Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to assess and control emotions in oneself and others and also use this information in ongoing coping methods. Emotional intelligence is known to have an effect on the success rate of an individual as well as job performance and satisfaction. Though contradictory, emotional intelligence is supposed to have multiple factors affecting it. The aim of this study was to investigate whether Shiraz University of Medical Sciences has an effect on the emotional intelligence of its medical students and also whether the students’ emotional intelligence had a relationship with their gender, hometown, and application exam rank or cumulative grade point average. Junior and senior medical students were approached from Autumn (2016) until winter 2017 and asked if they would fill out the Persian translation of TEIQue-SF questionnaire. They were also asked to inform us about their gender, educational region, cumulative grade point average, and Konkoor rank. The data was later analyzed by SPSS ver. 22. A significant difference was found between emotional intelligence of junior and senior medical students. No significant difference was found between emotional intelligence of male and female participants and there was no relation between emotional intelligence and Konkoor rank, cumulative grade point average, and educational region. The results showed that medical education has a negative effect the emotional intelligence. Males and females in this study had the same emotional intelligence that suggests the social effects on emotional intelligence. Also, the net effect of hometown and culture was not significant enough to influence emotional intelligence. As we analyzed the relationship of emotional intelligence and cumulative grade point average, it was concluded that the academic success of the students which is based on their scores is not related to their emotional intelligence.

Background

Emotion is any kind of mental experience which has a high gravity that causes mental disturbance and also has a high pleasure content; either pleasant or unpleasant [1]. These experiences themselves are results of deeper processes and so they can influence perception and social communications [2]. Intelligence is the ability of an individual to function purposefully, think wisely and communicate with the surrounding which can be summed into the ability to solve cognitive difficulties and is divided into multiple subgroups e.g. linguistic, logical, visual, etc. [3–۵]. Emotional intelligence1 is an individual’s ability to assess, express and control emotions and feelings in him or her and others, differentiate among them and use them into coping methods [3]. EI can be studied into 3 categories: 1. Assessment and expression of emotions: – in oneself, which happens in a verbal and a deeper non-verbal level. – in others, which happens in a non-verbal and a deeper level named “Empathy” which some say it is the most important aspect of EI. 2. Balancing of emotions in oneself and others. 3. Application of emotions into dealing with complex situations [3]. The EI itself consists of two major domains: 1 Trait EI, which is the individual’s point of view about himself and his abilities and personalities and is measured through self-report tests. 2 Ability EI, which is the individual’s ability to perceive others’ emotions and regulate oneself and others’ emotions and is measured through maximum-performance tests [6,7]. EI interacts with many aspects of medical practice like diagnostics relationship with patients, teamwork, communication, empathy, etc. so it can be used to improve clinical and educational aspects of medicine [8]. Also EI is effective in dealing with stressful situations of the medical career in addition to job satisfaction and improving performance [9–۱۳]. According to the studies performed on EI and the factors affecting it, despite their contradictions such as studies of Marzuki et al., Waddar et al., Rauf et al., Imran et al., Mckinley, Naeem et al. and Patel, it can be suggested that factors like age, gender, birth place and living place, financial and educational situation of the family, individual’s level of education, university and even living in a home instead of dormitory might have an effect on EI [11,14–۲۱].