A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement

Abstract

The notion of emotional intelligence and its association with academic outcomes have been a field of intense interest for quite a long time. The current study’s aim is to explore the effect level of emotional intelligence on academic achievement by using a meta-analytic approach. To this end, SCOPUS, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Academic Search Ultimate databases were searched for relevant studies published between January 2015 and June 2020. The correlation coefficient r was determined as the criterion for the articles examining the link between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. After a systematic review, a total of 20 studies with 6057 participants were included in the study for the further steps of the meta-analysis conducted through Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software. Findings revealed that the selected studies were heterogeneous and, accordingly, random-effects model was applied. The results showed that the overall effect size of emotional intelligence on academic achievement was .73, which corresponds to the medium size effect. In other words, high emotional intelligence was found to be related to higher academic achievement. The findings of the study confirm the prevalent assumptions and salient findings in the related literature, suggesting that emotional intelligence has a positive impact on academic achievement.