Emotional Intelligence and the Honors Student

Over the past decade the construct of emotional intelligence has captured the public imagination and become a hot topic in the popular media. While the extravagant claims for the importance of emotional intelligence have little empirical support, evidence has been growing for the existence of the construct. This study is an attempt to relate emotional intelligence to the decision of first-year college students to enroll in an honors program. A measure of emotional intelligence was devised made up of four different Likert-type scales measuring different components of the construct. These scales were administered to 72 freshman students at a selective, private, liberal arts college. All 72 students were eligible for the college’s honors program, but only 44 students chose to be a part of the program. Discriminant analysis confirmed that emotional intelligence, as measured by these 4 scales, was a significant predictor of the decision to enroll in the college honors program, predicting honors program involvement 76% of the time. This research indicates that differences in emotional intelligence may be a significant factor discriminating between honors students and their equally academically adept peers. Few areas of psychology have generated as much popular interest and hyperbolic distortion as emotional intelligence. Time and Newsweek magazines have run cover stories on emotional intelligence and Oprah Winfrey has dedicated a show to the topic. The Utne Reader and Parade Magazine have both published “tests” of emotional intelligence which result in an “emotional quotient” that is, presumably, more predictive of real life outcomes than one’s intelligence quotient. The International Society of Applied Emotional Intelligence exists to help the world raise its “EQ” and thus increase global harmony. The Journal of Principled Conscience offers “EQ activity books” for sale to help parents raise their children to have higher EQ. School curricula in over 700 school districts have been developed to help raise children’s EQ (Goleman, 1997). Emotional intelligence is big business for consultants and education gurus. However, as a useful, valid psychological construct, emotional intelligence has a much more muted history. FALL/WINTER 2004 LAIRD R. O. EDMAN AND SALLY OAKES EDMAN