The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Performance: A Closer Look at Individual and Environmental Factors

Abstract

This study presents a more comprehensive approach to investigate how Emotional Intelligence (EI) is associated with performance. Previous research has revealed that EI is related to positive outcomes such as better performance, life satisfaction and career success. However, in most research of EI, this factor has been investigated independently from the effect of contextual factors and other individual characteristics. This study extended the research on the impact of EI on student performance by simultaneously examining the impact of EI, individual factors - (1) Perseverance of Effort, (2) Goal Consistency and (3) Goal Clarity and learning environment factors - Program Fit in one study. The results based on the data collected from 1,117 students in Vietnam largely support the hypothesis that that EI was an important but not the only factor affecting the student performance. MANOVA and post-hoc analysis indicated that both individual and environmental factors better predicted performance than EI could. These results suggest that the impact of EI on individual performance is more complicated than what we have already known. Future study is encouraged to investigate both the mechanism through which EI impact individual performance and the interaction between EI and other factors that moderate the EI - performance relationship.