The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Success

Emotional intelligence is defined as a construct involving the ability of an individual to monitor their own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among the positive and negative effects of emotion, and to use emotional information to guide their thinking and actions. This study was carried out to find the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and academic success and the association between emotional intelligence and major of study.  The scores obtained on EQ-i and the GPA of 187 students of physical education, chemistry, mathematics, English and medicine were correlated. Results show a coefficient of correlation of 0.161 which is significant at 0.05 level of significance. This indicates no significant relationship between EI and academic success. The result of a correlational analysis between assertiveness and academic success shows an r = 0.318 at 0.03 level of significance that is not a statistically significant association. The F value of 1.461 at the level of significance of 0.205 indicates that there is no significant difference between the different majors regarding their EI. Hence major has no relationship with the EI of students.