Emotional Intelligence, Psychological Well-Being, and Self-Control of Athletic and Non Athletic Postgraduates

The article presents differences in scores of components of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control constructs’ in terms of gender, athletic, non-athletic postgraduates, and significant correlations between some components’ of the studied constructs. Only the scores of perception of emotion and using emotions were significantly higher for athletic than non-athletic. The article also presents models for predicting components’ values of psychological well-being.


Introduction
Students' emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control or willpower has been studied quite extensively. However, analogous characteristics of postgraduate students are examined much less frequently, although postgraduate studies are becoming increasingly popular.
Students' choices to study one or another program are determined by a complex of personal characteristics, competencies, among the most important of which, are emotional intelligence, self-control, psychological well-being, gender, and different achievement of athletic performance.
Emotional intelligence is usually defined by two basic concepts: ability (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and traits (Bar-On, 1997). Emotional intelligence, according to Solovey and Mayer (1990), is a complex construct that encompasses the ability to understand, analyze, evaluate, express, manage one's own and others' emotions, and use them in one's life.
In this study, we support Solovey and Maye's (Salovey & Mayer, 1990;Mayer et al., 2016) approach to the emotional intelligence construct and will apply this concept of emotional intelligence based on abilities in our study.
Research has shown the relationships between emotional intelligence and educational achievement (Agnoli et al., 2012), and adapting, and changing situations (Gignac, 2010), to establish and maintain the necessary interpersonal relationships (Nozaki, 2015). A sufficiently high level of emotional intelligence helps to trigger and manage the necessary external emotions (Clark, 2016). Also, emotional intelligence helps maintain positive emotions and evokes a subjective sense of life satisfaction (Huang & Lee, 2019).
The results of a study by Bahrololoum et al. (2012) showed a statistically significant relationship between emotional intelligence and goal-setting, self-confidence, and relaxation skills. Besides, emotions help a person focus their attention on the desired area. Individuals with higher estimates of emotional intelligence are characterized by complex and creative thinking (Murphy & Janeke, 2009), and adaptive coping strategies for stress (Montvilaitė & Antinienė, 2019). Emotional intelligence is related to stress regulation and an athlete's motivation to play sports (Umbago-Jiménez et al., 2019).
The results of a study by Arribas-Galarraga et al. (2017) showed that emotional intelligence can act as a mediator between intrinsic motivation and achievement. Emotion regulation is a means by which an athlete creates and maintains positive emotional states that are beneficial to sporting performance (Kopp & Jekauc, 2018). Studies show that emotional intelligence can enhance performance, job satisfaction, and prosocial behavior (Magrum et al., 2019). Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008) indicate that a person's well-being reflects their subjective satisfaction with their life, emotional, and social aspects. Psychological well-being is a construct that includes a person's assessment of life satisfaction, a sense of satisfaction, assessments of various areas of life, and reactions to processes in those areas.
There are opinions (Pacesova et al., 2019) that a high level of personal well-being can predict good prospects for long-term stress management. According to Huppert (2009), psychological well-being is associated with good psychological health, prosocial behavior, and creative thinking. Psychological well-being is also associated with the harmony of life, according to Antonovsky (1987). It is not a stable derivative, and although it is formed in a person as an adult, it changes over time (Antonovsky, 1987, 218). Capone and Petrillo (2016) found that dissatisfaction with the quality of life has a significant association with depression and emotional exhaustion (burnout), and is influenced by the psychological-emotional environment of the workplace. Ahmadi et al. (2014) found, that emotional intelligence has a significant positive impact on psychological well-being. A positive influence of high emotional intelligence on physical and psychological well-being was found for postgraduates (Baqutayan et al., 2017). Judge and Arora (2017), using correlation and step-wise regression analyses, found that emotional intelligence and psychological well-being are related and can be used to predict life satisfaction. Baumeister et al. (2007) believe that the concept of selfcontrol can be equated to a willpower concept, which is perceived as a form of energy. A distraction and loss of self-control weakens their willpower (Baumeister et al., 2007;Sela et al., 2017). Job et al. (2010) found that individuals who believed that willpower has limited resources achieved lower cognitive results in self-monitoring tasks. On the other hand, those who believed that willpower is unlimited achieved better results. These differences are explained by Job et al. (2010), who assert that, in performing complex tasks, people who believed willpower had limited resources were more sensitive to the psychological availability of resources. Duckworth et al. (2019) revealed links between self-control and academic achievement. Self-control is important for a person's behavior and well-being following Shoda et al. (1990) study results. Developed self-control has a significant impact on health and well-being in later life (Moffitt et al., 2011). Those with a higher level of self-control attain better academic achievement (Tangney et al., 2004).
De Ridder et al. (2012) revealed that individuals with a high level of self-control adapt better to a changing environment, which influences their accomplishments, well-being, and long lifespan. Subsequent research (Berkman et al., 2017) has revealed that selfcontrol is also related to personal values. It is known (Nielsen et al., 2019), that self-control is positively related to subjective well-being; moreover, this relation is a mediator in the use of self-control strategies.
The research question is whether the emotional intelligence, well-being, and selfcontrol of postgraduate students with high sports results differ from those of students who did not stand out more clearly in sports? The purpose of this study to find an answer to the question of how to differentiate between emotional intelligence, well-being, and self-control of athletic and non-athletic postgraduate students.
Tasks: 1. To find out the peculiarities of postgraduates' emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control from the aspect of gender. 2. To reveal the peculiarities of postgraduates' emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control from the aspect of being athletic/non-athletic. 3. To determine whether there are significant relationships between athletic/ non-athletic, gender, emotional intelligence, self-control components', and psychological well-being components', and which of these affect psychological well-being.

