The International Journal of Indian Psychology

ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)

Volume 3, Issue 4, No. 63, DIP: 18.01.115/20160304
ISBN: 978-1-365-32518-2
http://www.ijip.in | July-September, 2016

Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being

among Students

Dr. Sayeeda Shaheen 1*, Dr. Hameeda Shaheen 2

ABSTRACT
The present study was aimed to investigate the emotional intelligence in relation to
psychological well-being among students. The sample comprised 100 students (boys =50 & girls
=50), who were randomly selected from Senior Secondary Schools, AMU, Aligarh. The mean
age of students was 15 years. Well-Being Manifestation Measure Scale (WBMMS; Masse, et al.
1998a) and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS; Schutte et al., 1998) was used to assess
psychological well-being and emotional intelligence. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation and
t-test were used to analyze the data. The results of the correlation showed that there is significant
positive correlation between emotional intelligence and psychological well-being. Further, the
result of the t-test showed that girls scored significantly higher as compare to boys on emotional
intelligence, while there was no significant difference found between boys and girls scores on
total psychological well-being and also on its any dimensions.

Keywords: Emotional intelligence, Psychological Well-being, Adolescents

It is difficult to describe best definition of psychological well-being, however the majority of

previous researches define well-being as subjective satisfaction of one’s life (Diener et al.,1999;
Pavot & Diener, 2003; Van Praag, Frijters, & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2003) as according to Pavot
and Diener (2003) well-being as the subjective feeling of contentment, happiness, satisfaction
with life’s experience and one’s role in the world of work, sense of achievement, utility
belongingness and no distress, dissatisfaction or worry etc. Similarly, in a study Salami (2010)
defined psychological well-being is as a state that emerges from feeling of satisfaction with one’s
physical health and oneself as a person and with one’s close interpersonal relationships.

1
Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
2
Post Doctoral Fellow (PDF;ICSSR), Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
*Responding Author
© 2016, S Shaheen, H Shaheen; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being among Students

Emotional Intelligence
The concept of emotional intelligence is emerged by Thorndike’s (1920) theory of ‘social
intelligence’ who defined social intelligence as ―the ability to understand and manage men and
women, boys and girls – to act wisely in human relations. Further, Gardner (1983) who gave the
theory of multiple intelligences carried out the concept of social intelligence in the name of
‘intrapersonal’ and ‘interpersonal’ intelligence (an ability of understanding, motivating and
managing the self) and then Sternberg (1988) in the name of contextual intelligence i.e. the
ability to lead one‘s life successfully. Salovey and Mayer (1990a) put forward a theoretical
model of social intelligence and viewed the emotional intelligence as a subset of social
intelligence and define emotional intelligence as a type of social intelligence that involves the
ability to monitor one’s own and others emotions/feeling, to discriminate among them and to use
the information to guide one’s thinking and action (Salovey & Mayer, 1990a; 1990b). Further,
Mayer and Salovey (1997) have refined this definition in terms of four factors that is perceiving,
using, understanding and managing emotions, as they define this “the ability to perceive
accurately, appraise and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when
they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the
ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth”. Goleman (1995)
provided a broad and highly influential and vital importance of emotional intelligence in
people’s personal, social and professional lives. According to him intellectual intelligence
contributes only 20% to one’s success while the remaining 80% of a person’s success in life is
contributed by emotional and social intelligence (Goleman, 1995). Students with high emotional
intelligence are prepared to deal with the challenges of new environment, setting up a
responsibility schedule and study plan, meeting new people, and dealing with frustration and
anxieties of being out of control of the environment (Goleman, 1998).

Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Well-being

Emotional intelligence play an important role in one’s psychological wellbeing such as Ruiz-
Aranda, Extremera, and Pineda-Galán (2014) studied on emotional intelligence, life satisfaction
and subjective happiness in female student health professionals: the mediating effect of
perceived stress in a 12-week follow-up study. They found that participants with higher
emotional intelligence reported less perceived stress and higher levels of life satisfaction and
happiness. Their results suggest that perceived stress mediates the relationship between
emotional intelligence and well-being indicators, specifically life satisfaction and happiness.
Further their findings suggest an underlying process by which high emotional intelligence may
increase well-being in female students in nursing and allied health sciences by reducing the
experience of stress. Mehmood and Gulzar (2014) assessed the connection of emotional
intelligence with adolescent’s psychological well-being (depression and self-esteem) and found
significant positive relationship between variables of emotional intelligence and self-esteem and
showed negative association between emotional intelligence and depression which indicate
emotionally intelligent people adopt flexible patterns of life, which allow a person to adopt

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 207
 Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being among Students

attitudinal changes, which protect a person to feel failure, neglected and development of
depression. There is a stepwise structural chain between emotional intelligence and life success.
High emotional intelligence facilitates or push the person toward getting positive sense of self,
which contribute to developing high level of self-esteem. People who have high level of self-
esteem are more open and assertive, and handle hardships more effectively and intelligently,
which lead toward excellent performance and leading happy life. Cazan and Năstasă (2015)
showed that emotional intelligence is related to better adjustment or success in academic settings.
Also, high levels of emotional intelligence are associated with lower levels of anxiety, stress, and
burnout and with higher levels of satisfaction with life.

Objective:
The following objectives are formulated for the present study:
1. To find out the relationship between emotional intelligence and psychological well-being
among adolescents.
2. To find out the significant difference between male and female adolescents on emotional
intelligence and psychological well-being.

Hypotheses:
The following hypotheses were formulated for the present study:
H-1: There will be positive correlation between emotional intelligence and psychological well-
being among adolescents.
H-2: There will be significant difference between male and female adolescentson emotional
intelligence and psychological well-being.

METHODS
Participants
For present study a sample of 100 adolescents (boys =50 & girls =50) were randomly assigned
from both (boys and girls) Senior Secondary Schools of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU),
Aligarh, India. The age of the participants was ranged between 16 to 19 years, and the average
age was 15 years. All the participants came from middle socio-economic background.

Instrument
Well-Being Manifestation Measure Scale (WBMMS): Well-being manifestation measure
scale was used for measuring psychological well-being which was developed by Masse, Poulin,
Dassa, Lambert, Belair and Batttaglini (1998a). This scale consist 25-items with six factors or
subscale that are control of self and events, happiness, social involvement, self-esteem, mental
balance, and sociability. Masse, et al. (1998b), found an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .93 for the
questionnaire, and a range of .71 to .85 on the subscales.

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 Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being among Students

Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS): Schutte’s Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS: Schutte et al.,
1998) was used for present study. The EIS consists of 33 self-referencing statements, for
example, ‘I know when to speak about my personal problems to others’. Participants are
instructed to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement using a 5-
point Likert scale. This scale ranged from 33 to 165, and high scores indicating as high EI of the
person and vice-versa.

Procedure
For collecting the data investigator met the subjects in the classroom setting. After established a
rapport and getting consent with the subject, the investigator administered three questionnaires
i.e. demographic sheet, emotional intelligence, and psychological well-being. When all
respondents were filled up their questionnaires, they were thanked by the investigator for their
kind cooperation. Scoring of the responses was done according to the manual described for each
questionnaire, and tabulation of the data was making carefully for its analysis. SPSS 16 was used
for analysis of data.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The data were analysed by Descriptive statistics that is Mean, SD, and Pearson Product Moment
Correlations were used to see the relationship of psychological variables of the total sample. t-
test were used for identifying gender differences of psychological variables i.e., emotional
intelligence and psychological well-being. Results are presented in the following tables:

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics and Correlation between Emotional Intelligence and

Psychological Well-Being of total students (N=100).
No. Variables 1. i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. 2.
1. Well-Being 1
Total
i. Self-Esteem .675** 1
ii. Mental .726** .373** 1
Balance
iii. Social .570** .334** .257** 1
Involvement
iv. Sociability .682** .431** .403** .165 1
** ** ** **
v. Control of .716 .293 .506 .414 .290** 1
Self and
Events
vi. Happiness .748** .366** .406** .258** .549** .440** 1
2. Emotional .312** .303** .178 .221* .213* .207* .179 1
Intelligence
Mean 89.97 13.95 14.81 14.62 14.78 13.21 18.60 113.30
SD 13.17 3.19 3.41 2.85 2.88 3.18 3.58 12.77
Note.**p< .01; *p< .05.

