In plain language
Researchers have invented many different questionnaires to measure “social and emotional competence” — skills like solving problems effectively, identifying and describing your emotions, controlling impulses and aggression, and not ruminating. Because these measures often correlate with one another, an awkward question arises: are they largely redundant, all tapping the same thing? This study set out to test whether each skill adds something unique to predicting mental and social health.
Three hundred and thirty-one university students completed an anonymous survey battery covering stressful life events, a wide range of social and emotional competencies (social problem solving, alexithymia, emotional control, and emotional awareness), and multiple indicators of well-being, including depression, anxiety, hopelessness, suicidal thinking, life satisfaction, and social support. The analyses tested whether each competence predicted health outcomes after controlling for stressful events and for all the other competencies.
Almost every skill earned its keep: all measures except “minimising emotions” predicted unique variance in health. Crucially, different skills mattered for different outcomes — effective problem orientation was the strongest and most pervasive predictor of mental health, difficulty describing emotions was especially tied to poor social support and depression, rumination to depression, stress, and anxiety, and poor impulse control to suicidal thinking under stress. The results suggest that social and emotional learning programs should not treat these skills as interchangeable, but should target the specific competencies that matter for the outcomes they aim to improve.
Key findings
- All social and emotional competence measures except “minimising emotions” showed incremental validity, predicting psychological health beyond stressful events and beyond the other competence measures.
- Effective problem orientation had the most pervasive effect, relating to all mental health measures with the largest effect sizes — though it did not predict social health.
- Difficulty describing emotions was linked to higher depression and hopelessness, lower life satisfaction, and poorer social support — a stronger social effect than problem orientation.
- Rumination predicted depression, stress, anxiety, and lower satisfaction with social support, even after controlling for all other competencies.
- Low benign (impulse) control was one of only two variables to predict suicidal thoughts: under high stress, impulsive people were more likely to think about suicide.
- The optimal set of predictors differed by outcome, and effects held after controlling for stressful events and common method variance, with measures administered on different days.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., Scott, G., Deane, F. P., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2003). Relations between social and emotional competence and mental health: A construct validation study. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 1947–1963. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00043-6
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2003relations,
title = {Relations between social and emotional competence and mental health: a construct validation study},
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Scott, Greg and Deane, Frank P. and Heaven, Patrick C. L.},
journal = {Personality and Individual Differences},
year = {2003},
volume = {35},
pages = {1947--1963},
doi = {10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00043-6}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.