The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Predicting Career Indecisiveness among College Students

Abstract

The study examined the role of emotional intelligence, personality traits and positive and negative affect in relation to career indecisiveness. The primary purpose was to investigate whether emotional intelligence could predict a significant proportion of incremental variance in career indecisiveness beyond the variance accounted for by the personality traits and positive and negative affect among male and female undergraduate university students across Colleges of Engineering and Education at a research one university in Southwest, USA. Data were collected from 582 participants who completed four survey questionnaires including the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form (TEIQue), Emotional and Personality-Related Career Decision-Making Difficulties Scale-Short Form (EPCD), Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and the Big Five Inventory (BFI).

Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted and the results revealed that emotional intelligence added a significant percentage of incremental variance in career indecisiveness compared to the variances explained by the personality traits and affectivity. The study also sought to investigate the moderation effect of gender and academic major on the prediction of career indecisiveness by emotional intelligence. A moderated moderation analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction effect of gender and academic major on the prediction of career indecisiveness by one of the emotional intelligence dimensions, self-control. According to the results, significant proportions of variance in career indecisiveness were predicted by self-control for men in engineering, men in education, and women in education. However, for women in engineering, self-control could not significantly predict career indecisiveness. The results were thoroughly discussed, implications for practice were explained and future research ideas were suggested.