Emotional Intelligence and Everyday Behavior Essay Example for Free

Emotional Intelligence and Everyday Behavior Essay On this article the author establishes the relationship between emotional intelligence and college students. It’s very notorious that the author’s focused the research based on measuring the Big Five personality traits (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) and related to behaviors, this is because the intellectual measures and the ability to express knowledge don’t give us a complete overview of the person. As the author said: â€Å"The goal of the present study is to assess the criterion validity of EI, and hence the social significance or external utility of EI by relating the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT, 2002a) to selected scales from the College Student Life Space Scale (CSLSS, Brackett, 2001)†. Another fundamental point of this article was to present the genders’ differences and which of the scores on the scale are more representative on each one. Even though the participants as the author expressed were recruited from introductory courses and received course credit for their involvement in the study, the participants were part of a larger study that examined the relation between the Big Five personality traits and the Life Space. There were a 330 total of participants all between 17 and 20 years which 241 of them were female and the 89 left were males. (M.A. Brackett et al., Personality and Individual Differences (2004). The participants were asked for permission to acquire their SAT scores and college grade points average from the university; student’s been not brilliant but can be considered as a standard class. For measuring the results the scales were organized according to three broad content areas: healthy versus unhealthy behavior, general leisure and academic activities and interpersonal relations. In order to mean the gender differences on both scales analyses were conducted separately. Mayer et al. (1998) said that some question formats are items that first, require minimal interpretations on the part of the participant, and that the answers are definite and potentially verifiable. The same was as Shaffer, Saunders Owens (1986) explained that â€Å"such question formats also minimize social desirability response bias†. For improving the data collection I would have had the same sample size for both genders, and have evaluated them both ways: first, by a whole population and them examine the results by gender, this is to understand how any of the gender impact on the whole group. Brackett Mayer (2003), Ciarrochi et al. (2001), Mayer et al. (1999), Mayer et al. (2002a), Roberts et al. (2001), Salovey et al. (2001) found that scores on tests are related to but mostly independent of verbal intelligence, the Big Five, and empathy (rs0.35). The preliminary analysis on the MSCEIT and Life Space indicated that the abilities associates with the two Emotional Intelligence areas (Experiencing Emotional Intelligence and Strategic Emotional Intelligence) are related to one another but still distinguishable warranting separate analysis with the criteria. (Mayer et al., 2000). In other cases MSCEIT and SAT scores didn’t present significant gender differences, but that was known on previous research which showed that MSCEIT scores are mostly independent from personality and verbal intelligence. Brackett Mayer (2003); Salovey et al. (2001). An important issue to be more careful about in the next research and studies is to suggest a same sample size from genders and that the evaluating scales were the same, for this some criteria applies but others doesn’t; even though what is not significant in a group might be significant for the full sample. The present study supports and emerging pattern of correlations between lower EI and larger amounts of alcohol consumption, illegal drug use, and involvement in deviant behavior. Brackett Mayer (2003), Formica (1998), Trinidad Johnson (2001). The results obtained on this and with others researches as base clearly points out that woman are better able to read unstated social information, including feelings from facial expressions and other non verbal clues. Examples of these researches are Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers Archer (1979). The article says that: â€Å"Recent research has shown that areas of the brain devoted to emotional processing may be larger in women than men, which may also be related to the observed gender differences in Emotional Intelligence. (Gur, Gunning-Dixon, Bilker Gur, 2002). Helmers Mente (1999), Kauhanen, Julken Salonen (1992), Taylor, Parker Bagby (1990) research have tell that males with high scores alexithymia (self reported difficulty in identifying and expressing emotions) measures report increased alcohol consumption and drug use, and psychoactive substance dependence. White (2001) expressed that â€Å"the social deviance scale in this study only contained overt physical aggressive behaviors; perhaps stronger associations for females may have emerged if more covert or verbal aggressive tactics like ostracism, gossip, and indirect vendettas had been included.† That’s maybe why there’s a â€Å"lower frequency and range of violent acts for females than for males.† (White, 2001). The author on the article said that maybe the results found are unique to students of New England area and will not generalize to individuals in ethnically diverse areas. For me, this is very important, due even I know everyone it’s different and the culture might impact over the results there would be a more accurate result if the group is more diverse. For next researches the gender shouldn’t be so notorious on the results. The author’s well explained their conclusions and told that more researches are needed to understand how Emotional Intelligence is expressed in people’s lives. With this been said, the conclusions over this research need more basis to be sustained. The good point of is, that knowing the issues found on this research will help future researchers not to make the same sampling, methods and procedures.