Emotional Intelligence and the Honors Student

Over the past decade the construct of emotional intelligence has cap-tured the public imagination and become a hot topic in the popular media. While the extravagant claims for the importance of emotional intel-ligence have little empirical support, evidence has been growing for the existence of the construct. This study is an attempt to relate emotional intel-ligence to the decision of first-year college students to enroll in an honors program. A measure of emotional intelligence was devised made up of four dif-ferent Likert-type scales measuring different components of the construct. These scales were administered to 72 freshman students at a selective, pri-vate, liberal arts college. All 72 students were eligible for the college’s hon-ors program, but only 44 students chose to be a part of the program. Discriminant analysis confirmed that emotional intelligence, as measured by these 4 scales, was a significant predictor of the decision to enroll in the college honors program, predicting honors program involvement 76 % o