The research concerned the determinants of social competencies, which are significant indicators of the quality of interpersonal relations. The aim of the study was to verify the connection between social competencies and temperamental traits. The respondent group included 220 university students of different faculties aged 19-24. Social competencies were measured with the use of a Social Competencies Questionnaire by Anna Matczak, while temperamental traits were measured with The Formal Characteristics of Behaviour-Temperament Inventory, by Bogdan Zawadzki and Jan Strelau. The research (...) proved that activity, emotional reactivity and sensory sensitivity are significant predictors of social competencies. The predictive value of these traits differs depending on the kind of measured competency. (shrink)

Traditionally, most of the research on occupational burnout has focused on organizational stressors, such as workload and time pressure, and has overlooked the emotional nature of customer service work and its effect on burnout. This study was designed to examine the effects of individuals’ affective traits and affective states on burnout. The main hypothesis of this study was that emotional intelligence acts as a moderator in the relationship between negative emotions felt by employees during their interactions with clients and emotional (...) exhaustion. A total of 137 service sector employees rated the extent to which they felt four positive emotions and four negative emotions while interacting with clients. The results indicated that negative affectivity was significantly associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion, whereas high positive affectivity showed the reverse pattern. It was also observed that employees who declared greater intensity of negative emotions reported more symptoms of emotional exhaustion. However, as predicted, this effect was observed only among employees who were low in the trait of emotional intelligence. Negative emotions and emotional exhaustion were unrelated among employees who were high in trait emotional intelligence. (shrink)