Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Nowadays emotional intelligence is considered as a new subject in the field of psychology. Studies  performed in this area, suggest the role of emotional intelligence and its components in various aspects of life such as educational attainment, marriage, career and social relationships. Academic life , is one of the most important aspects of an individual’s life influences other aspects of  it. In this regard, one of the fundamental problems of academic life and educational system of each country is the issue  educational failure and low academic performance of its students.

 Methods: The present study is cross-sectional carried out to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement of the students. The study population consisted of 126 female students and 95 male students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences who were selected by simple random sampling method. The research tools used in this study was bar-on questionnaire.  This questionnaire was validated in Iran and has been used in various studies. Also  the overall GPA (grade point average was used to measure  the academic performance) of students was used. For data analysis methods and statistical tests, two-tailed Pearson correlation coefficient, stepwise multiple regression analysis, independent t-test and chi-square were used.

 Results: The findings showed that the mean age of participants in the study is 22.43±2.42 yr.   Given the obtained correlation coefficient (r=0.478), there was a significant positive correlation between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. The general relationship between gender and emotional intelligence was not significant  (p <0.07). But the results of stepwise multiple regression showed that the three components of emotional intelligence [assertiveness (p <0.001), optimism (p <0.001) and emotional self-consciousness (p <0.015)], had significant predicted roles in academic improvement of students.

 Conclusion: This study showed that there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. Thus in order to achieve high levels of academic and educational skills, in addition to general cognitive ability, an individual should    be able to control emotions. In other words  ‎students without access to components that make the emotional intelligence, are not able to learn effectively and more importantly  will not be able to use this learning and  experiences.