Abstract:
Emotional intelligence is a powerful psychological factor of every athlete, and it is
considered a determinant of sports performance. Thus, the aim of the present study
was to examine the relationship between the emotional intelligence of high-performance
athletes on emotional self-awareness, emotional expression, emotional awareness of others,
emotional reasoning, emotional self-management, and emotional self-control. A
quantitative inquiry method was applied to conduct the study. The field survey of highperformance
pool athletes in Sri Lanka generated 45 (n = 45) valid responses (response
rate = 75%). Pre-tested two standardized questionnaires captured the responses on
a five-point Likert scale. One questionnaire was “Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory”
to measure the emotional intelligence variables, and the other one was the
“Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale” to measure the emotional intelligence of highperformance
athletes. Descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis techniques were
used to analyze the collected data while hypotheses testing was based on the result
of the multiple regression analysis. The gathered data were analyzed by considering a
confidence interval of 0.95. The results indicated that emotional intelligence of highperformance
athletes has a positive relationship with emotional reasoning (B = 0.318;
p < 0.003), emotional self-control (B = 0.301; p < 0.002), and emotional awareness of
others (B = 0.282; p < 0.003). The implications of the findings were not addressed by
the previous studies. Generally, the findings of the study will be beneficial to all sports
organizations and sport-related personalities to identify the importance of improving
training and development programs and to update the knowledge and good moral
principles which are a good fit for the athletes who want to increase their performance.
