Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Educational ... - Core

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 69 (2012) 1270 – 1275

International Conference on Education and Educational Psychology (ICEEPSY 2012)

Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Educational Achievement Lotfi Kashani, FaΎ., Lotfi Azimi, Ab., & Vaziri, Shc a

c

Department of clinical Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran b Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Tehran South branch Department of clinical Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran

Abstract Problem Statement: Achievement encompasses student ability and performance, it as the quality and quantity of a student's work, is multidimensional and strongly related to human cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development. In the beginning, psychologists focused on cognitive constructs but, researchers recognized that there are other non-cognitive aspects of intelligence such as emotional intelligence. In this study we want to see whether there is a relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement or not?

Purpose of Study: The research purpose is to look into the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. we want to know whether we should incorporate emotional intelligence in school programs. Research Methods: In a correlation study, a sample of 100 individuals was selected using the opportunity or convenience sampling among the students of Islamic Azad University, Tehran South branch and were tested with emotional intelligence questionnaires (Bradberry & Greaves, 2003). Findings: Results indicated that there’s no significant association between emotional intelligence and the students’ end-of-the-term and diploma degrees. Conclusions: In our research no significant relation was found between emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management) and academic achievement. Moreover, the strong relationship between diploma and university degrees was observed that indicates that academic success is significantly correlated to IQ and can be a reliable predictor of educational achievement. Our findings here do not prove any significant association between emotional intelligence and diploma and university degree and we conclude that it can’t be a reliable predictor of educational achievement. © 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Selection and/or peer-review under of responsibility Dr. Zafer Research Bekirogullari of Cognitive – Selection and peer-review underLtd. responsibility of Dr. Zafer Bekirogullari Cognitive – of Counselling, & Conference Counselling, Research & Conference Services C-crcs. Services C-crcs. Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Academic Achievement

Introduction Emotional intelligence has received an intense amount of attention in research circles during the last decade and many issues and variables have been attributed to that and many like Goleman attempted to define emotional intelligence as significant and important as IQ in predicting success in life. Empathy is a particularly important aspect of emotional intelligence, and researchers have known for years that it contributes to occupational success. Such announcements were largely expanded and finally Goleman claimed in 1998 that emotional intelligence * Corresponding author. Tel.: +989123009784 1877-0428 © 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Dr. Zafer Bekirogullari of Cognitive – Counselling, Research & Conference Services C-crcs. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.12.061

Lotfi Kashani, F et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 69 (2012) 1270 – 1275

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doubles IQ and other technical skills in importance. Salovey (2002) believes that conception of emotional intelligence strives to define emotional intelligence within the confines of the standard criteria for a new intelligence. Following their continuing research, their initial definition of emotional intelligence was revised to the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions to promote personal growth. The ability-based model views emotions as useful sources of information that help one to make sense of and navigate the social environment. Goleman holds that emotional intelligence is another aspect of human intelligence that includes awareness of emotions and using it to make appropriate decisions in life and the ability to endure psychological trauma and mental disorders. According to Heins emotional intelligence includes four types of abilities: Perceiving emotionsthe ability to detect and decipher emotions in faces, pictures, voices, and cultural artifacts-including the ability to identify one's own emotions. Perceiving emotions represents a basic aspect of emotional intelligence, as it makes all other processing of emotional information possible. Using emotions: the ability to harness emotions to facilitate various cognitive activities, such as thinking and problem solving. The emotionally intelligent person can capitalize fully upon his or her changing moods in order to best fit the task at hand. Understanding emotions: the ability to comprehend emotion language and to appreciate complicated relationships among emotions. For example, understanding emotions encompasses the ability to be sensitive to slight variations between emotions, and the ability to recognize and describe how emotions evolve over time. Managing emotions: the ability to regulate emotions in both ourselves and in others. Therefore, the emotionally intelligent person can harness emotions, even negative ones, and manage them to achieve intended goals. Some experts believe that intelligence and academic talents do not provide necessary skills to benefit from desired opportunities. (Goleman, 1995). Researches indicate that social and cognitive competences have great impact on that (Eisenberg, Febes & Guthrie, 2000; Halberstadt, Denham & Dunsmore, 2001). These factors can affect the identification of emotions, the ability to identify with another's feelings and empathize (Mayer, Di Paolo & Salovey, 1990); social agreement (Salovey, Mayer and Caruso, 2002) and satisfaction with life (Palmer, Donaldson and Stough). The first use of the term emotional intelligence is usually attributed to Wayne Payne's doctoral thesis, A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence from 1985followed by Salovey and Mayer (1990), and Daniel Goleman (1995). The distinction between trait emotional intelligence and ability emotional intelligence was introduced in 2000. Bar-On defines emotional intelligence as being concerned with effectively understanding oneself and others, relating well to people, and adapting to and coping with the immediate surroundings to be more successful in dealing with environmental demands. Bar-On posits that emotional intelligence develops over time and that it can be improved through training, programming, and therapy. Bar-On hypothesizes that those individuals with higher than average EQs are in general more successful in meeting environmental demands and pressures. He also notes that a deficiency in emotional intelligence can mean a lack of success and the existence of emotional problems. Problems in coping with one's environment are thought, by Bar-On, to be especially common among those individuals lacking in the subscales of reality testing, problem solving, stress tolerance, and impulse control. In general, Bar-On considers emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence to contribute equally to a person's general intelligence, which then offers an indication of one's potential to succeed in life. Strenberg (1998) holds that it would be absurd to suggest that cognitive ability is irrelevant to success in science. One needs a relatively high level of such ability merely to get admitted to a graduate science program at a school. Once you are admitted, however, what matters in terms of how you are compared to your peers has less to do with IQ differences and more to do with social and emotional factors. According to him intelligence is bound to be goal-oriented, and has got to employ an effective way of processing information, intelligence is a social and cultural phenomenon and a behavior which is considered adaptive in one culture might be considered maladaptive in others. Strenberg’s book entitled “successful intelligence” defines Successful intelligence as the kind of intelligence used to achieve important goals. People who succeed, whether by their own standards or by other people’s, are those who have managed to acquire, develop, and apply a full range of intellectual skills, rather than merely relying on the inert intelligence that schools so value. These individuals may or may not succeed on conventional test, but they have something in common that is much more important than high test scores. They know their strengths; they know their weaknesses. They capitalize on their strengths; they compensate for or correct their weaknesses. “Emotional intelligence is a different way of being smart. It includes knowing what your feelings are and using your feelings to make good decisions in life. It’s being able to manage distressing moods well and control impulses. It’s being motivated and remaining hopeful and optimistic when you have setbacks in working toward goals. It’s

