Comparing the Emotional Intelligence of the Gifted Elementary Students in Science and General Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the emotional intelligence of the gifted elementary students in science and general students. To this study, the emotional intelligence test designed by Moon(1999) was conducted to 111 elementary gifted students and 418 students of general class. The results of this study were as follows: First, the gifted students achieved the highest average in the section II (emotional facilitation of thinking) and in the section III (understanding and analyzing emotion), while general students showed the highest average in the section I (empathy). This presented that the gifted students were in the higher level of meta-emotional intelligence. Second, regarding the gender of the gifted, there was no significant difference in the gifted and general students. But the gifted boys seemed to be higher level than general boy students, while there was no significant difference between two groups in the emotional intelligence of female students.