UC Irvine

In today’s diverse college student populations, mental health problems are increasingly prevalent, complex, and unmet. Further exacerbating the matter, the enduring COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted the quintessential college experience with massive psychological and physical disruptions. Undergraduate students of color are disproportionately impacted by the influx of pandemic and sociopolitical stressors. This mental health disparity calls for accessible and culturally adaptive interventions to help students develop greater emotional competence and resilience. Building on emotional intelligence theory, I designed and delivered an equitable social and emotional learning program that equips students with the skills, knowledge, and attitude to adaptively manage their emotions. I used a quasi-experimental design and replicated the program, Emotional Intelligence for School and Job Success, six times across the winter, spring, and fall quarters in 2020. This enabled me to carry out three studies. In study 1, program participants showed significantly greater improvement in emotional awareness and acceptance than students in the control group. Students in the intervention group also reported an increase in positive emotions experienced in college, despite maintaining similar levels of negative emotions. In study 2, I examined the adaptive roles emotion and emotional competence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. I demonstrated that positive emotion fully mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and negative emotion and partially mediated the relationship between self-compassion and negative emotions. I found that, during the pandemic, female students and students with upper-class-standing reported significantly lower college well-being than male students and students with lower-class-standing. In study 3, I assessed the effectiveness of my intervention during the pandemic and found that students in the intervention group demonstrated significant improvements in emotional intelligence and adaptive coping behaviors. These findings suggest that Emotional Intelligence for School and Job Success can accessibly and equitably help students build adaptive social and emotional skills, beliefs, and behaviors.