Relationship among Mental Health, Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence in Male and Female Adults

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship among mental health, emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence from a gender perspective. A sample of 150 adults within the age bracket of 30 to 40 years, with equal number of males and females, administered the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (King, 2008). On the basis of their scores on the inventory, high and low spiritual intelligence (SI) groups were formed. Persons scoring above the median and those having a score equal to or less than the median constituted the high (N=73; 37 males, 36 females) and low (N=77; 38 males, 39 females) SI groups respectively. All the subjects were administered the Emotional Intelligence Scale (Hyde, Pathe and Dhar, 1971) and the Mental Health Inventory (Jagdish and Srivastava, 1983). Statistical analysis of the data with 2(gender) X 2(SI) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of gender only for emotional intelligence, not for mental health. Thus, while males and females were comparable in terms of mental health, a significant gender difference favouring the males was evident. Significant main effect of spiritual intelligence for both emotional intelligence and mental health suggests that persons who are higher in spiritual intelligence are emotionally more intelligent with better mental health. Regressional analyses revealed that mental health in males is predicted by emotional intelligence variables while in females spiritual intelligence contributes more to their mental health. Results are discussed in the context of Indian cultural values.

Keywords: Emotion, Emotional intelligence, Mental health, Spiritual intelligence