Emotional Intelligence and Achievement Motivation: A Study of International Students in Selected Chinese Universities

Identifying antecedents of achievement motivation is important because they are critical to students' academic success, life and college satisfaction, and student retention. Previous research has identified a relationship between intellectual abilities and achievement motivation. However, it is still unknown whether relatively newer dimensions of intelligence such as emotional intelligence might influence achievement motivation especially among a sample of international college students. This study examined the relationship between Emotional intelligence (EI) and (academic) achievement motivation (AM) among (international) college students in China. A sample of 204 international students in selected Chinese universities was made to complete Schutte’s Emotional Intelligence questionnaire and achievement motives questionnaires. The Pearson correlation and regression was used to analyse the data. The results indicated that overall emotional intelligence and overall achievement motivation were positively correlated. All the subscales of EI with the exception of utilising emotions (UE), also significantly correlated with overall AM. Overall EI also correlated significantly with both subscales of AM, (i.e., hope of success and fear of failure) and all the subscales of EI also correlated positively with hope of success. Thus, students’ emotional intelligence was positively associated with their achievement motivation. The findings have implications for (International) college students’ counseling, recruitment and training in emotional intelligence development.