The Correlation between Personality and Emotional Intelligence among College Students

This study aimed to explore the relationship between the personality and emotional intelligence of college students. The researcher used the convenient random sampling technique and the survey was conducted among undergraduate students. The current study used a sample of 200 college students in Bangalore City, South India, both male and female to understand the relationship between their personality and emotional intelligence. The study used two scales The Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF) by Cattell, Tatsuoka and Eber (1969) and the Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EII-MM) by Mangal & Mangal (2011). To analyze the data, the researcher utilized the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program and inferential statistics, specifically, Pearson Correlation. The study shows a significant relationship between personality factors and emotional intelligence. The result shows that the Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level and 0.01 level with some of the sub-scales. Abstractedness has been a common correlated factor with other scales. Reasoning, dominance, sensitivity and vigilance do not show any relationship with other scales. The results reveal that within subscales of EII-mm’s Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. All four sub-scales show a strong relationship with each other. Results comparing personality factors and emotional intelligence show that there is a significant correlation between personality and emotional intelligence at 0.01 level. Samples have exhibited a strong relationship between personality and emotional intelligence. For both male and female participants, the significance level of correlation between 16PF and EII-MM is 0.01. There is a significant relationship between male and female samples between their personality and emotional intelligence. The results showed that in the area of the participants’ age level, the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. The study highlights that personality and emotional intelligence are strongly related to each other.