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empathy; knowing what the people around you are feeling. And it’s social skill—getting along well with other people, managing emotions in relationships, being able to persuade or lead others,” (O’Neil, 1996). There are two general models of EI in the literature: a skill-based model proposed originally by Mayer and Salovey (1997) and a variety of “mixed” approaches (Bar-On, 1997; Furnham & Petrides, 2003; Schutte, Malouff, Hall,Haggerty, et al. 1998). According to Mayer and Salovey, EI pertains to an individual’s capacity to reason about emotions and to process emotional information to enhance cognitive processes and regulate behavior. According to researchers, there are strung relationship between emotional intelligence and ability of leadership (Wolff, Pescosolido & Druskat, 2002), self efficacy (Okech, 2004), mental health (Manhas, 2004), self-esteem (Chauhan, 2008) and aspiration (Wells, 2004). Among children and adolescents, EI positively correlates with good social relations and negatively correlates with social deviance, measured both in and out of school as reported by children themselves, their family members, and their teachers (Denham, Blair, DeMulder, Levitas, Sawyer., et al, 2003; Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & eiser, 2000; Fine, Izard, Mostow, Trentacosta and Ackerman, 2003; Izard, 2001). Others perceive high-EI individuals as more pleasant to be around, more empathic, and more socially adroit than those low in EI (Brackett and Katulak, 2006.; Lopes, Brackett, Nezlek, Schutz, Sellin and Salovey, 2004; Lopes, Salovey, Cot and Beers, 2005). EI is correlated with higher academic achievement as reported by teachers, but generally not with higher grades once IQ is taken into account (Barchard, 2003; Izard, 2001, O’Connor & Little, 2003). Studies exploring the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance have produced mixed results. Schutte, Malouff, Hall, Haggerty, and et al. (1998) found that emotional intelligence predicted grade point average at the end of the year. According to Rozell, Pettijohn, & Parker (2002), there are a small, but significant relationship between academic success and emotional intelligence. Petrides, Frederickson, and Furnham (2004) found that emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between academic performance and cognitive ability. Parker, Summerfeldt, Hogan, & Majeski (2004) showed that the highly successful students scored higher than the unsuccessful group on three out of the four subsets (intrapersonal ability, stress management, and adaptability) of emotional intelligence. As researches show, IQ tests are great predictors of academic achievement (Appelbaum & Tuma, 1982; Grossman & Johnson, 1982; Ruan & Rosenberg, 1983; Neisser et al, 1996); this shows the effect of IQ tests’ marks on academic achievement. However Goleman believes that only 20 percent of academic can be predicted by IQ and the rest can be predicted by emotional and social intelligence. Individuals scoring higher on emotional intelligence can also demonstrate higher commitment. With regard to what was mentioned above we’re going to shed light on the relationship between academic achievement and emotional intelligence. Method

