Effects of Military Environment on Students' Emotional Intelligence Development: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

There are 65 military schools in the United States with many sharing the same goals and objectives, which are to develop and prepare students for leadership roles and for post-secondary academic success. Other than anecdotal claims by their alumni, these schools lack the evidence of how this is achieved. This study aims at providing such evidence by assessing the effects of a school's military environment on the students' development of emotional intelligence (IE) as measured by the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short-Form. EI has been associated with academic success and higher leadership effectiveness. This exploratory analysis finds a positive correlation between leadership education level and students' EI scores (r= .28, <; .05), and a regression analysis (F(1, 51)= 4.20, p< .05) predicts and EI score increase of 17% for each year of exposure to the school's military environment. This study suggests that the school's military environment inherently fosters social emotional learning, which in turn positively influences the development of the students' EI.