Emotional intelligence and creativity in first- and second-year primary school children

The objective of this study was to describe emotional intelligence and creativity in Primary Education schoolchildren. These two constructs were evaluated in first- and second-year Primary Education schoolchildren who went to different schools in the Spanish Autonomous Community of Aragon. The study sample was formed by 631 schoolchildren (313 boys and 318 girls) aged 6-7 years. The results showed differences in emotional intelligence for gender, but the differences obtained for creativity were not significant. Finally, a cluster analysis was done to analyse how the different variables were grouped according to clusters, where differences were found for creativity levels, but not for emotional intelligence levels. This research indicated how emotional intelligence did not influence our pupils'' creativity as the cluster with the highest creativity level had the lowest level of elaboration (quantity of details in responses). This indicated that, despite being creative, these pupils were concise and pragmatic when responding. This situation should make schools reflect on what type of students we are training. As future research lines, work should be done with programmes that include creativity and emotional intelligence, and that investigate the way positive emotions and creativity can be combined