Assessment of Social and Emotional Competencies and Coping in Offenders

CRESPI MELINA

New York

Congreso; 4th International Congress on Emotional Intelligence (ICEI); 2013

International Society for Emotional Intelligence

The concept of social and emotional competencies can be defined as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes necessary to understand, express and appropriately regulate emotional phenomena and handled properly in relationships (Bisquerra & Pérez, 2007). Regarding the problem of delinquency previous research indicate that social and emotional competencies have an important role in the initiation and maintenance of criminal behavior. Thus, many of the programs for the prevention of recidivism are directed to training different socio-emotional competencies such as empathy, emotion regulation, self-efficacy, problem solving and the appropriate management of interpersonal relationships (Garrido, 2005). Current researches have focused on socio-emotional competencies as they can help in coping with stressful situations, encouraging the adoption of healthy behaviors. The evidence accumulated so far shows that specific competencies are associated with active coping strategies based on reflection and problem solving while others are associated with predominantly avoidant coping (Smith, 2006). The aim of this study is to analyze Socio-emotional competencies in a sample of adult offenders in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina and the existence of significant associations between them and coping responses implemented. A descriptive-correlational study with the participation of 52 offenders between 18 and 45 years of age. Assessment instruments administered were: Socio-demographic Interview (Crespi, 2011), Inventory of Socio-emotional Competencies (ICSE-Mikulic, 2013) and the Coping Responses Inventory (CRI - Moos, 1994, Adaptation Argentina, Mikulic, 1998). The results have a correspondence with previous research in this area, revealing a low level of socio-emotional competencies in many of the participants, and significant associations with avoidant coping responses. Based on these results, we discuss the important role that socio-emotional competencies have in programs for prevention and treatment of delinquency.