The Impact of Spiritual Intelligence Instruction on the Critical Thinking Disposition and Emotional Creativity

Critical thinking refers to self-regulated thinking that involves fair reasoning without any bias or prejudice (Fell & Lukianova, 2015). It is also an active and skillful conceptualization, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of gathered or produced data using observation, experience, deep thinking, argumentation, or communication (King & DeCicco, 2009). The significance of critical thinking is highlighted taking into account that the Holy Quran inspires humans to nurture traits and characteristics that contribute to the growth of spiritual intelligence (Ibrahimi & Azapoor, 1388), and critical thinking is one aspect of spiritual intelligence, through which one seeks to find the right way to live. Indeed, in spiritual intelligence, critical thinking is referred to as critical existential thinking (CET) (King, 2008). Moreover, critical thinking is a kind of problem solving (Naddafi, 1385) and problem solving is an aspect of intelligence in general (Frensch & Funke, 2002), and of spiritual intelligence in particular (Ahmadi, Zamani, &Sarzaym, 2014).
The significance of spiritual intelligence, and of critical thinking, is further recognized taking maturity in spiritual intelligence (spiritual maturity) an integrated proactive agent (Emmons, 2007), a framework for recognizing and structuring the skills and strengths (Amram, 2009), and an insight that induces tolerance, dauntlessness of life hardship, and allows finding rational humane solutions (Zohar & Marshall, 2008). It is the intelligence individuals use when resolving spiritual or moral value problems; therefore, spiritual intelligence enables one to find goals and a personal meaning for life (Hossainchari & Zakeri, 1388).
Critical thinking is also related to creativity (DeWaelsche, 2015; Fell & Lukianova, 2015; Perkins, 2005). Indeed, creativity is a complex social, cultural, and psychological process that leads to new meaningful outcomes (Glaveanu, 2009). One significant aspect of creativity is emotional creativity, which together with critical thinking, emotional creativity plays a key role in the process of thinking (Thayer-Bacon, 2000) and is associated with different spiritual experiences (Averill, 2011). Sofar, no research has been conducted in the field of spiritual intelligence and emotional creativity, but researchers relate spiritual intelligence to emotional intelligence (King, 2008; Mayer & Gehe, 1996; Wigglesworth, 2002-2012; Zohar, 2010), and critical thinking to creativity (DeWaelsche, 2015; Fell & Lukianova, 2015; Perkins, 2005). Mayer and Geher (1996) have shown that spiritual intelligence is related to emotional creativity. Nevertheless, Malamiri and Fekrazad suggested that emotional intelligence and creativity are not related to each other. Karimi's results (1390), on the other hand, showed that spiritual intelligence and emotional creativity are the positive predictors of critical thinking disposition. Given the intimacy between cognition and affection, the question that arises here concerns whether instruction on spiritual intelligence could affect the students’ emotional creativity and orientation toward critical thinking. Although there are studies considering the correlation between , for instance, spiritual intelligence and critical thinking or spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence, there is no research investigating the impact of spiritual intelligence instruction on both critical thinking disposition and emotional creativity.
Research Questions
- Does spiritual intelligence instruction have any impact on critical thinking disposition?
- Does spiritual intelligence instruction have any impact on emotional creativity?
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This was an experimental research, using a pretest-posttest with control group design. The statistical population was all high school female students in Kerman and the participants were 34 students who were recruited through multi-cluster sampling method and were placed into two groups of experimental and control groups, using simple randomized method. To gather data, Ricket’s critical thinking tendency and Averill’s emotional creativity inventories were used as pretest in both groups. Then, the spiritual instruction as the independent variable (intervention) was conducted only in the experimental group in 10 sessions of 90 minutes each; the control group did not receive any instructions. At the end of instructions, the questionnaires were administered again in both groups as posttests. Data was analyzed using the covariance analysis.
Results show that the spiritual intelligence instruction has a positive and meaningful impact on the intervention group’s critical thinking disposition but it has no impact on their emotional creativity.
The first hypothesis was confirmed and it is concluded that the spiritual intelligence instruction has an impact on critical thinking disposition. This finding is in correspondence with the findings of Azizi (2015), Karimi (1390), and Mollamohammadi and Etemad Ahari (2016). The finding is justifiable in that based on King’s (2008) definition of spiritual intelligence, critical thinking is an aspect of spiritual intelligence and involves problem solving (Naddafi, 1385). In fact, as problem solving is an aspect of cognitive intelligence, spiritual intelligence also entails a type of critical thinking through which individuals can find the right way to live (Ahmadi, Zamani, &Sarzaym, 2014). Critical thinking encompasses all humans’ positive activities (Fodor & Carver, 2000) and spiritual intelligence instruction includes individuals’ spiritual growth which has an impact on their critical thinking disposition.
The second hypothesis was rejected, indicating that instruction on spiritual intelligence has no impact on emotional creativity. No analogous research was found in the literature, according to which the results could be explained; however, a probable explanation might be the vagueness of the questions to the students that did not allow them to interpret them appropriately. Another explanation could be that both spiritual intelligence and emotional creativity are essentially complex issues (Amiri and Partabian, 1395) that are hard to comprehend (Averill, 2011). The studies conducted so far have reached different results (Karimi, 1392; Malamiri & Fekr azad, 2015; Mayer & Geher, 1996), which could be due to the use of different methodologies, instruments, or statistical population. Another probable explanation is in differences in some aspects of emotional creativity (Kanhai, 2014), uniqueness of the construct, and the existence of different kinds of creativities (Lim, 2005). It is recommended that this research be conducted in other academic levels, including university levels, on males, in other cities, with shorter questionnaires and more understandable items. It is further suggested that critical thinking and spiritual intelligence workshops be conducted for teachers and students.