An overview of psychological well-being and trait Emotional Intelligence of adolescents: Is there a place for creativity?

Psychological well-being of adolescents not only means the absence of psychopathology, but also being content with life, experiencing a wide range of emotions, and having balanced bio-psycho-social functioning. Creativity is considered a resource having a lifelong significant impact on health and well-being as well. Moreover, studies have shown that trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) promotes psychological well-being via several pathways. Regarding the link between trait EI and creativity, it has been emphasized that emotional aspects of personality should be explored in creativity research. However, study on these relationships with adolescent samples is scarce. The present groundwork aims to systematically explore the literature on the protective role of trait EI in adolescent psychological well-being and then later analyse the relationship between trait EI and creativity in adolescence. As operationalization is crucial for any EI model, we focused on studies using the adolescent forms of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, which provides a comprehensive analysis of trait EI factors: Wellbeing, Self-control, Sociability and Emotionality. Results from 27 systematically reviewed studies relate to five different areas: gender differences, psychological constructs, parental relations, scholastic constructs and practice-oriented topics. Although the prevalence use of cross-sectional designs limits the generalisation of results, the wide coverage of topics in the reviewed literature gives insight on the dynamics between trait EI and adolescent well-being. The research project's next step will be to investigate the association between trait EI and creativity as it may provide insight on how trait EI can help creative problem-solving skills of adolescents to maintain their psychological well-being.