Effects on empathy and emotional intelligence of a Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility programme in physical education

Abstract

In recent years, research has pointed to the value of positive youth development programmes through physical education.The influence of this type of programme, specifically theTeaching Personal and Social Responsibility programme, on the empathy and emotional intelligence of students is a field to be explored.The study’s aims were: (1) to investigate the effects of aTeaching Personal and Social Responsibility-based programme on empathy and perceived emotional intelligence in physical education; and (2) to compare the scores between lower-middle and upper-middle socioeconomic context schools. Participants were 210 students (ages 10-12). A quasi-experimental design with two analyses of covariance were completed.The programme improved the students’ feelings of sadness (p < .05). More pronounced improvements were found on the feelings of sadness (p = .016) in the lower-middle socioeconomic context group.The intervention was more effective on understanding feelings (p < .001) in the upper-middle context group. Improvements were found in emotional intelligence (p = .017), attention (p < .05) and repair (p < .026) factors in the lower-middle context group compared to the upper-middle context group.We found that the programme has been especially useful for improving emotional intelligence in depressed socioeconomic contexts.