Nowadays, medical schools and institutions are paying close attention to students' and employees’ quality of life (QOL) and personality traits due to various challenges in this dynamic environment. There is a great deal of research investigating how these two components in a person change over time, and if changes in one component (such personality) cause changes in the other (like QOL). However, few investigated what caused the participants' personalities and quality of life to change. To date, many organizations and businesses placed a very important criterion for selection of their employee. Emotional intelligence (EI) assessment is one of the tools used. As a respond to this issue, this research has been done and thus this paper is focusing on the link between QOL and personality traits, as well as a prospective mediational impact of EI.
Importance of QOL
The stressful key characteristics of medical school can have an impact on medical students' physical and mental health, as well as their overall quality of life [1]. In fact, throughout their medical education, students are subject to academic pressure with the goal of obtaining a successful medical profession and coping with future uncertainty about medical practice and its related employment. Students may experience social, emotional, physical, and family issues, leading to negative repercussions on their academic performance and ability to study [2,3,4,5,6]. All these factors may contribute to lower quality of life among medical students [7]. It is, therefore, critical for medical schools and educators to understand students' QOL during their medical training [8]; research on QOL has the potential to enhance students' physical and mental health.
QOL is best defined as the overall well-being of individuals and societies, sketching out adverse and positive features of life [4]. QOL notices total life fulfillment when one's own life matches with an ideal standard level, including physical health, family, education, employment, wealth, religious beliefs, finance and the environment [3]. The importance of quality of life among medical students has been stressed since research has shown that it is related with an unhealthy lifestyle, mental health problems, academic failure, as well as having a detrimental influence on professional growth. Moreover, QOL is a multidimensional and relative concept influenced by time, place and individual values [4]. This highlights the significant interaction between physiological, behavioral, and emotional factors and several social and cultural factors such as religious beliefs, social networks involved in QOL, relative to each country. Actually, with regard to medical students, we were particularly concerned with the role of personality, and performance indicators such as academic results and clinical competence.
Evidence for a personality—QOL relation
Personality is known as the blend of behavior, emotion, motivation, and thought patterns that characterize an individual [9]. Researchers have suggested five measurements of personality, which are extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness to experience [10, 11]. The Big-Five Factor System has become a scientifically valuable paradigm in personality trait studies [12]. Extroversion refers to a person with high energy, sociable, with direct leadership roles, enthusiastic, assertive and with high measure of emotional expressiveness [13,14,15]. Conscientiousness is connected to a high degree of care, with goal-directed behavior, discipline, organization and precision [13,14,15]. Agreeableness is normally described by reliability, thoughtfulness, compassion and cooperativeness [13,14,15]. Neuroticism is regularly related to emotional insecurity, distress, moodiness, low adaptive capacity and bitterness [13,14,15]. Openness to experience is linked to innovativeness, wide scope of interest, inventive, impulsive and rational [13,14,15].
Personality traits, in reality, are features related to our motivational system's factory settings. In the absence of a significant impact from the surroundings, they determine what we are driven to accomplish [16]. Among the many possible variables that can be associated with QOL, researchers list personality traits. Indeed, a study of the research reveals that the relations between the Big Five personality traits and QOL are well established. It has been found that personality characteristics are good predictors of academic performance during medical school [17]. Furthermore, previous findings have denoted the vulnerability of certain personality traits to stress [18, 19] and poorer mental health [20]. Especially, medical students with pronounced levels of neuroticism were at expanded risk for depression [20] and suicidal ideation [21], suggesting that personality characteristics have a substantial impact on QOL.
The potential process involved—Why is EI connected to personality traits and QOL?
A growing body of research has begun to investigate student academic state of achievement, specifically among medical students, and research‐based on useful or harmful agents’ approaches to narrowing performance gaps, has always been one of the researcher’s education system challenges. In addition to the relationship between personality and susceptibility to stress, which has been demonstrated to influence the QOL of medical students and has implications for performance, much needs to be discovered about how QOL is directly connected to other personality traits, and if these links are impacted indirectly by various personal or societal circumstances.
