Music education's contribution to the development of EI in adolescents and its effect on the gender variable

Emotional intelligence is a psychological variable that affects personal well-being and transcends the educational field. It is known that learning music provides emotional benefits for people and that emotional intelligence varies by age and gender. Based on these principles, we propose this research with the following objectives: to measure the perceived emotional intelligence of adolescent students of obligatory secondary education from Valencia, to compare by the variables of musician-non-musician and gender; and to explore the effect of music on the perceived emotional intelligence of young musicians considering gender as a variable. The final sample comprised a total of 409 adolescents of between 11 and 16 years of age. The data collection tools were an ad hoc sociodemographic questionnaire and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24). The results of the statistical analyses displayed significant differences by gender in emotional attention; a positive correlation between age and attention, which increases with progress through adolescence; and a significant effect that reveals greater emotional clarity in musicians. This effect occurs independently of the gender of the subject, and so it benefits boys and girls equally.