Role of Emotional Intelligence in Academic Achievement: An Empirical Study on Engineering Students

Literature Review

Emotional intelligence is a fairly new concept. After reviewed the literature—in refereed journals, non-refereed journals, books, and on the Internet—in order to see what researchers have discovered about it so far and how they linked it to achievement. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were several attempts to find a substantial relationship between achievement and personality, but these attempts did not meet much success (Barton, Dielman & Cattell, 1972). In 1968, Cattell and Butcher tried to predict both school achievement and creativity from ability, personality, and motivation. The authors succeeded in showing the importance of personality in academic achievement however could not link motivation to it. In 1972, Barton, Dielman and Cattell conducted another study to assess more fully the relative importance of both ability and personality variables in the prediction of academic achievement. One of the conclusions they reached was that IQ together with the personality factor—which they called conscientiousness—predicted achievement in all areas. What was tested under personality was--among others--whether the student is reserved or warmhearted, emotionally unstable or emotionally stable, undemonstrative or excitable, submissive or dominant, conscientious or not, shy or socially bold, tough-minded or tender-minded, zestful or reflective, self-assured or apprehensive, group dependent or self-sufficient, uncontrolled or controlled, relaxed or tense. We can easily see that most of these factors are included in the components of emotional intelligence. In 1983, Howard Gardner introduced his theory of Multiple Intelligences which opened doors to other theories like Emotional Intelligence.

Then the term Emotional Intelligence appeared in a series of academic articles authored by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey (1990; 1993; 1995). Their first article presented the first model of emotional intelligence. However, the term “emotional intelligence” entered the mainstream only with Daniel Goleman in 1995. He argues in his book that IQ contributes only about 20% to success in life, and other forces contribute the rest. We can infer that emotional intelligence, luck, and social class are among those other factors. He also says that emotional intelligence is a new concept indeed, but the existing data imply that it can be as powerful as IQ and sometimes even more. And, at least, unlike what is claimed about IQ, we can teach and improve in children some crucial emotional competencies. Emotionally intelligent people are more likely to succeed in everything they undertake. Teaching emotional and social skills is very important at school; it can affect academic achievement positively not only during the year they are taught, but during the years that follow as well. Teaching these skills has a long-term effect on achievement. (Elias et al., 1991).