Researchers have revealed that the subjective experience and behavior can interfere with the emotional capacity of each individual [22]. Using the logic described earlier, our study's goal was to investigate a putative mediational mechanism involved in this connection. Individuals with high EI are mindful of their own feelings, ready to control their emotions well from overpowering pressure, depression, anxiety, or anger [23,24,25,26]. They are likewise eager to have a decent comprehension of others' feelings and utilize this capacity to oversee and change their behavior when communicating with others [27]. This ability model of EI posits four related skills: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management [28]. In brief, the four domains connect with the ability to know, differentiate and understand one’s own emotions; to control emotions for providing one’s own development; perceiving and understanding others' feelings; and managing relationships, i.e. dealing with the emotions of others [29]. In Goleman’s point of view, EI is the most important factor to determine the success of individuals, which means that people who develop qualities of human relationships are most likely to succeed in their daily life [30]. Emotional abilities and social skills under the title of EI exhibit a strong predictor of educational success. Therefore, EI as a predictor of success has become the central focus of medical education [31].
A vast amount of research has recorded higher academic achievement due to positive association between trait EI and medical education [32]. Various studies have reported that EI is associated with social network efficiency [33], positive communications [34], and better adaptation [35]. Furthermore, evidence shows that EI influences improvement in clinical practice factors, such as increased empathy in medical consultation, interactions between doctor and patient, clinical performance and patient satisfaction [36, 37]. These facts suggest that EI plays a crucial role in many areas relevant to the abilities of future medical practitioners.
Since it promotes well-being outcomes [38], optimism and hope [39], we hypothesized that EI may act as a possible mediator between Big Five Model personality traits and QOL. In the section that follows, we try to offer the main rationale for the critical assumption of the temporal precedence in the mediational scheme [40].
The correlation between personality traits and EI is the first significant link in the potential mediatory relationship. On a conceptual level, McCrae drew attention to links between EI and aspects of the Big Five Model's dimensions [41]. Furthermore, certain investigations have revealed that both variables are most likely intertwined [33, 42, 43]. EI has been found to have a negative and substantial relationship with neuroticism, as well as a positive and significant relationship with extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness [39, 44,45,46,47]. According to these studies, whereas neuroticism and extraversion were the main personality predictors of EI, agreeableness and openness were relatively weak. In turn, while performing a multiple regression, Petrides et al. discovered that all Big Five personality traits contribute considerably to the prediction of EI [48].
The second crucial element in the mediatory relationship is the link between EI and QOL. According to research, EI correlates with a higher feeling of personal well-being [49]. Several studies demonstrate that EI is a key predictor of life outcomes, therefore individuals with greater EI are better at handling work situations, building deeper connections with coworkers, and feeling more pleased and fulfilled in their life [50].
The present study
Currently in the developed world, EI is increasingly made reference to in medicine. In Lebanon, this area is under research especially among the medical students in order to enhance a successful educational performance. The medical graduate is expected to be emotionally stable, empathetic to patients, good in counseling and having good leadership skills qualities [34]. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify factors associated with these special abilities and behaviors, since traditional tests used in medical admissions offer limited screening regarding these competences.
Actually, medicine is a highly demanding career that appears to leave many medical students at the risk of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout [51, 52]. Hence, these entities can significantly affect the QOL among medical students. During the past couple of years, students in Lebanon endured multiple stressful events ranging from economic instability and unemployment [53], to lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the Beirut Port explosion [54]. Fares et al. rated stress among preclinical students at 62% and showed that 75% of Lebanese medical students suffered from burnout [55]. Obviously, getting into medical school has an effect on a student’s QOL because adaptation and lifestyle changes are needed. Taken together, specific Big-Five personality traits and EI facets may be both linked to medical student’s QOL [56]. In fact, researchers' theoretical insights and statistical findings have postulated that EI contributes to the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships by utilizing the capacity to comprehend the feelings of others and convey to relate to them [57]. As a result, it can be presumed that personality domains (extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) can possibly lead to higher QOL when people experience satisfaction, have the ability to self-monitor in social situations, and understand the emotions and behaviors of others. However, to our knowledge, no studies have been done on the concurrent and prospective relationship between QOL-related personality traits and EI in Lebanese medical students. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the association between personality traits and QOL, taking into consideration the mediating role of EI, according to the theoretical framework in Fig. 1.