Emotional Intelligence and Strategies for Coping With Stress Among Music School Students in the Context of Visual Art and General Education Students

This article addresses the psychosocial functioning of young people with artistic abilities. The study involved 354 students from music, art, and general education schools, ages 16 to 19 years. The research hypothesis was that the diversity of situations experienced by students studying at different types of schools could generate differences in their socio-emotional functioning, focusing on features such as emotional intelligence and coping strategies. The variables connected with emotional intelligence were acceptance, empathy, controlling, and understanding, and the variables connected with coping strategies were task-, emotion-, and avoidance-orientation. The results indicated that music students differed significantly from art students in the level of their emotional intelligence in general results and on the Acceptance scale; they are more aware of the positive and negative emotions that they feel, express their emotions more easily, and can effectively use their knowledge about the emotions they experience. Moreover, in stressful situations, music students exhibit task-oriented coping strategies significantly more often and are significantly less likely to engage in substitute actions than are art students.