A sample of 100 individuals was selected using the opportunity or convenience sampling, among from Azad University, Tehran South branch. The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal is a 28-item performancebased assessment of emotional intelligence. The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal authored by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves measures emotional intelligence (EQ) using four core skills self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These four skills are based upon the model created by Daniel Goleman. This model is a competency-based framework that is intuitive and easy to apply in real-world settings, which makes the Appraisal well-linked to job performance. The first two skills focus on person, and the third and fourth skill focus on his contact with others. The assessment provides an overall EQ score as well as a score in each of the emotional intelligence factors. Research with the instrument has yielded Cronbach alpha reliability ratings ranging from .85 to .91(Bradberry & Greaves, 2003). The Emotional Intelligence Appraisal is designed to assess behavior demonstrative of emotional intelligence skills. The five factors of the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. This test has been normalized in Iran and its reliability and validity has been confirmed by Ganji (2005). Results Results were analyzed with regard to each factor after carrying out the test on university students and emotional intelligence’ s scores and diploma and university degrees. Correlation of the factors have been presented in table 1. As observed in table 1, emotional intelligence and its factors are not significantly related to diploma and university degrees. However, the correlation between diploma and university is significant at 0.01.

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Social awareness

Relationship management

Emotional intelligence

Diploma degree

University degree

Means Mn Mo Standard Deviation Variance Skewness Kurtosis Range Minimum Maximum Correlation: Diploma achievement University achievement

Selfmanagement

Statistical factor

Selfawareness

Table 1: Demonstrates the descriptive data of the analysis of the result

18.41 19 19 6.44 41.58 0.82 -0.93 22 8 30

27.43 26 23 8.46 71.56 0.39 -0.34 39 10 49

16.60 19 19 5.31 28.22 -0.35 -1.46 15 8 23

26.98 27 22 7.52 56.56 0.14 -0.23 35 10 45

89.42 88 74 17 27.9 0.04 0.02 89 38 127

15.25 16 16 2.15 4.62 -0.56 -0.99 6.70 11.30 18

13.85 14.2 15 2.09 4.35 -0.45 -0.79 8.07 9.30 17.37

0.121 0.12

0.16 0.149

0.058 0.058

0.077 0.067

0.73 0.072

1.00 0.93

0.93 1.00

Discussion As long as we are concerned, Intelligence Questionnaire assesses analytical skills and memory in order to solve class, numerical and visuo-spatial problems. These are a collection of academic abilities. Obviously, this intelligence is associated with application of analytical skills and memory in solving daily problems. This intelligence does require certain skills for recognition of problems, definition of formulated strategies for solving the problems and allocation of resources for application of strategies, supervision over execution of the said strategies and evaluation of the efficiency of solutions. In fact, since there is a very close relationship between class problems and class, spatial and mathematical abilities and similar ones, we do need emotional intelligence more than that kind of intelligence that assesses high abilities. This is associated with educational progress. On the other hand, there is a meaningful correlation between the average of students during study years and prior to the said period and assumptions of general intelligence. On the one hand, because of existing disputes in definition of emotional intelligence, achievements of this research is associated with a tool that we have used for assessment of emotional intelligence. On the other hand, emotional intelligence may only be regarded as a mediator that facilitates compatibility of intelligent function in an environment. In spite of journalism publicity on emotional intelligence and during researches conducted in one century, using diagnostic questionnaires for prediction of job success of researchers, they could rarely find certain structure that is able to explain over 5% of variance of job success. It is unlikely that emotional intelligence be effective in success as much as analytical intelligence is. The subject of emotional intelligence along with educational progress is also associated with trainability. This is a very interesting subject that tempts all persons, especially educational psychologists. According to Alan Carr (2004), no scientific research has been reported strongly confirming that particular intervention programs would meaningfully raise emotional intelligence. Nowadays, it’d better that we would consider emotional intelligence an individual characteristic or ability. Although school administrators in uence the successful operation of the school, it is important to consider how students' emotional intelligence is related to academic success. As we mentioned before, interest in emotional intelligence has grown lately with research suggesting that emotionally intelligent people are more likely to succeed in everything they undertake then we can say that success depends on several intelligences and on the control of emotions. IQ alone is no more the measure for success; emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and luck also play a big role in a person's success (Goleman, 1995). In our research no significant relation was found between the factors of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management) and also the total score of emotional intelligence. Moreover, the strong relationship between diploma and university degrees was observed that indicates that academic success is significantly correlated to IQ and can be a reliable

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