чай и за любимата чаена чашка от детството и. Имах чувството че дървото, което не се огъва, все пак отговори на повея на вятъра.В отношенията си с мъжете Мис Р.които беше наблюдавала в детството си. Майка й беше вземала важните за семейството решения самостоятелно и монолозите й за безполезността на мъжкия пол бяха дълбоко проникнали в съзнанието на Мис Р. Естествено, мъжете в живота й идваха най-вече за да потвърдят тази нейна представа и нейните очаквания.Открихме повторение на модела, в който Мис Р. поема инициативата в съвместните действия на двойката, след което изпитва неприязън и гняв, че трябва за всичко да се грижи сама, а мъжът е безполезен паразит, използвач и предател.

71Всеки път се беше разигравал един от двата възможни сценария, водещи до сходен резултат: мъжът постепенно губи търпение да изслушва тези обвинения, или Мис Р. губи търпение да изпълнява «мъжката» роля и двойката се разпада. За анализ на тази ситуация използвахме “драматичния триъгълник” на Карпман (Karpman 1968) - модел, в който се разграничават три основни роли на участниците в изграж-дането на деструктивни отношения – жертва, спасител и агрессор. В драматичния триъгълник, в който неизменно се беше оказвала Мис Р., тя не играеше ролята на жертва. В началния етап на отношенията тя беше «спасител», като се опитваше на научи мъжа, който не знае как да се справя с живота, а в последствие се превръщаше в «агресор», преследваше го и го в безполезност. Към момента на нашата среща Мис Р. беше забелязала повторението на този модел и беше готова  При всяка наша среща с Мис Р. ние разглеждахме  от ежедневните ѝ взаимоотношения с нейния партнор. Тя осъзнаваше затрудненията си да се довери на новия човек в живота и. Започна да споделя с него как се чувства, когато нещата не се случваха по начина, по който тя очакваше. Изслушваше го и започна да придобива по-ясна представа за неговите мотиви – рационални и емоционални - да действа по един или друг начин. На една от последните ни сесия Мис Р. сподели, че с партньора й планират първата си ваканция. Тя беше го помолила той да избере дестинацията и да не й казва, къде ще пътуват. Новото усещане за отпускане и доверие че нещата ще се случат по най-добрия начин я изпълваше с ведрина и топлина. Тук моята роля беше да й напомня, че процесът на това сближаване и осъзнаване има начало, но няма край.Понятието индивидуална резилиентност, дори при широката дефиниция, която приемам в своята работа, винаги включва реакцията на индивида на определен стимул/обект, който се възмприема като потенциално застрашава баланса на ин-дивида. В случая на Мис Р. беше необходимо да работим върху емоционалната ѝ осъзнатост, която не винаги е свързана със стимулите, постъпващи от външната среда. В този смисъл целта на нашата работа беше по-скоро  която включва способността да се осъзнават, използват и управляват емоциите – както своите, така и тези на другия.Работата ми с Мис Р. включваше    осъзнаването ѝ на това, какво чувства, уважението и интереса ѝ към

72собствения ѝ емоционален свят, обогатяване на емоционалния ѝ речник и умението и да говори за емоциите си с другите. Резилиентността като набор от лични ресурси се асоциира с емоционалната интелигентност като личностна черта (Di Fabio & Sa-klofske 2018, 143). Връзката между емоционалната интелигентност и резилиентност-та е предмет на изследвания, които показват интересна опосредстваност, при която емоционалната резилиентност и способността за саморегулация медиират емоци-оналната интелигентност и удовлетвореността от качеството на живота (Liu et al., 2013). В този смисъл, работата ми с Мис Р. се базираше на нейните налични психоло-гически ресурси (нейната ментална и физическа резилиентност), като ги развиваше в посока емоционална грамотност, емоционална резилиентност и интелигентност, за постигане на желания от нея резултат – повишаване на удовлетворението ѝ от живота чрез изграждане на здрави лични отношения.Този случай от моята частна практика, както и провежданите от мен обучения по развиване на резилиентността на служители в няколко държавни департамента в Лондон, разшириха моите представи за потенциала на последователната работа в областта на психотерапията, коучинга и обученията по емоционална резилиентност и емоционална интелигентност, както за превенцията и профилактиката на психологически проблеми, така и за промотирането на емоционална грамотност, психично здраве и по-високо качество на живота.Чонгарова-Арон, Ирина. Дървото, което никога не се огъва. За емоционалната устойчивост (резилиентност). Пулс. 14 ноември 2019. https://www.puls.bg/vzaimootnosheniia-c-32/drvoto-koeto-nikoga-ne-se-ogva-za-emotsionalnata-ustoichivost-rezilientnost-n-36249Chervenkova, L., Zsheliaskova-Koynova, Zs., & Misheva-Aleksova, Tz. (2010) Bulgarian adaptation of ЕR89 scale for measuring ego-resiliency (Block & Kremen, 1996). Psiholog-ichni izsledvania 2/2010. 165-176.Di Fabio, A., & Saklofske, D (2018). The contributions of personality and emotion-al intelligence to resiliency”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917306694 Infurna, F. J., & Luthar, S. S. (2018). Re-evaluating the notion that resilience is common-

73place: A review and distillation of directions for future research, practice, and policy. Clini-cal Psychology Review, 65, 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2018.07.003 Karpman, S. B. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulle-tin, 7, 39–43.Liu, Y., Wang, Zh., & Lü W. (2013). Resilience and aect balance as mediators between trait emotional intelligence and life satisfaction, Personality and Individual Dierences, 54 (7), 850-855. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.12.010 Pietrzak, R. H., & Southwick, S. M. (2011). Psychological resilience in OEF-OIF Veterans: Application of a novel classication approach and examination of demographic and psy-chosocial correlates. Journal of Aect Disorders, 133(3), 560-568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.04.028 Resilience Advantage Guidebook (2014). HeartMath Institute [Certied Trainer Instructor Notes]. Southwick, S. M., Bonanno, G. A., Masten, A. S., Panter-Brick, C., & Yehuda, R. (2014). Re-silience denitions, theory, and challenges: Interdisciplinary perspectives. European Jour-nal of Psychotraumatology, 5(1), 25338. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338

The Foundation for Developing Emotional Intelligence was established in January 2019 by Dr. Antonina Kardasheva, Ph.D. – The National Coordinator for Bulgaria in Emotional Intelligence at the International Society for Emotional Intelligence /ISEI/, New York, USA.The Foundation is rapidly growing and has a high reputation in Bulgaria and abroad!Our Mission is to encourage and support the development of theory and application of Emotional Intelligence in all social areas and professional practice all over the world!Collection 2024Foundation for DevelopingEmotional Intelligence Press