Predictive validity of Perceived Emotional Intelligence on nursing students' self-concept

This study examines the role of Perceived Emotional Intelligence, in nursing students' self-concept, controlling personality dimensions. Self-image is a cognitive component of the self that contains images of who we are, what we want to be and what we express and wish to express to others. Likewise, there is also an emotional and assessable component known as self-esteem. For a profession that requires not only technical expertise but also psychologically oriented care, knowledge about the self in nursing would be crucial to further development and growth of the profession. However, the role of emotions in the formation of nursing professionals has been scarcely studied. One hundred and thirty five undergraduates from nursing studies voluntarily participated in our study. They completed a questionnaire that comprises several scales. Our results show positive correlations between the Clarity and Emotional Repair components of Perceived Emotional Intelligence and all scales of the self-concept scale. Furthermore, we found positive relationships between the Extraversion and Accountability components of personality with almost all the scales of the self-concept and negative relationships with personality and neuroticism components of the self-concept. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.