A research project which began in November in the School of Psychology at the University of East Anglia (UEA) will look at whether emotional intelligence helps professionals in emotionally demanding jobs such as social work to perform well and whether it helps them to manage their anxiety and stress. 

Dr Laura Biggart, Lecturer in Social Science Research in the School of Psychology, has been awarded £168,000 from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), through its Future Research Leaders grant programme, to conduct the study. With advisors Professor Philip Corr from the School of Psychology and Professor Gillian Schofield from the School of Social Work, this three year interdisciplinary project will investigate whether something called emotional intelligence helps social workers to do a better job and whether it also helps them to manage their anxiety and stress better. 

Emotional intelligence gives an indication of how good someone is at understanding how emotions work, recognising emotions in themselves, recognising emotions in others, managing their own emotions and managing emotions in others. 

If emotional intelligence does help both performance and managing anxiety and stress, Dr Biggart wants to see if training in emotional intelligence skills for social workers makes a difference to their performance and anxiety levels at work over the course of a year. The results of the research could have implications for the recruitment, training and support of social workers. 

Dr Biggart suggests that public sector workers such as social workers, teachers or nurses are in professions where good interpersonal skills, such as listening and considering other people’s feelings, are very important for the quality of service that they deliver. Just as important is the ability for workers to manage their own anxiety and stress, otherwise they may not perform as well as they need to in the high risk environments in which they work. 

“The research is important because social workers' stress is known to be an issue that affects performance and also makes individual social workers unhappy to the point where they might give up their job,” explained Dr Biggart. “When this happens, as well as the cost in terms of personal distress and loss of skills and experience, it also costs money to employers and taxpayers to train and recruit new social workers.  .

“If emotional intelligence skills are important to carry out this challenging job, it is essential that these skills are adequately assessed at the stage of recruitment, into training and work, so that resources are targeted towards recruiting and retaining professionals who are psychologically suited to the emotional demands of social work.”