Study design and participants
The study used the following three inventories and scales: Schutte Self-Report Inventory (SSRI) (Schutte et al., 1998), the Ryff Scale for Measuring Psychological Well-Being (RSMPWB) (Ryff, 1989), and the Tangney Short Self-Control Scale (Tangney et al., 2004). The Schutte Self-Report Inventory is based on the Emotional Intelligence Ability Model (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and includes four components of emotional intelligence. These four components of emotional intelligence are a perception of emotions, managing one's emotions, managing other people's emotions, and using emotions (Mayer et al., 2016). This inventory has been chosen because it is one of the most commonly used instruments for assessing emotional intelligence (Laborde et al., 2016). The Schutte Self-Report Inventory contains 33 items that are rated according to a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree). The Lithuanian version of the Self-Report Inventory description is confirmed by the reliability test and gives a reliability coefficient of .84 for the overall inventory (Malinauskas & Sniras, 2010). The internal consistency of the Self-Report Inventory for this study was verified by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients of subscales: perception of emotions -.671, managing one's emotions -.733, managing other people's emotions -.653, and using emotions -.832.
The RSMPWB includes six subscales of psychological well-being: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. The scale contains 54 items, 9 for each subscale. The RSMPWB is based on theoretical constructs of psychological well-being related to emotional health that include self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environment, mastery, life purpose, and personal development. The items should be evaluated on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = slightly disagree, 4 = slightly agree, 5 = agree, and 6 = strongly agree). A higher score means a higher level of psychological well-being. The Lithuanian version of the RSMPWB has a reported internal consistency of .84 (Malinauskas & Dumciene, 2017). The internal consistency of the RSMPWB for this study was verified by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients of subscales: autonomy -.712, environmental mastery -.643, personal growth -.631, purpose in life -.621, and self-acceptance -.713.
The Self-Control Scale (Tangney et al., 2004) was used to assess the self-control properties of research participants. The Self-Control Scale consists of 36 statements that the subject must rate on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree). The Self-Control Scale includes five subscales of self-discipline, non-impulsive action, healthy habits, work ethic, and reliability.
The Self-Control Scale (Tangley et al., 2004) was translated into Lithuanian by an English teacher. After that, another English teacher translated the scale back into English. The Lithuanian and English versions of the scale were checked by an English-speaking person fluent in English and Lithuanian. Both versions of the scale were submitted by 18 students fluent in Lithuanian and English, and they completed both versions of the scale. The recommendations of Aaronson et al. (2002) were followed for the adaptation of the scale. Correspondence between scale versions was estimated by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient, which was r = .78. The internal consistency of the questionnaire for this study was checked by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients according to the subscales: self-discipline -.762, non-impulsive action -.732, healthy habits -.689, work ethic -.759, and reliability -.687.
The Shapiro-Wilk test was used for the sample groups. Given the test results and the values of asymmetry and excess, the assumption of normality was partially satisfied (George & Mallery, 2010). If the coefficients of excess and asymmetry are in the range of -2 to 2, it is acceptable to consider the section as slightly away from normal. Due to differences between the number of athletes and non-athletes in postgraduates, the Mann-Whitney U test was chosen to check for statistical differences of the mean in comparison in this respect. Correlation and stepwise regression analyses were used to identify factors that significantly affect psychological well-being components.

