Investigating Emotional Intelligence in Children: Exploring its Relationship to Cognitive Intelligence

The phrase emotional intelligence was made popular in the mainstream culture by Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence. Goleman's book focuses mainly on aspects of emotional intelligence in adults, as does most of the literature that exists concerning emotional intelligence. The little empirical research that exists in the field of emotional intelligence has been conducted primarily with adults. With the advent of the BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version, it has become possible to measure this construct in children. In the current study, sixty children ages nine to twelve were administered the BarOn EQ-i:YV and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Third Edition. The Full Scale IQ standard score, Performance IQ standard score, Verbal IQ standard score, Picture Arrangement subtest scale score, and Comprehension subtest scale scores were compared to the BarOn EQ-i:YV Total EQ scores to determine the relationship between them. Small, significant positive correlations were found between the Total EQ standard score and Full Scale IQ standard score, Total EQ score and Performance IQ standard score, Total EQ standard score and Picture Arrangement subtest scale score, and Total EQ standard score and Comprehension subtest scale score. All hypotheses were confirmed. A positive and statistically significant correlation exists between emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence. The relationship was small enough; however, that it can be concluded that the BarOn EQ-i:YV and the WISC-1H were measuring two different but overlapping types of intelligence.

Name thesis:degree_name

Education Specialist

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Psychology

Year

2000

Author dc:creator

• Allen, Margaret

• Education
• Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/708

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.wku.edu:theses-1711