Inteligência emocional e sua relação com o vício em redes sociais e sintomas depressivos

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI), that is, the ability to analyze emotions and feelings in ourselves and others, as well as to use them to guide actions and thoughts according to the environment, is an important psychological construct for human beings and their relationships, and has been studied with various variables in recent years, such as depression and social media addiction. In this sense, the objective of this study was to investigate the moderating effect of EI on the relationship between depression and social media addiction, as well as the correlations between these variables. To this end, 196 adults, aged 18 to 60 years (M = 32.2), who used at least one social media platform, participated in the research. Participants were invited to complete an online form consisting of a sociodemographic characterization questionnaire and three self-report instruments: the Emotional Competencies Inventory 3.0 (ICE-R) (Bueno et al., 2015), the DSM-5 Depression Symptom Scale, Level 2 (2014), and the adapted and validated version by Fonseca et al. (2018) of the Social Network Addiction Questionnaire (CARS) (Mayaute & Blas, 2014). The variable depression correlated negatively and significantly with the 6 factors of the ICE-R and positively with social network addiction. Social media addiction was significantly and negatively correlated with the facets “Regulation of High-Power Emotions in Self” (⍴ = -0.194**), “General Factor” (⍴ = -0.251**), and “Regulation of Low-Power Emotions in Self” (⍴ = -0.438**) of the ICE-R. No moderating effect of EI was found on the correlation between social media addiction and depression.