Emotional intelligence, personality and self esteem: a comparison of the characteristics among two categories of subjects

The main objective of this cross-sectional study is to determine the differences characteristic between volunteers and non-volunteers in terms of emotional intelligence, self-esteem and personality based on four dimension aspects of personality such as psychoticism, neuroticism, extraversion and lie. Three sets of questionnaire to measure Emotional Intelligence, Self-Esteem and Personality were administered to 276 subjects. One hundred and sixty eight of them were volunteers and one hundred and eight were non-volunteers. Findings showed that there was no significant difference between volunteers and non-volunteers in term of emotional intelligence (t=0.13, p>0.05). As for self-esteem, there was a significant difference between the two groups, it was showed that the non-volunteers scored lower than volunteers in self-esteem, (meaning a higher level of self-esteem) (t=2.67, p<0.05). In term of personality as for psychoticism dimension, it was found a significant differences between these two group (t=9.72, p< 0.05) indicated that volunteers have high in psychoticism scores (tough minded people) than non-volunteers. Whereas, in extraversion there was no significant difference between these two groups. However, volunteers have higher Lie scores than non-volunteer in personality that showed a significant differences between them (t=2.34, p<0.05). Moreover, for neuroticism, it was found a significant differences between these two group which indicated that volunteers have lower Neuroticism scores than non-volunteers (t=-4.70, p< 0.05). The results also showed that emotional intelligence was moderately correlated with neuroticism, psychoticism, and extraversion. The results seem to suggest that people are in volunteer organizations due to having the required personality. It is not the case that voluntary activities act as a channel of their personality. However, on a practical note the assessment of personality in voluntary workers could possibly assist in enhancing for screening potential voluntary workers in order to ensure the effectiveness these services to the society