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 Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being among Students

Table-1 shows that there is strong positive correlation between the psychological well-being total
scores and emotional intelligence scores(r=.312; p< .01). When we observe the psychological
well-being dimensions scores with emotional intelligence scores then it was found that only four
dimensions i.e. self-esteem (r=.303; p< .01), social involvement (r=.221; p< .05),sociability
(r=.213; p< .05), and control of self and events (r=.207; p<.05) are significantly positive
correlated. Thus, the first hypothesis that there will be positive correlation between emotional
intelligence and psychological well-being was confirmed as true. Result indicates that high levels
of emotional intelligence are associated with higher levels of self-esteem, social involvement,
sociability, control of self and events, and overall better psychological well-being of students
life.

Table 2: Comparison of Girls (N=50) and Boys (N=50) Scores on Emotional Intelligence and
Psychological Well-Being.
No. Variables Gender Mean SD t-value
1. Well-Being Boys 89.86 13.63 -.083
Total Girls 90.08 12.82
Self-Esteem Boys 13.70 3.27 -.783
Girls 14.20 3.11
Mental Boys 14.82 3.26 .029
Balance Girls 14.80 3.59
Social Boys 14.66 2.90 .140
Involvement Girls 14.58 2.83
Sociability Boys 14.38 2.58 -1.397
Girls 15.18 3.12
Control of Self Boys 13.54 3.35 1.038
and Events Girls 12.88 2.99
Happiness Boys 18.76 3.77 .445
Girls 18.44 3.41
2. Emotional Boys 107.96 11.71 -4.59**
Intelligence Girls 118.64 11.58

Note.**p< .01

Table-2 shows mean and SD of boys and girls on psychological well-being and emotional
intelligence. The t-values in the table indicate that there is no significant difference was found
between boys and girls on psychological well-being in total scores as well as in its any
dimensions scores. When we observe emotional intelligence scores, it was found that girls’
scored significantly higher (Mean= 118.64) as compare to boys’ (Mean= 107.96; p<.01) on
emotional intelligence scores. So our second hypothesis that there will be significant difference
between male and female adolescents on emotional intelligence and psychological well-being
was partially confirmed.

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 Emotional Intelligence In Relation To Psychological Well-Being among Students

Results of the present findings supported by previous studies that there is significant relationship
exist between emotional intelligence and well-being among students (Kaur, 2015; Mehmood &
Gulzar, 2014). Further, present findings also indicate that there is no differences between boys
and girls on psychological well-beings which was partially supported by the previous findings of
Rathi and Rastogi (2007) who found no significant difference between males and females on
other subscales of psychological well-being except self-esteem and mental balance. Inversely,
the present findings was contradictory the findings of Akhter (2015) who found male and female
students are differ in psychological well-being. Result also show that significant difference found
on emotional intelligence which was supported previous findings (Naghavi & Redzuan, 2011)
who concluded that females have higher emotional intelligence than males and this may be
reasoned by the individual differences and expectations of the society where girls are expected to
be more emotionally expressive than males.

CONCLUSION
From the findings of the present study on emotional intelligence in relation to psychological
well-being among students, it was concluded that there is significant positive relationship
between emotional intelligence and psychological well-being. Further it was also concluded that
there is gender difference on emotional intelligence as girls showed more emotional intelligence
than boys.

Thus this study helps elucidate the role of emotional intelligence in students’ mental balance,
personal or social relationship, academic performance and in their overall psychological well-
being. This study is significant implication for parents, teachers, and counsellors and future
researchers for revealing how the development of emotional intelligence can lead to enhanced
well-being of adolescents in society.

Acknowledgments
The author appreciates all those who participated in the study and helped to facilitate the
research process.

Conflict of Interests
The author declared no conflict of interests.

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How to cite this article: S Shaheen, H Shaheen (2016), Emotional Intelligence In Relation To
Psychological Well-Being among Students, International Journal of Indian Psychology, Volume
3, Issue 4, No. 63, ISSN 2348-5396 (e), ISSN: 2349-3429 (p), DIP: 18.01.115/20160304, ISBN:
978-1-365-32518-2

© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 213