The main goal of our research was to investigate whether the ability of emotional understanding can predict students’ school achievement over and above fluid intelligence and the Big Five personality factors. A sample of 493 pupils (45% girls) participated in this study (Mage = 12.61, SD = 1.12). According to our results, girls were slightly better than boys in understanding emotions. Girls also had a slightly higher GPA than boys, and reported engaging in more altruistic and prosocial behavior than boys. As expected, boys reported more aggressive behaviors than girls. Understanding emotions had a weak but significant effect on the prediction of aggressive behavior. It also accounted for an additional 5% (for boys) and 9% (for girls) of the variance of GPA, after controlling for fluid intelligence and personality factors. A better understanding of emotions is important for academic achievement, as well as for well-being and adjustment in the educational environment

Young adults in the United States, Croatia, and China described personal episodes of times when they felt especially good or bad about themselves. These self-esteem memories were either recent (episodes that occurred during the previous 4 weeks) or remote (episodes that occurred between the ages of 10 and 15). Systematic content differences between memories of positive and negative self-worth were apparent primarily for remote rather than for recent memories. Across cultures, long-lasting positive memories frequently represented achievement themes, whereas negative memories frequently represented social themes. Links between achievement success and positive self-regard, and between social distress and negative self-regard, are explained using theories of self-esteem and autobiographical memory.

The aim of the study is to examine the moderating role of sports performance in the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and stress coping strategies. In a sample of 171 elite and 169 non-elite athletes, EI was found to be related to task-oriented strategies, and completely unrelated to emotion-oriented strategies. Sport performance moderates the relationship between managing and regulating emotions and using avoidant coping strategies, in a way that non-elite athletes with higher scores on this EI subscale are more likely to use distraction-oriented coping.

320 Croatian female students ( M = 20.4 yr.) were recruited to examine the validity and reliability of figural scales using different numbers of stimuli (3, 5, 7, and 9) and different serial presentation (serial and nonserial order). A two-way analysis of variance (4 numbers × 2 orders of stimuli) was performed on ratings of current self-size and ideal size as dependent variables. Analysis indicated a significant main effect of number of stimuli. This, together with post hoc tests indicated that ratings were significantly different for a scale of three figures from scales of more figures, which in turn did not differ among themselves. Main effects of order of stimuli, as well as the interaction, were not significant. The results support the hypothesis that the optimal number of figures on a scale is seven plus (or minus) two.

Emotional intelligence (EI) and its measures have been widespread across several countries and cultures and the need for valid and robust measures that could expand research on international settings is on the current agenda. This study aimed to assess the measurement invariance of a widely used self-report EI measure, Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ), in two cultural contexts (Portugal vs. Croatia). The ESCQ, a 42-item self-report EI scale which comprises three dimensions – Perceive and Understand Emotion, Express and Label Emotion and Manage and Regulate Emotion - was administered to 1,188 Portuguese and Croatian secondary students. The results showed that the ESCQ had satisfactory reliability and the three-factor structure was replicated on both country samples. Configural (χ²= 308.71,df =220,p< .01; RMSEA = .030, CFI = .956, TLI = .948) and partial metric (Δχ²= 9.102, Δdf =10,p= .522; ΔCFI = −.01, ΔRMSEA = .002) and scalar (Δχ²= 15.290, Δdf =21,p= .083; ΔCFI = .001, ΔRMSEA = .006) invariances were supported across groups. This EI measure invariance cross-cultural study highlighted cultural particularities related to emotional competence in Portugal and Croatia contexts and contributed to bring awareness to the validity of cross-cultural studies in the emotional abilities field.