Author(s)

M. T. Sánchez-Núñez^1*, C. Rubio Medina¹, N. García Rubio²

¹Faculty of Education, Department of Psychology, University of Castilla La Mancha, Albacete, Spain.
²Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Castilla La Mancha, Albacete, Spain.

In the field of intelligence, parental beliefs about their children’s intelligence can influence their performance (Beyer, 1999). In a particular way, this phenomenon is known as the Pygmalion effect (Furnham & Bunclark, 2006). In the area of Emotional Intelligence (EI), the research is scarce. Therefore, our objective is to study if the perceptive emotional adjustment differs according to the sex of the parents, and also to examine if this is reflected in the predictive power of the EI of the children. The sample consisted of 1005 subjects, including 335 students from the University of Castilla la Mancha and their respective fathers and mothers. According to the results of this study, we can conclude that emotional abilities of children perceived by their parents are quite close to those provided by children themselves. However, the mothers, in particular, were able to report these EI abilities more closely, showing, in comparison to fathers, a more accurate emotional adjustment with relation to their children’s EI. The prediction of the EI of children varies according to the EI factor we are referring to, as well as with the sex of the parents.

Self-Report Emotional Intelligence, Gender Differences, Perceptive Emotional Adjustment, Parents, Children

Sánchez-Núñez, M. , Medina, C. and Rubio, N. (2018) Gender Differences in Perceptive Emotional Adjustment of Parents on Their Children’s Emotional Intelligence. Psychology, 9, 124-143. doi: 10.4236/psych.2018.91009.