**1. Introduction**

There is a growing interest in investigating constructs framed within Positive Psychology as alternative solutions to promote mental health. Positive Psychology is an approach based on human strengths. This paradigm includes constructs such as emotional intelligence, resilience, self-esteem, subjective wellbeing, and optimism. Our study provides evidence about the predictive value of emotional intelligence, resilience, and self-esteem in life satisfaction in the Peruvian context. There is research on these variables in Europe and the USA; however, there is not enough evidence on how these variables predict satisfaction with life in the Peruvian and Latin American contexts.

Peru has its idiosyncrasies marked by maleness, a patriarchal culture, with high rates of family violence and violence against women, discrimination, and racism among other psychosocial problems. Therefore, it is important to investigate factors that could contribute to an increase psychological well-being in Peru.

#### *1.1. Emotional Intelligence (EI)*

EI, according to the Wong and Law model [1], uses Mayer and Salovey's [2] conceptualization but also incorporates Gross's model of emotional regulation [3]. EI is the ability to perceive, understand, and regulate one's emotions and others [4–6]. Wong and

**Citation:** Vilca-Pareja, V.; Luque Ruiz de Somocurcio, A.; Delgado-Morales, R.; Medina Zeballos, L. Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Satisfaction with Life in University Students. *IJERPH* **2022**, *19*, 16548. https://

doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416548

Academic Editors: V. K. Kumar and Jasmin Tahmaseb-McConatha

Received: 21 September 2022 Accepted: 6 December 2022 Published: 9 December 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Law [1] specify that EI is composed of four dimensions: (a) the ability to appraise and express emotions in self; (b) the ability to appraise and recognize emotion in others; (c) the ability to regulate one's own emotions, which allows faster recovery from psychological discomfort; and (d) the use of emotion to facilitate performance, which is the ability of individuals to use their emotions to orient themselves towards constructive activities and personal performance.

We found two models developed for the EI: a model that conceives EI as a personality trait [7], and another that conceptualizes it as a capacity [2]. The latter is defined as the cognitive ability to process emotional information to resolve conflicts adaptively [8], while for Petrides [9], the Trait Emotional Intelligence (Trait EI) refers to people's perceptions of their emotional abilities and is located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies.

EI is considered to moderate mental health's adverse effects [10,11]. A higher EI is associated with greater satisfaction, job success [12,13], and better health [14]. EI correlates positively with self-efficacy in university students [15–17]. In addition, people with higher EI possess more developed social skills, are prosocial, less conflictive, and are better at coping with emotional difficulties [11,18]; people with a low level of EI are more likely to experience interpersonal difficulties and significant psychological problems [19].
