The relationships between emotional intelligence and perceptions of faculty incivility in higher education – Do men and women differ?

Awareness of the concepts of incivility and emotional intelligence (EI) and of their relevance to higher education has grown in recent years. Incivility has been widely linked to deviant behaviours that are known to negatively impact upon students, while EI has been linked, among other things, to pro-social behaviours. However, the links between EI and faculty incivility (FI), and in particular uncivil behaviours perpetrated by faculty towards students in academic settings, remain unmapped. Similarly, the role of gender with respect to such links has yet to be examined. Thus, the current study examined the relationships between EI and perceived FI towards students as a function of gender. The research was conducted among 210 undergraduate students from one major college in Israel. High scores on the Self-Emotion Appraisal (SEA) branch of EI were correlated with reduced FI perceptions among female students, but not among male students. However, the links between general EI scores and perceived FI toward students did not indicate any gender effect. The findings extend research on the personal resources targets bring to uncivil encounters and highlight a gendered pathway through which emotional awareness shapes students' perceptions of faculty behaviour.