Effects of emotional intelligence education on interpersonal conflict and work-family facilitation in an industrial company’s staff

Abstract

The main question of the current study is to consider how much education of emotional intelligence is effective in reducing interpersonal conflicts and increasing job-family facilitation. In this test experiment, a sample of 40 people of District 5 Gas Transmission Operations staff that were selected by the simple random method, were randomly divided into two groups of test (20 people) and control (20 people). To measure variables, Jex and Spector’s Interpersonal Conflict Scale and Holbrook’s work-family facilitation scale have been used. The study is a variant of field experiment with pretest and control post-test. Participants were put under emotional intelligence education for ten 120-minute sessions. After applying interference, once again the amount of interpersonal conflict and work-family facilitation of subject and control groups was measured. To analyze data, SPSS 18 and multivariable covariance analysis was employed. Findings showed that a significant difference is dominant between interpersonal conflicts of groups, which means that education of emotional intelligence resulted in reduced interpersonal conflict. However, no significant relationship was observed for the variable of work-family facilitation. This study showed that a high level of interpersonal conflict, and effectiveness of emotional intelligence criteria and the information related to emotional intelligence in work-place can have a considerable effect on criterion.