Date of Award

12-1-2004

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

Abstract

Emotional Intelligence has been described in the popular literature as being a better predictor of life success than cognitive ability or personality (Gibbs, 1995). In recent years, there has been a plethora of emotional intelligence workshops, books, seminars, and web pages dedicated to education and training in the development of emotional intelligence in the workplace and in other life areas. Despite this trend, there is a considerable amount of discrepancy regarding the measurement and description of what emotional intelligence represents. Not surprisingly, there has also been inconsistency in the literature regarding its predictive value with job and academic success. Moreover, the notion of emotional intelligence development and conditions for change has not been explicitly evaluated. One area of potential promise for evaluating emotional intelligence change and predictive utility is in counseling graduate training, where students are trained in intra and interpersonal effectiveness and other areas related to the current notion of emotional intelligence. Moreover, students are closely monitored and evaluated on their clinical performance and professional development and thus incorporate more than GPA in determining student performance and success in the program.

In this study, two hypotheses were examined. First, I hypothesized that exposure to graduate training practicum and socialization into the program philosophy would increase one's level of emotional Intelligence (El). Second, I hypothesized that both El ability and self-report measures would explain variance in counselor performance evaluations not otherwise explained by personality and cognitive ability. Using analysis of covariance and paired sample t-test procedures, hypothesis one was not supported by the data. HypCw.esis two was tested using stepwise regression and correlational procedures and was also not supported in the current data. Limitations of this study and implications for research and practice will be addressed.

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