The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Perceived Social Support

Abstract

The studty aims at examining and understanding the relation between Emotional Intelligence and Perceived social support in a sample of 525 students of the University of Prishtina. Great number of studies in the field of Emotional Intelligence, have shown that that this new construct of Intelligence, (EI), operates within the social context, therefore the examination of socially relevant variables is crucial for personal and social context. It has been hypothesised that Emotional Intelligence and it’s dimensions correlate positively with the Perceived Social Support and the relation between these two variables is a great predictor of positive interactions, interpersonal relationships and is very relevant for the educational context as well. The study is based on the ability and competency based model of the Emotional Intelligence construct. Emotional Intelligence Scale (Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., & Dornheim, L. (1998) and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farely, 1998) were administered to gather data in order to test the hypotheisis. The preliminary findings support theoretical and empirical perspective, and appear to be promising by emphasizing the Emotional Intelligence consutruct as an added value for the educational context, in specific for youth interactions and their wellbeing.