USING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO ASSESS STUDENT BEHAVIOR

School, which is generally recognized as a place for adolescents to learn socially appropriate behavior, has become an institution whereby interpersonal disputes between teachers and students have increasingly resulted in aggravated assault and the use of lethal weapons. Surveys of high school students reported that a startlingly high proportion of them are unaware of effective methods for solving social conflict. Emotional intelligence, according to Goleman (1995), is the ability one has to monitor and regulate emotions effectively and appropriately, including the emotions displayed by others. Emotion management, a component of emotional intelligence, is the ability one has to handle feelings so they are socially appropriate (Goleman, 1996). Many students grow up with below average interpersonal skills for dealing with others in a socially appropriate manner that puts them at risk for social functioning. The purpose of this study was to identify the percent of male students (n=50), 12 to 14 years of age, who may be deficient in their ability to manage emotion strategically in various social contexts. The Juvenile Emotion Management Scale (JEMS), a twenty-five item self-report measure of the emotion management construct, was used to assess students ’ ability to manage emotion. The results of the JEMS identified 48 percent of the sample scored 105 and below. A score of 105 and below suggest deficiencies in one’s ability to manage emotional reactions to stressors or problems found in various social contexts. The areas of deficiencies for students who scored 105 and below in this sample were in their ability to: alter their emotional response to provocative situations; manage feelings concerning what is or isn’t appropriate to a given social situation; and acknowledge an inappropriate feeling and repair it. These findings could be instrumental in designing interventions for those students who need to either reduce socially inappropriate emotion or induce socially appropriate emotions in themselves for social succes