Relação entre inteligência emocional e estilos parentais no Brasil

Abstract

During childhood, contact with caregivers is essential for children's development, and this caregiving process is characterized as parenting. The way these relationships occur can be called parenting styles (PS), which are classified into three groups: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. PS are responsible for developing various skills in children, including Emotional Intelligence (EI). In turn, EI is the ability to perceive, understand, and regulate emotions in order to promote emotional and intellectual growth. This is crucial for children and can be mediated through PS. In Brazil, there is no research linking these two constructs. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare the emotional intelligence of groups of adult children who perceived themselves to have been raised with each of the parenting styles. Furthermore, the relationship between the two constructs, EI and PS, was verified. This was done by recruiting 206 participants aged between 18 and 40 years (M=24.49; SD=5.1), of both sexes (79.6% women), literate, and raised by a guardian over 18 years of age. Participants answered a socioeconomic profile questionnaire and two inventories: PAQ, which assessed parenting styles through peer-report; and ICE 3.0, which analyzed participants' emotional competencies through self-report. The present study found that the authoritarian (M=33.85) and authoritative (M=29.09) parenting styles were the most perceived by the sample, and permissive was the least indicated (M=20.72). Regarding EI, the authoritative style had the highest predominant mean. In the correlations, the authoritative factor correlated positively with the facets of Regulation (r=0.298), General Factor (r=0.267) and Perception (r=0.130). The authoritarian factor had a positive correlation with Perception (r=0.44), but a negative correlation with Regulation (r=-0.203) and General Factor (r=-0.101), and the permissive factor did not present a correlation with any facet.