Participants
The target group for the inquiry was students from postgraduate study programs. The participants' sample consisted of 65 postgraduates: 33 men and 32 women, including 14 with high achievements in sports (world champions, Olympic and European championship prize winners, Lithuanian championship prize winners). All the study participants participated in the study voluntarily, marking the statement in the first questionnaire: "I am participating in the study voluntarily. I have been provided with information on the anonymity and confidentiality of the investigation". The study was approved by the Committee for Social Sciences Research Ethics of the University (protocol No. SMTEK-44). The ethical recommendations were followed, which included legal requirements for researching in Lithuania.

Results
Data on the emotional intelligence components, psychological well-being, and selfcontrol of male and female students are presented in Table 1. The results in Table 1 revealed that the estimates of the perception of emotion and managing one's emotions components of emotional intelligence for men were significantly higher than for women; however, using emotions score higher for women than men, although insignificantly. Women rated their environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, and self-acceptance significantly higher than men. Men rated their autonomy and positive relationships significantly higher than women. Men rated self-control components, self-discipline and reliability higher than women, but women rated non-impulsive actions higher than men.
Data on the emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control components of athletic and non-athletic are presented in Table 2. Notes. (M, SD) -mean and standard deviation; U -Mann-Whitney criterion; * -p < .05; ** -p < .01.
It was found that the scores of all components of emotional intelligence constructs of athletic were higher than for non-athletic, but only scores of the perception of emotion and using emotions were significantly higher.
Among scores of the components of psychological well-being, only the estimate of autonomy was significantly higher for non-athletic than for athletic.
The assessments of the components of the self-control construct did not reveal any significant differences between athletic and non-athletic.
A more interesting result from the correlation analysis is that the coefficient is statistically insignificant in the correlation between gender and athletic/non-athletic. Of the 15 relationships between gender and the components of constructs of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control, 11 are statistically significant. The only insignificant correlations are with managing other people's emotions, using emotion, healthy habits, and work ethics components.
The results of the stepwise regression analysis revealed that the factor of gender is included in the prediction models of psychological well-being components, except for the personal growth model. Interestingly, none of the self-control components and athletic/ non-athletic were included in the prediction models.

