A Study of Mongolia and Korean Couples’ Emotional Intelligence and Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

The current study attempted to explore the role of emotional intelligence in forming marital satisfaction and the difference between two cultures like Mongolia and Korean women. Also, the other critical factors (e.g., attitude toward gender roles, distribution of house chores, and financial satisfaction in marriage life) which may affect marital status was investigated. Specifically, I adopted Daniel Goleman's (EI) Emotional Intelligence questionnaire for the emotional intelligence, which suggested that emotional intelligence includes five dimensions such as Self-awareness, managing emotion, motivating oneself, empathy, and social skill. Also, I utilized ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale for the marital Satisfaction, which tried to estimate both bright and dark side of marital satisfaction with including ideal distortion of marriage. Online survey collected 193 married women (111 Mongolian and 82 Korean) utilizing snowball sampling since the marriage topic is likely to be somewhat personal so I reached participants that I have known in Mongolian through emails asking them to spread the survey to the other married women. I did the same sampling process through church and university that I attended in South Korea. SPSS version 25 was utilized for statical tests such as factor analysis, ANOVA (analysis of variance), and multiple regression analysis. The adopted psychological measures were organized using factor analysis and reliability as well as validity were tested. Firstly, we progressed ANOVA to test the statistical difference between the two cultures in emotional intelligence and distribution household chores. As a result, there was no significant difference in the other four the emotional intelligence dimensions of Mongolian and Korean women, but there were significant differences only in social skills. On the whole perspectives, women from the two cultures were likely to maintain relatively good level of self-awareness and empathy. whereas they showed lower level of motivating oneself and managing emotion. Also, regarding distribution of household chores, the results of paired-samples t-tests showed that household chores between husband and wife in the two cultures are perceived differently by women. Wives tend to think that they do house chores more than their husbands except repairing houses. Exceptionally, for Mongolian wives, taking children to schools is the only house chore that turned out to be insignificant. Finally, two multiple regression analysis were conducted with the two dependent variables such as marital satisfaction as well as ideal distortion of marriage. Since the two concepts of marital satisfaction and ideal distortion of marriage are likely to be opposite direction, the two analysis gave significant effects of the same independent variables such as husband’s house chores, managing emotion, and financial satisfaction. This paper also offers direction for future research.