EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS CONNECTION TO ENGINEERING DESIGN COGNITIVE PROCESSES

The Center of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing and Production (CAMP) at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) has long strived to develop the professional engineer in the co-curricular. This work presents the findings in a pilot study where the cognitive design process of a group of engineering students (N=37) is compared to the Emotional Intelligence scores of the same group of students. The demographics of the participants include freshman to senior students and include seven female engineering students. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, understand, and express emotions constructively. The EQi-2.0 developed by Multi-Health Systems based on the BarOn EQ-I model was used to evaluate the emotional intelligence of the group. In this descriptive study, we collected the verbal protocols from 37 students and completed an analysis of their engineering design process. The verbal report of the design process of each subject was gathered by having each student speak aloud what they were thinking as they solve the design problem. Audio recordings were then transcribed, segmented and coded by a predefined coding scheme. The coding scheme followed was from the work of Cynthia Atman consisting of eight activities: problem definition, information gathering, ideas generation, modeling, feasibility, evaluation, decision-making, communication, and other. Data collected from the verbal protocol and the EQi assessments were then compared to determine any relationship between the design process and EQi score. Data from the verbal protocol was tested for normality using the Shapiro-Wilk test; a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed for the normal data pairs and the nonparametric measure of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was computed for the data pairs that tested non-normal.
Results show a moderate relationship between emotional expression and the percentage of time spent modeling (r(35)=0.390, p=0.017). Emotional expression is the ability to express one’s feelings either verbally or nonverbally. Modeling is time spent describing how to build the design, how to produce it, determining dimensions, or performing calculations. This is then balanced by a negative correlation between emotional expression and the percentage of time spent generating ideas (r(35)=-0.339, p=0.040). Generating ideas is the process of brainstorming solution candidates. This gives some indication that students with a high emotional expression scores may spend more time modeling than generating ideas when solving a design problem. Interpersonal relationship is the ability to establish and maintain relationships. Students scoring high in this area tend to spend less time generating ideas as well (r(35)=-0.326, p=0.049). Students scoring high in the problem solving scale, defined as the ability to use a systematic approach to solve problems when emotions are involved, tended to spend the least amount of time on the design problem (rs(35)=-0.360, p=0.029).