Can Emotional Intelligence Act as a Weapon (Warrior) Against Bullying?

Abstract

To build an effective and safe learning community fighting with bullying is critical, which can be done via increasing students’ emotional intelligence. This paper aims to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and bullying rate, and how an effective bullying prevention program can be organized. For this study, the qualitative research design was chosen. A convenience and snowball sampling were applied to hold the interview with school teachers and psychologists. Eight teachers and two psychologists from different schools were interviewed via the zoom.com platform. The findings revealed that, for most teachers, the term ‘emotional intelligence’ was relatively new. However, psychologists were well aware of this concept. All respondents were well aware of the concepts of bullying (victims of bullying, bullies, bystanders, and victimization). Most importantly, all respondents believed that the development of emotional intelligence can help prevent or at least diminish the bullying rate. Developing emotional intelligence should become one of the priorities for reducing the bullying rate among students. Bullying prevention/intervention programs should have a complex nature.