Inteligencia emocional, ansiedad y control atencional

Abstract

Our study aimed to investigate whether the Emotional Intelligence (EI) might mediate the relation between anxiety and attentional functioning. Participants with high vs. low traitanxiety carried out a task to measure the functioning of the attentional networks (orienting, alerting, and executive control) and filled out the TMMS-48 questionnaire. Results showed greater interference (reduced control) in the high trait-anxiety group. Furthermore, the Attention factor of the TMMS was related with the orienting network, whereas the cognitive control depended on the Clarity and Repair factors. A suitable profile of EI (i.e., average scores in Attention and high in Clarity and Repair) lead to an improvement in cognitive control and performance in the attentional task. High trait-anxiety participants with this profile not showed deficit in the control, and they had similar performance to low anxiety group. This pattern of data leads us to conclude that EI might be a mediator factor mitigating the negative effects of the anxiety on attention.