Abstract:

This study aims to characterize the social intelligence of Portuguese students attending the 8th grade, as well as to analyze the differences in the social intelligence results by sex and age. Participants were 540 students (264, 48.9% boys and 276, 51.1% girls) with ages between 11 and 15 years old (M=13.22; SD=.586), attending the 8th grade at public schools in northern, central and southern Portugal. Adolescents were administered the Cognitive Scale of Social Intelligence (CSSI; Candeias, 2007), a performance and self-report instrument aimed at the diagnosis of capabilities, experience and motivation to solve interpersonal problems and situations of young adolescents between 12 and 17 years. Results indicate that participants have average levels of social intelligence, similar to the mean value of the T scores. There are statistically significant differences between boys and girls in the Problem Solving, Self-confidence and Familiarity indices, favouring girls, as well as, statistically significant differences between students aged up to 13 years and above in the Familiarity index, in favor of the younger ones. An interaction effect between gender and age was also found in the Familiarity index. Implications are drawn to the development of educational and career interventions that promote self-knowledge, knowledge of the academic and professional world, the development of personal and career goals, and social problem-solving.

This paper was supported by the Study “Career and citizenship development: Personal and contextual conditions for ethical questioning of life-career projects” financed by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, and Programa Compete (PTDC/CPE-CED/098896/2008).

Keywords:

Social intelligence, adolescents, 8th grade, sex, age.