Students Can Improve Emotional Intelligence

Research being conducted by a marketing professor in Western Carolina University’s College of Business may shed light on how students can improve their own emotional awareness and develop the so-called “soft skills” that many of today’s employers desire.

Heidi Dent, assistant professor of marketing, is in the second phase of ongoing research designed to explore the question of whether self-regulated learning activities can help nurture and develop emotional intelligence in college students.

Dent presented a paper on her research titled “Building Emotional Intelligence Through Social Self-Reflection” at the 2022 Society for Marketing Advances conference in Charlotte in November.

Soft skills – such as critical thinking, communication, teamwork and time management – are an increasingly important factor for employers to consider when making hiring decisions, Dent said. Emotional intelligence refers to the capacity of individuals to be aware of personal emotions and the positive and negative impact those emotions can have in personal interactions, including those that occur in a workplace setting.

“Emotional awareness and an understanding of the role emotions play are valuable soft skills for marketers,” Dent said. “As educators, we are tasked with developing hard and soft skills for students to prepare them for post-graduation opportunities, including employment.”

A total of 38 WCU students completed the exercises in a first round of Dent’s study, and 76% participated in the final research project. Another 60 students are taking part this spring.

To begin each semester’s research activities, Dent asks her students to watch two videos and complete a workbook about emotional intelligence. Students then begin a digital reflection analysis through a series of activities, including building a personal brand and emotional intelligence reflection followed by self-analysis, creation of a brief video, and interaction and analysis of results determined from artificial intelligence personality-identification tools.

Dent has developed some preliminary findings from her initial research last fall. “On average, the emotional intelligence of participating students increase by 2.6%,” she said. “There were a few outliers were that swinging up and down by 20 to 20%, but only one or two outlier on each side, which is consistent with the classic bell curve.”

Dent is still reviewing scores from student evaluations after participating in the project in the fall, but early indications are that student sentiment is leaning more toward the positive than the negative, she said.

“Some comments from students about what they learned include recognizing and handling emotions better, active listening, increased emotional- and self-awareness, and self-confidence,” she said.