emotional intelligence

emotional intelligence, set of psychological faculties that enable individuals to perceive, understand, express, and control their emotions and to discern and respond appropriately to the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence facilitates thoughts and actions that take emotions into account—including the use of emotions to motivate oneself or others or to pursue long-term goals—and it underlies the successful exercise of social and communicative skills across a broad range of life experiences. Emotional intelligence may be regarded as a subset of the multiple species of human intelligence postulated in the 1980s by the American psychologist Howard Gardner, who held (in his work Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences [1983]) that human intelligence comprises several distinct cognitive skills or abilities, including the “interpersonal” ability to recognize and understand the feelings of others and the “intrapersonal” ability to understand one’s own feelings (see multiple intelligences).

An early theory of emotional intelligence was introduced in 1990 by the American social psychologists Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, who defined it as “a subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

Perception, expression, and control

Emotional intelligence involves appraising and expressing emotions of both oneself and others. Accurate perception of one’s own emotions is necessary to appropriately respond to and communicate those emotions to others. Once recognized, one’s emotions can be expressed through language, facial expressions, and body language (see emotion: The physical expression of emotion). Identifying and responding to the emotions of others are also part of emotional intelligence. For example, a caring person uses emotional intelligence to perceive how and when to offer comfort to a troubled friend. These skills are central to empathy, the ability to recognize emotions in other persons and to experience them as if it they were one’s own. Empathy is key to healthy social relationships.

Emotional intelligence also encompasses emotional control or regulation, which is the ability to monitor and modify one’s mood. People control their moods by seeking out ways to create particular feelings, whether positive or negative. Experiencing art or music, for example, may elicit joy, sadness, or melancholy. Emotionally intelligent individuals also can purposefully affect others’ emotional reactions positively or negatively. For example, at a dinner party or a reception, people tend to behave in ways intended to create a good impression of themselves, including by eliciting positive emotions in other people. However, the ability to influence the emotional state of others may be used in harmful and cynical ways, such as in manipulation.

Components, models, and acquisition

According to Salovey, Mayer, and other researchers, emotional intelligence encompasses the abilities to perceive emotions in oneself and others, to use emotions in thought and action, to understand emotions, and to manage or control emotions. In Emotional Intelligence (1995), a work that served to popularize the notion in the 1990s, the American psychologist Daniel Goleman described emotional intelligence as comprising five broadly understood components: self-awareness, self-control, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills. Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions and reactions and how they affect one’s life experiences. People who are self-aware are able to identify their likes and dislikes and to establish life goals. Self-control involves consciously modifying one’s mood and its usual expressions. Self-motivation involves seeking out new, different, and challenging experiences and delaying gratification to achieve a worthwhile goal. Empathy is related to understanding the perspectives, needs, and wants of others, in addition to experiencing their emotions. Finally, social skills comprise the set of abilities used to communicate with, influence, and motivate others. Individuals with well-developed social skills are often popular and tend to gravitate toward leadership positions.

On the basis of such abilities-based models, researchers have devised tests of emotional intelligence similar to those used to measure a person’s IQ (intelligence quotient). Other models of emotional intelligence conceive of it in terms of personality traits, or dispositions to certain types of behaviour, and measure it by using tests similar to personality assessments. A third model combines abilities and traits with knowledge, understood as being an individual’s overall comprehension of emotional experiences and of how they can be managed. Under this conception emotional intelligence has been assessed on the basis of questionnaires and rating scales.

Emotional intelligence is a function of both age and learned abilities. As people mature, they become more adept at managing emotional information from both themselves and others. The parent-child bond is especially important in developing emotional maturity, because most social and emotional learning occurs in early childhood, usually between the ages of three and four.