A study by Limonero and colleagues examined the association between self-reported perceived emotional intelligence (PEI) using an abbreviated version of the Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS), a measure designed to assess an individual's ability to perceive, understand and manage emotion in university students who frequently smoked marijuana compared to non-smoking students (Limonero et al., 2006). The authors report that the marijuana smoking students scored significantly lower on emotional repair, a measure of the ability to regulate and modulate one’s emotions or feelings relative to the non-smokers, and that this measure was inversely correlated with marijuana use. No differences were detected between the groups on the ability to think about one’s feelings (termed “attention”) or in the ability to discriminate among moods or emotions (termed “clarity”). These findings provide further evidence that marijuana smoking individuals may have difficulty regulating or controlling their emotions, and may not process affective or emotional stimuli in the same way as those who do not smoke.
