The Relationships between Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, and Academic Performance during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The adversities inflicted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic placed university students at a disadvantage in their pursuit of academic achievement. Previous studies demonstrated that emotional intelligence (EI) and resilience are related to how people react when faced with stress-inducing circumstances (Armstrong et al., 2011; Bermejo et al., 2021; Cleary et al., 2019). Given these findings, the present study aimed to address how EI and resilience relate to university students’ academic performance during semesters challenged by the pandemic. Amongst other hypotheses investigated in the study, it was hypothesized that EI and resilience would be related to academic performance, and that students’ overall experience with COVID-19 would be associated with their EI, resilience, and academic performance. To test these hypotheses, a variety of questionnaires were utilized to measure participants’ EI, resilience, GPA, along with their experiences with the pandemic. Results showed that EI was positively correlated with academic performance, but resilience and academic performance on the other hand, were unrelated. Nonetheless, partial support was found for the hypothesis that students who experienced COVID-19 more negatively will score lower in EI, resilience, and GPA. The study provided important information on the relationships between EI, resilience, and academic performance during the global outbreak. However, future research is necessary to understand whether EI and resilience directly influence how students perform in the midst of an unprecedented adversity.