Community Violence and Psychological Adjustment in Youth: Role of Emotional-Social Intelligence

Abstract

The current study examined the potential mechanism of emotional-social intelligence in the relation between exposure to community violence (CV) and psychological adjustment in ethnic minority youth. Using responses from 114 low-income youth ages 11 to 15 years old, results indicated that component parts of emotionality (i.e., awareness of one's feelings, recognition of others' feelings, managing negative emotions, and flexible problem-solving) were stronger predictors for youth adjustment (i.e., internalizing & externalizing symptoms & adaptive behaviors) than exposure to CV alone. Additionally, youths' abilities to manage negative emotions significantly mediated all three indicators of adjustment. The mediational role of stress management in the relation between exposure to CV and psychological adjustment and areas for future research are discussed.

Emotional intelligence and cognitive skills protecting mental health from stress and violence among Ghanaian youth

“…Our findings thus contradict previous research that evidenced the role of high emotional intelligence (Asad et al, 2018;Ciarrochi et al, 2002) and high cognitive skills (Riglin et al, 2016;McMahon et al, 2013) in protecting mental health from social adversity, stress and violence. Instead our findings are similar to some studies among African American adolescents exposed to socio-economic adversity and community and gang violence (Day et al, 2005;Stokes and Jackson, 2014), which did not find a protective function of high EI for mental health. Also similarly to ours, the results by Bellair and McNulty (2010) show that high cognitive skills did not protect adolescents'mental health from negative impact of severe poverty, stress and community violence.…”

“…Also similarly to ours, the results by Bellair and McNulty (2010) show that high cognitive skills did not protect adolescents'mental health from negative impact of severe poverty, stress and community violence. Similar to Stokes and Jackson (2014), our results showed that good cognitive skills were associated with low mental health problems, but only when adolescents were exposed to low level of violence. Severe violent experiences thus neutralized the potential beneficial effect of cognitive resources on mental health.…”

“…One reason given to the lack of protective power of EI in mental helth is that emotional intelligence is not independent from hardsips, especially in conditions of severe community violence (Stokes and Jackson, 2014). Indeed, in our sample, stressful life-events correlated negatively with both EI and CS, and violent experiences negatively with CS.…”

“…The result is counter-intuitive, as violence is usually highly traumatic and burdening to adolescents (Dubow et al, 2009). On other hand, chronic everyday stress, such as serious financial problems in the family, conflicts in close relationships or legal problems can be harmful, especially when accumulating (Day et al, 2005;Stokes and Jackson, 2014). One explanation for why encountering violence did not form a mental helth risk may be that these experiences were mostly one-time events among the Ghanain participants, and not an inherent character in their environment.…”

“…A longitudinal Canadian established that also among students with high EI daily hassles negatively impacted mental health, indicated by high burnout and psychological distress and low wellbeing (Day et al, 2005). A North-American study found that emotional-social intelligence could not improve psychological adjustment among adolescents living in low-income and violent neighbourhoods (Stokes and Jackson, 2014). The authors explained the inefficiency of emotional-social intelligence by describing how experiences of dreadful violence in community, such as shooting and killing, disrupted adolescents' vital coping resources and thus also neutralizing the protective potentials of EI.…”