RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRATITUDE, RESILIENCE, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN PAKISTAN.

Abstract

This study examined the relationships among gratitude, resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance in a sample of Muslim and non-Muslim university students in Pakistan, and tested whether religious affiliation was associated with differences in these variables. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was used with 300 university students (150 Muslim, 150 non-Muslim) recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Gratitude, resilience, and emotional intelligence were measured with standardized self-report scales, and academic performance was indexed by self-reported cumulative grade point average (CGPA). Because Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk tests indicated significant departures from normality for all study variables, non-parametric statistics were used. Spearman correlations showed that gratitude (r = .533), resilience (r = .503), and emotional intelligence (r = .566) were each significantly and positively associated with CGPA (p < .001), and emotional intelligence and resilience were strongly correlated with each other (r = .807, p < .001). Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests indicated that Muslim students, older students (22–25 years), and postgraduate students scored higher on gratitude, resilience, and/or emotional intelligence than their counterparts, and that Muslim students had significantly higher CGPA ranks than non-Muslim students. These findings support the role of positive psychological resources in academic success and suggest that university support services should attend to students' emotional and religious-cultural context.