Emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility and psychological symptoms in pre-service teachers

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility and psychological symptoms in pre-service teachers. The study included 414 pre-service teachers at the Faculty of Education, Mersin University, Turkey.  Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility showed significant negative correlation with anxiety and depression. In addition, evaluation of emotions, which is one of the dimensions of emotional intelligence, was the strongest predictor of psychological symptoms.   Key words: Emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility, psychological symptoms