Effects of emotional intelligence and self-leadership on students’ coping with stress

We examined the impacts of emotional intelligence and self-leadership on coping with stress, and assessing the mediating roles that positive affect and self-efficacy play in this process. Participants were 575 students at 2 Chinese universities, who completed measures of coping with stress, self-leadership, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, and positive affect. The structural equation model analysis results indicated that self-efficacy fully mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and active coping, as we had predicted. Further, self-leadership had a direct effect on active coping. However, positive affect and self-efficacy did not mediate the relationship between self-leadership and coping with stress. Implications are discussed in terms of theoretical contributions and interventions for coping with stress.