Bullying in High School Youth: Relationships with Trait Emotional Intelligence

Although previous research has found trait emotional intelligence (TEI) to be a moderate predictor of bullying behaviors in adolescents, this work has limited generalizability. The current study is the first to use a multidimensional approach to both TEI and bullying behaviors when looking at their relationship in high school students. The study employed two samples: 1,517 adolescents from three high schools in central Ontario, Canada and a subset of 35 bullies and 35 non-bullies from another school in the same region. Participants in both samples completed the Youth Version of the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQi:YV). In addition, the first sample completed the Bully-Victim Questionnaire, which measures four types of bullying behavior: social, physical, verbal, and electronic. TEI was found to be a significant negative predictor for all types of bullying behaviors. In addition, being a male adolescent and having low interpersonal and stress management scores were the strongest predictors of bullying behaviors. Overall, bullies were found to have significantly lower TEI scores across all dimensions. Based on the findings, TEI should be considered as an addition to current anti-bullying programing.