Cognitive dissonance and its relationship to emotional intelligence

Abstract

The current study aimed to identify the level of cognitive dissonance among students of Al al-Bayt University in Jordan in terms of gender, academic specialization and level, and to reveal the predictive ability of emotional intelligence for cognitive dissonance. The study sample consisted of 235 male and female students from Al al-Bayt University. The Cognitive Dissonance Scale (Al-Adamat & Atoum, 2022) and the Emotional Intelligence Scale (Al-Alwan, 2011) were used to collect the data. The findings of this study indicated that the level of cognitive dissonance was average. Statistically significant differences were identified in the level of cognitive dissonance in terms of gender, higher scores being reported by males. Also, there were significant differences in terms of academic specialization, in the favor of humanities major, and academic level, in the favor of the second, third and fourth year students. In addition, findings revealed that emotional intelligence explained 9.3% of the cognitive dissonance variance.