Gender differences in the influence of emotional intelligence on the situation selection among college students / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the effect of emotional intelligence (EI) in situation selection among college students under different gender.Methods:Using the emotional intelligence scale to test 416 students from an university in Chengdu, and 42 students (high emotional intelligence high EI) and 42 students (low emotional intelligence low EI) were selected as preselected subjects according to their scores. A total of 40 subjects, including 20 in the high EI group (10 males and 10 females) and 20 in the low EI group (10 males and 10 females), were selected to participate in the experiment by excluding subjects who gave up the experiment and taking into account both genders. Using the emotion picture selection task, the eye movement data of the subjects watching the situation picture and the reaction time of selecting the situation picture again were recorded respectively.The R language Bruce R package was used for three-factor analysis of variance. If there was interaction effect, the post simple effect analysis was carried out.Results:(1) About the eye-movement data before picture selection, the females with higher EI scores had significantly greater saccade amplitude when viewing negative pictures than the females with lower EI scores ((2.79±1.58)°, (2.46±0.85)°, F(1, 36)=7.39, P=0.007), and the males with high EI scores had less saccade amplitude when viewing all pictures than the males with low EI scores ((2.00±0.83)°, (2.17±0.85)°, F(1, 36)=6.58, P=0.011). The females with high EI scores had a significantly faster saccade velocity than the females with low EI scores((98.93±35.60)°/s, (92.81±20.56)°/s, F(1, 36)=8.39, P=0.004), and the males with high EI scores had a significantly slower saccade velocity than the males with low EI scores ((79.35±18.55)°/s, (85.11±18.53)°/s, F(1, 36)=6.70, P=0.01). The females with high EI scores had a significantly shorter fixation duration for negative emotional pictures than the females with low EI scores ((2 654.7±530.85) ms, (2 877.87±205.44) ms, F(1, 36)=30.38, P<0.001), and the males with high EI scores had a significantly shorter fixation duration for positive emotional pictures than the males with low EI scores ((2 839.74±405.34) ms, (2 932.83±228.07) ms, F(1, 36)=9.46, P=0.002). About the fixation number, females gazed at the negative pictures significantly less than males ((9.43±2.31), (10.24±2.05), F(1, 36)=21.49, P<0.01). (2) In terms of choice response times, the females with high EI scores chose to look back at positive neutral pictures with shorter reaction times than the females with low EI scores (positive (726.79±329.12) ms, (924.51±758.34) ms, F(1, 36)=9.07, P=0.003; neutral (783.46±543.54)ms, (962.44±463.57)ms, F(1, 36)=6.23, P=0.013), and the males with high EI scores chose to look back with longer reaction times than the males with low EI scores, but the difference was only significant when viewing neutral pictures ((1 092.29±905.52) ms, (871.27±461.68) ms, F(1, 36)=9.07, P=0.002). Conclusion:The influence of emotional intelligence on the process of situation selection is different by gender the higher the emotional intelligence of female college students, the faster they can process negative emotional information in the process of situation selection, and the broader and more dispersed the processing patterns; the higher the emotional intelligence of male college students, the faster they can process positive emotional information in the process of situation selection, and the more concentrated the processing patterns.