Hemispheric Dominance, Thinking Style Preferences and Emotional Intelligence among College Students

INTRODUCTIONA glance over the present society makes it clear that there have been rapid changes of vast magnitude in all spheres of life in the past decade. Swami Vivekananda once said, "Education is the manifestation of perfection already reached in man". In order to adjust with societal changes, it becomes essential that the education system should be changed accordingly. Our existing educational system focuses primarily on the marks obtained by students. While this trend can be considered reasonable to certain extent, the importance of education for moulding an individual as a whole has been neglected.Need for the studyThe education system predominantly portrays the importance of rote memory and little or no importance is given either to development of emotional intelligence or thinking preferences of students. The wholistic education which focuses on left brain and the right brain is often neglected. The consequence of this can lead to underachievement, lack of motivation, violence, substance abuse and suicide ideation and other mental health problems among students. If Swami Vivekananda's words are to come true, then a new pattern of education needs to evolve which is relevant to student's abilities and provide learning they can use to improve themselves continuously. Whole brain dominance in teaching strategies while educating the students will improve the standards and provide a sense of academic well being. Further, research has indicated that including emotional intelligence skills, developing combination of different thinking styles has enhanced the students' overall performance and personality development (Boyle and Dunn, 1998; Dunn, Sklar, Beaudry, Bruno, 1990). OBJECTIVESThe objectives of the present study were as follows:1. To study the relationship between hemispheric dominance and emotional intelligence among college students.2. To find out the relationship between hemispheric dominance and various thinking style preference among college students.3. To study the relationship between various thinking style preference and emotional intelligence among college students.4. To find out the difference between arts and science and professional stream students in their hemispheric dominance, thinking style preference and emotional intelligence.5. To identify the most preferred thinking style among college students.Conceptualization of the variables under studyHemispheric Dominance - is the "normal tendency for one of the two sides of the brain or cerebral hemisphere to have a stronger control over some functions of the mind and the body, irrespective of the cognitive nature of the task" (Sackheim, Greenberg, Weinman, Gur, Hungerbuhler and Geschwind, 1984). Thinking Style Preference - is " how you gather and process information, how you use that information to make and act on decisions, even what kind of information you gravitate towards". (Harrison and Bramson, 1977). Emotional Intelligence - is "the ability to perceive and express emotions, assimilate emotions in thought, understanding and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in self and others". (Mayer, Salovery and Caruso, 2000). Methodology - Literature review and Hypotheses DevelopmentLeary, Reithy and Brown (2009) found evidence of a significant and positive relationship between the feeling dominance associated with right brain, thinking style and interpersonal emotional intelligence scale. In line with this the following hypothesis was formulated:Hypothesis 1 - there would be significant and positive relationship between hemispheric dominance and emotional intelligence among college students.Regis (2008) study indicated that boys were better than girls in their cerebral dominance. In line with this finding the following hypothesis was formulated:Hypothesis 2 - there would be significant relationship between hemispheric dominance and various thinking style preference viz. …