Perceived emotional intelligence and its relation to tobacco and cannabis use among university students

Résumé 0

"The aim of this work has been to analyse the role of Perceived Emotional Intelligence (PEI) in the useof tobacco and cannabis in 133 psychology undergraduates (114 women and 19 men), all aged between18 and 27, with a mean age of 21.52 yr. (SD= 5.42). PEI was assessed using an abbreviated version ofthe Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS), developed by Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey and Palfai(1995) and adapted into Spanish by Fernández-Berrocal, Extremera, and Ramos (2004). The TMMSassesses an individual’s ability to perceive, understand and manage emotion. The principal results obtainedpoint to the fact that the students who consume tobacco or cannabis present lower levels of theRepair component of the TMMS and are those who started consuming tobacco or cannabis at an earlierage. On the other hand, Emotional Clarity appears to be related to the occasional consumption ofcannabis, in that the students attaining high scores were those who consumed less. The EmotionalAttention component of the TMMS is not involved in the consumption of these substances. These preliminaryfindings indicate the existing relationship between some components of the TMMS and theconsumption of tobacco or cannabis. Nevertheless, we need to further investigate the differing implicationsof each one of the PEI components in the use of these substances."