Emotional Intelligence and Personality Traits: A Correlational Study of MYEIT and BFI

The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and the personality traits using Malaysian Youth Emotional Intelligence Test (MYEIT) and Big Five Inventory (BFI). MYEIT is a newly developed measures to meets the need of a reliable instrument to measure EI among Malaysian samples. The dimensions of this newly developed MYEIT are similar to the well known SSEIT and TEIQue and however the items have been designed to suit the Malaysian socio-politics and cultures. Although MYEIT is new instrument but, it’s has the capacity to linked to mainstream scientific models in differential psychology such as Big Five. The finding of this study is shows that there are strong relationships between EI and Big Five, consistent with previous studies. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness strongly correlates with EI, followed by Extraversion, Openness and Neuroticism. Regression analyses further confirm that EI measured by MYEIT is overlap with the higher–order personality dimensions.