Emotional Intelligence and Gender as Predictors of Academic Achievement among Some University Students in Barbados

Abstract

This study investigated emotional intelligence (attending to emotion, positive expressivity and negative expressivity) and gender as predictors of academic achievement among 163 undergraduate psychology students in The University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Results revealed significant positive and negative correlations among academic achievement, emotional intelligence components and gender. Additionally, using the stepwise multiple regression analysis, it was found that emotional intelligence contributed 40% (Rsq= 0.396) to the variance in academic achievement while simple regression analysis revealed that gender also contributed 5% (Rsq =0.048) to academic achievement and these results were significant indicating that both emotional intelligence and gender predicted academic achievement but emotional intelligence was a better predictor of academic achievement than gender. The Independent t-test analysis also revealed gender disparity in academic achievement and attending to emotions in favour of girls. These findings were discussed in the paper.