Emotional intelligence/competence and the principle of mindfulness. Analogous or different concepts?

  • Roland Drews
  • Katja Boehm
  • Wilfried Belschner
Keywords: emotional intelligence, emotional competence, mindfulness

Abstract

Psychology as a scientific discipline contains a range of concepts, models and theories. Based on this background it seemed to be useful to assess the concepts of “emotional intelligence / competence” and “mindfulness” in order to investigate whether these concepts overlap and to see whether the terminologically claimed independence of those concepts can sustain an empirical assessment. For this investigation and online questionnaire EIKA (emotional intelligence / competence mindfulness tool) was developed. It consists of 79 items, each one of which was extracted from 4 established, topically relevant instruments. The data from a total sample of 323 participants was analyzed. For the factor-analytical assessment of the items measuring emotional intelligence / competence and mindfulness one main overriding factor was identified. Thus, the claimed independence of both concepts in psychometric tests is no longer sustainable. Significant as well as highly significant correlations between a total of 7 factors were found, which were then confirmed by Chi-square tests.

Author Biographies

Roland Drews

Dipl.-Psych., was born in 1980 and completed his studies of psychology at the University of Oldenburg and received his degree in June 2011, specializing in the field of emotions & communication as well as clinical health psychology and transpersonal psychology (psychology of consciousness).email: roland.drews@gmx.de

Katja Boehm

PhD, MSc, C Psychol. Received her PhD in "Healthcareandotherareasrelatedtomedicine" from the British University of Plymouth in 2006. She has been involved in evidence-based research on complementary and alternative medicine for 12 years. She is co-author of numerous publications and was awarded the TP Gunton Award by the British Medical Association (2002), the German Ernst and Anita Bauer Foundation (2007 and 2008), and the Carsten Foundation in 2009. Since 2009 she has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Medical Theory, Integrative and Anthroposophical Medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke. email: Katja.Boehm@uni-wh.de

Wilfried Belschner

Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil., Dipl.-Psych. *1941. discovered for himself the vision to understand psychology and meditative practice as methods for the exploration of the individually experiencable consciousness in its cultural forms, to explore it as psychology of consciousness and to convey it as transcendence training. 1. chairman of the German College for Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy (DKTP), Scientific Director of the Contact Study Qigong(PTCH). Contact address: Univ.Prof. Dr. Wilfried Belschner, University of Oldenburg, Institute for Psychology, D-26111 Oldenburg. email: wilfried.belschner@uni-oldenburg.de

Published
2012-07-25
Issue
Vol. 18 No. 2 (2012): Issue 2/2012 Subjective experience as a basis for competence
Section
Artikel