Discussions
The means of the estimates were compared using the Student's t-distribution and Mann-Whitney U test criteria to reveal differences in the estimates of the components of the constructs of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control components in terms of gender and athletic/non-athletic students.
Our study revealed that postgraduate men rated significantly higher than women in their ability to perceive emotion and managing their own emotions. Our results do not contradict the statement of Wijekoon et al. (2017) that women have higher emotional intelligence than men. There are studies (Meshkat & Nejati, 2017) that show that the overall level of emotional intelligence between men and women does not differ significantly, but differences have been found in the assessment of individual components. Other studies (Shahzad & Bagum, 2012;Badawy & Magdy, 2015;Nikbakhsh et al., 2014) also did not reveal significant differences in emotional intelligence across gender. High emotional intelligence is very important for educators because, as Naqvi et al. (2016) note, emotional intelligence has a positive influence on the effectiveness of teachers' professional activities. Our study found that athletic rate significantly higher than non-athletic, in the four components of emotional intelligence, perception of emotion, and using emotions. Emotional intelligence influences sport-related variables and factors beyond sport (Magrum et al., 2019). The correlations revealed in our study for the components studied reflected that too. Trigueros et al. (2019) believe that emotional intelligence has a positive effect on self-esteem and self-determination motivation in athletes. The results of a study by Arribas-Galarraga et al. (2017) show that emotional intelligence in athletes can act as a mediator between motivation and performance success. Singh and Sachdev (2020) found that individuals with high levels of emotional intelligence experience less stress. The estimates of the components of emotional intelligence obtained in our study do not contradict the results obtained by other researchers (Malinauskas & Malinauskiene, 2018;Huang & Lee, 2019;Brougthon, 2017;Sukys et al., 2019).
Interestingly distributed in our study are opinions of men and women looking at estimates of psychological well-being components scores. Women rated their environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, and self-acceptance significantly higher than men. Men rated their autonomy and positive relationships significantly higher than women. The results of our study responded to a study that found that women's psychological well-being scores are higher than men's (Bingöl & Batık, 2019). The scores of psychological well-being obtained in our study are not inconsistent with those of Pacesova et al. (2019). The psychological well-being scores obtained in this study confirm the results disclosed by earlier researchers (Malinauskas and Malinauskiene, 2018), although that study did not distinguish between male and female evaluations. Psychological well-being can be negatively influenced by negative emotions (Liu et al., 2019). However, it can also be influenced by the individual because, as indicated Singh and Sharma (2018), self-regulation abilities have a positive association with psychological well-being and its components. Good life skills can positively influence educators' psychological well-being (Kasapoglu & Didin, 2019). This is confirmed by the significant correlations between the components of psychological well-being, self-control, and emotional intelligence revealed in our study. As Kurt and Demirbolat (2019) point out, a high level of psychological well-being has a positive effect on educators' job satisfaction. In our study, in the evaluations of athletic and non-athletic for psychological well-being components, only autonomy estimates for non-athletic were significantly higher than for athletic.
Our study found that significantly higher scores were found for women for the components of the self-control construct and non-impulsive actions, and for men the scores for the components self-discipline and reliability were significantly higher. The assessments of the components of the self-control construct did not reveal any significant differences between athletic and non-athletic. As Boat and Cooper (2019) point out, higher levels of self-control are associated with higher levels of exercise, but depleted self-control reduces operational efficiency and perseverance in other activities that require self-control efforts. Higher levels of self-control are associated with higher academic achievement, better interpersonal relationships, and better well-being (Cheung et al., 2014;Hofmann et al, 2014). However, Gillebaart and De Ridder (2015) argue that self-control simply cannot rely on inhibition efforts alone, as that would lead people prone to self-control towards exhaustion, fatigue, lack of attention, and/or lack of motivation.
By assessing the relationships between the components of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, self-control constructs, and gender revealed a variety of statistically significant relationships. The results of our correlation analysis confirm the observations of other researchers (Nielsen et al., 2019;Montvilaitė & Antinienė, 2019;Baqutayan et al., 2017).
In stepwise regression analyses, prediction models were constructed in the first or second steps. The results of the stepwise regression analysis revealed that the factor of gender is included in the prediction models of psychological well-being components, except for the personal growth model. Interestingly, none of the self-control components and athletic achievement factors (athletic/non-athletic) were included in the prediction models.

Conclusions
Male and female postgraduates evaluate significantly differently for many components of the constructs of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control.
In terms of different athletic performances (athletic/non-athletic), both men and women had significantly different scores for the components of the constructs of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control -a much smaller number of cases than in terms of gender. Thus, in terms of athletic/non-athletic, men's and women's assessments differed less frequently than in terms of gender.
Gender is significantly associated with components of emotional intelligence, psychological well-being, and self-control, except for healthy habits, work ethics, managing one's emotions, and using emotion. Athletic/non-athletic are significantly associated only with the autonomy, perception of emotion, and usage of emotion, but are not significantly related to gender.
Only emotional intelligence components and gender were significant for the prediction models of psychological well-being components.

Information about funding and acknowledgements
No funding was received for the study. The author expresses gratitude to all the postgraduate students who participated in the study.