Role of Family Structure in Emotional Intelligence among Adolescents

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21337830

Abhimanyu Ramkisan Dhormare (Department of Psychology, Babuji Avhad Mahavidyalaya, Pathardi, Ahilyanagar, Maharashtra)

The family is recognized as an environmental factor that plays a crucial role in the construction of personality and the holistic development of a human being. The present study was conducted with the aim of exploring the role of family structure in emotional intelligence and its sub-scales, and to examine the potential structure of family and gender differences in emotional intelligence (EI) among 116 adolescents (15-16 years) from Pathardi, India, using a correlational and regression design. The sample comprised 47 joint families (boys-26 & girls-21) and 69 nuclear families (boys-37 & girls-32) adolescents. All adolescent participants were studying in the 9th and 10th classes. The Emotional Intelligence Scale (Singh & Narain, 2014) was used to measure overall emotional intelligence and its subscales, such as understanding emotions (UE), understanding motivation (UM), empathy (E), and handling relations (HR). Data were analysed using SPSS 20.0, which included descriptive statistics, t-tests, and simple linear regression. The results revealed that adolescents in joint families exhibited higher EI, particularly in terms of understanding motivation, empathy, and handling relations, compared to those in nuclear families. Family structure significantly predicted emotional intelligence, accounting for 32.8% of the variance. Additionally, boys demonstrated higher emotional intelligence than girls. The findings suggest that joint family environments may foster emotional intelligence development, underscoring the significance of family type (structure) in shaping adolescents’ emotional intelligence.