The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Information Behaviors of Academics at Hacettepe University

Emotions are an integral part of teaching and learning processes as it involves continuous human interaction. Academics can add value to education practices they provide and enhance the quality of education through emotional intelligence (EI). This is an exploratory study on information behavior of academics. The data is collected via a questionnaire survey from 103 academics in Hacettepe University. This exploratory study intends to examine if emotional intelligence is a factor affecting information behavior of academics. More specifically, it investigates if there is a relationship between academics’ emotional intelligent levels and their information behavior in terms of how they accumulate, use, and share information. The results show that EI is a factor affecting information behavior of academics in terms of only information share dimension. This research puts an emphasis on the correlation between academics with high emotional intelligence and the vision of sharing information in the right way and at the right time. As a practical implication, educational institutions may consider different ways to increase their faculties’ EI levels as offering more EI training programs or hiring emotionally intelligent academics to have well-organized information flow.