The Role of Physical / Emotional Abuse and Neglect, Perceived Parental Style and Self-esteem on Emotional Intelligence among 4th and 5th Grade Primary School Children

Intelligence has several mental functions such as perceiving, memorizing, learning, thinking, abstracting and adapting to new conditions (Aydin, Leblebici, Arslan, Kilic & Oktem, 2005). Emotional intelligence was described as the attend to, ability to, understand and regulate emotions to lead thought and behavior (Salovey & Mayer, 1990 as cited in Alegre, 2011). In the current study, we examined the associations of physical / emotional abuse and neglect, perceived parental style and self-esteem with emotional intelligence. A total of 250 4th and 5th grade primary school children were recruited for the study from twelve public primary school in Northern Cyprus and at home based by using personal contacts. Participants filled four questionnaires; Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Scale – Child and Adolescent Form, Child Abuse Scale, Parental Attitude Scale and Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. It was found that self-esteem and perceived authoritative attitude of parents significantly predicted emotional intelligence of 4th and 5th grade primary school children. Emotional abuse and perceived authoritarian attitude of parents were significant negatively correlated with emotional intelligence. However, emotional neglect and also, age, gender, mother education level and father education level were found to have absence of prediction role on emotional intelligence. In addition, physical abuse and neglect were not assessed in this current study because of their reliability analysis’ results. Based on these findings, further recommendations were presented. Keywords: Emotional intelligence, physical / emotional abuse, physical / emotional neglect, authoritative / authoritarian parental style, self-esteem.