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The main aims of this study were to examine the differences in the Emotional Intelligence (EI), the emotional domain of social cognition (SC), between euthymic patients with bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy controls (HC) and to evaluate the contribution of sociodemographic, clinical, and neuropsychological variables to EI.

We recruited 202 patients with BD and 50 HC. EI was evaluated using the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). The sociodemographic, clinical, and neurocognitive variables that showed a significant association with EI were entered into hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

BD patients obtained significantly lower scores compared to HC in the Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EIQ) and in the Understanding Emotions branch score. The best fitting model for the variables associated with EI in the patients group was a linear combination …