Emotional Intelligence May Build Career Success Through Adaptability and Proactive Behavior

Working professionals with higher emotional intelligence may go on to report greater career satisfaction, and a new longitudinal study suggests the route runs through two intermediate steps: the capacity to adapt to career demands and the willingness to take proactive action. The research, published in BMC Psychology, tracked 315 working professionals over three survey waves spaced three months apart.

Drawing on Career Construction Theory, the authors tested whether emotional intelligence operates as an internal resource that fuels later career outcomes. Using path analysis within a cross-lagged panel design, they examined directional relationships while statistically controlling for the temporal stability of each variable and for demographic factors, a design choice intended to address the possibility that associations merely reflect pre-existing differences.

The results showed that emotional intelligence measured at the first wave significantly predicted career adaptability at the second wave. Career adaptability, in turn, was positively associated with proactive career behaviors, which ultimately predicted higher subjective career success at the third wave. In other words, the data fit a serial sequence rather than a simple direct link.

The hypothesized serial mediation pathway was statistically significant (β = 0.010, p < .01), indicating a small but reliable indirect effect that persisted after the stability and demographic controls were taken into account. The authors interpret this as longitudinal evidence that internal emotional resources form a foundation for adaptive capacities and proactive actions that are essential for long-term career satisfaction.

Because subjective career success was measured by self-report, the findings concern perceived career satisfaction rather than objective indicators such as salary or promotion. The three-month intervals support the proposed temporal ordering, but the study cannot establish causation with certainty, and the indirect effect size was modest. The sample consisted of working professionals, so generalization to other populations remains an open question. Even so, the study adds unusually rigorous longitudinal support for a chain long proposed in career theory, linking how people understand and manage emotions to how flexibly and actively they steer their working lives.

Subject of Research: A longitudinal three-wave study of the serial mediation pathway from emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors

Article Title: A three-wave serial mediation model: linking emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors

Article References: Doğanülkü, H. A., & Duru, H. (2026). A three-wave serial mediation model: linking emotional intelligence to subjective career success via career adaptability and proactive behaviors. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05770-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05770-1

Keywords: emotional intelligence, career adaptability, proactive behaviors, subjective career success, Career Construction Theory, serial mediation, longitudinal study, cross-lagged panel design, BMC Psychology, occupational psychology, three-wave, serial