Emotional intelligence and soft skills in students from a national higher education center in Ica (Peru)

This study aims to determine whether emotional intelligence, understood as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one's own emotions and those of others, is related to soft skills, defined as a set of interpersonal, communicative, and adaptive competencies. The design was non-experimental, correlational, and cross-sectional. The population consisted of 200 students, with a random sample of 132 students from the 2024-II semester at a national higher education center in Ica (Peru).. A survey was used as the technique and the questionnaire as the instrument. The findings revealed that 64.4% of the students presented a low level of emotional intelligence and 65.2% a deficient level of soft skills. The Spearman coefficient (0.827) and the significance value (0.000) indicated a high positive relationship, concluding that there is a significant relationship between both variables.