Adoption of a Serious Game in the Developing of Emotional Intelligence Skills

Abstract

Emotional intelligence is intrinsically associated with the ability to understand, manage, and express feelings and deal with other people’s emotions. This competence is essential for the formation, development, and maintenance of personal and professional relationships. Furthermore, emotional intelligence can be extensively worked out and developed over time, which allows each individual to become a better professional. Nevertheless, the perception that higher education students have about the importance of emotional intelligence remains residual and there are few contexts that allow them to develop emotional intelligence skills. In this sense, this study proposes the use of a serious game to assess and develop emotional intelligence skills in the context of an entrepreneurship discipline attended by multidisciplinary students from the courses of management and computer engineering. The performance of students is measured and discussed considering a mixed methods approach. The findings indicate the existence of a correlation between the player’s emotional intelligence skills and his performance in the game, and this occurrence is common to students regardless of their course, gender, age, and number of years of professional experience. The study also explores the importance of emotional intelligence considering the distinct profile of students.