Alienation and Emotional Intelligence among Male and Female College Students

Alienation refers to the condition in which a person is cut off from his own real or natural self, from reality and from the society and other fellow beings. Alienation may result in undesirable learner outcomes, academic failure, apathy towards learning process, and a host of psychological and emotional problems as revealed in the available literature. E.I. might be defined as the set of skills people use to read, understand and react effectively to emotional signals by others and oneself. EI assists an individual in handling novel situations by understanding other's and their own emotions about the situation and managing them and hence move towards effective adjustment in life especially under novel situations that a college entrant has to face. The objectives of the study were to assess and compare alienation and E.I. among male and female college students and to explore the relationship between alienation and E.I. among male and female college students. Student Alienation Scale (Sharma, 1988) and Emotional Intelligence Inventory (Mangal & Mangal, 2006) were used. Data was obtained from 101 boys and 100 girls studying in first year and hostel residents. Both boys and girls display similar levels of alienation. No difference existed between boys and girls on any of the areas of E.I. All the areas of E.I. were more highly correlated with alienation among boys than among girls.