Emotional Intelligence of the Adolescents in Relation to Their Self-Concept

Abstract

The concept of emotional intelligence has gained popularity and accepted over in the recent years. The ability to appropriately identify, recognize and manage your emotions for one's own well-being as well-being of people around you is what is described as emotional intelligence. Researchers investigated dimensions of emotional intelligence by measuring related concepts such as skills, interpersonal competence, psychological maturity and emotional awareness.Emotional intelligence more or less relates to intelligence and self-concept. It includes inter and intrapersonal intelligence in Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is a correlative ability turned inward. It is a capacity to forman accurate, veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate effectively in life. The concept of E.I. (Mayer & Salovey, 1993; Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 1999) shows that to understand and appreciate intelligence in totality, one needs to attend to the domains of personality, emotions and motivation. The merging of emotions and intelligence as a cognitive tool under the caption of E.I. was proposed by Yale Psychologists, Peter Salovey and Mayer (1990). They gave definitions of El and the most comprehension is the revision of definition of El in 1993 .According to them, emotional intelligence involves abilities that may be categorized into five domains:* Self awareness i.e. observing oneself and recognizing a feeling as it happens.* Managing emotions i.e. handling feelings so that they are appropriate; realizing what is behind a feeling, finding ways to handle fears and anxieties, anger and sadness.* Motivating oneself: channeling emotions in the service of a goal; emotional self control; delaying gratification and stifling impulses.* Empathy: sensitivity to others' feelings and concerns and taking their perspectives; appreciating the differences in how people feel about things.* Handling relationships: managing emotions in others; and skills.Daniel Goleman (1995) defined E.I. as the ability to know, manage one's emotions and recognizes them in others and to handle one's relationship. He (1998) says that an emotionally intelligent person is likely to be skilled in two key areas namely competencehow one manages the self, and social competence how one manages relationships. El is nothing but the ability to understand one's emotions and those of people around us. It enables us to modify our feelings and influence what happens in the world around us. Emotional intelligence is one's subconscious ability to create positive outcomes in one's relationships with others and with oneself, by being in control of how one responds to the world around.There has been a growing realization of importance of self-concept in recent years in understanding and predicting human behavior. Self-concept is the way in which the individual reacts to himself for his perceptions, attitudes and feelings. This is the totality of an individual's behavior through which he manages difficult situations. Self-concept is not an inherited quality. It is formed as a result of ones experiences and reaction to environment (Guilford, 1967).Self-concept consists of four aspects: (i) how a person perceive himself, (ii) what he thinks of himself, (iii) how he values himself and (iv) how he attempts through various actions to enhance or defend himself. Guilford (1967) defined self-concept as individual's perception, attitude and feeling about himself. There seemed to be two dimensions positive and negative of self-concept i.e. to perceive self and ideal self discrepancies. Self-concept and behavior mutually go on influencing each other and according to Sharma (1967),it is a byproduct of learning experiences and with this point of view, it is apex and the culmination of all and personal experiences the child has had. …