Relationship between emotional intelligence, learning styles and academic performance in a group of psychology students

Abstract

Objective. Correlate emotional intelligence (EI), learning styles (LS) and academic performance (AP) in university students. Methodology. Quantitative approach, with descriptive, correlational, and non-experimental crosssectional design. The sample is constituted by 145 students with ages between 20 and 30 years, of first, second and third semester, of the Psychology program, assigned to UNIMINUTO - Bucaramanga headquarters, selected for convenience. The Learning Styles Questionnaire of Honey and Alonso (CHAEA) was used to measure EA, the Trait-Meta Mood Scale-24 (TMMS-24) proposed by Fernández-Berrocal, Extremera & Ramos (2004), to measure IE, and the academic report of students. Results. A moderate preference is observed in all LS, highlighting that reflective style had the highest score: 14,8; an appropriate level of emotional intelligence in the participants with average scores of 27,29 in emotional perception, 29,59 in feelings understanding, and 31,38 in emotional regulation; no statistically significant between EI and AP, nor between LS and AP; and finally, about the link between EI and LS, was only found moderate and negative correlation between the reflective style and the feelings understanding, considering p= 0,041 y r= -,305. Conclusion. These results indicate no relationship between the evaluated variables, except for the reflective style and feelings understanding (as higher the first, lower the second). Foresight, it would be appropriate to include more participants, in order to establish a more complete analysis of the variables.