We have assumed that pre-school teachers, who are emotionally more competent, empathic and imaginative, probably experience less stress at work. To check this basic hypothesis, we tested the possible stress anticipation of pre-school teachers in terms of dimensions of empathy, imagination, and emotional competence. We questioned all the kindergarten teachers in Kindergarten “Zvončic” and Kindergarten “Radost” in Zagreb, and Kindergarten “Sisak Novi“ in Sisak (N = 102), applying stress measuring instruments in order to test stress in pre-school teachers, a questionnaire of empathy and imagination, and emotional competence. We found that there was a statistically significant ability of teachers to predict the overall stress based on empathy and imagination. The result on the scale of empathy is a good predictor of stress. However, no significant opportunity to predict specific variables of general stress on the basis of empathy and imagination has been found, neither the ability to predict the overall stress of pre-school teachers based on dimensions of emotional competence. The guidelines for future research have been given.
