E mma and Daniel had a serious argument with their boss, and they were fuming. When they had both reached their respective houses, one more instance was waiting to provoke their already-hurt emotions further. Daniel’s kids had created a mess in his room, which made him yell at them. Meanwhile, Emma’s kids had turned their bedroom into a pool of toys and were playing noisily, refusing to go to bed. Instead of yelling at them, Emma chose to sit down with them and politely reasoned with them about their mistakes. She asked them to put the toys back and get to bed. Emma knew that yelling or showing her anger at the kids was of no use, as she wasn’t angry with them but at her boss.
Have you noticed the difference in both these individuals while handling their emotions? Emma was able to recognize her emotion and express it differently than Daniel did. To comprehend why these incidents happen, you will need to understand what emotional intelligence is and the role it plays in your regular life 먹튀검증커뮤니티.
The first thing to understand is that human beings are intelligent creatures with a quotient of intellectual intelligence or cognitive intelligence, which is most often referred to as IQ. But, there is indeed another level of intelligence quotient in humans, which is more important than the IQ. It is referred to as emotional intelligence, or the emotional quotient. The idea that you and I have these two different quotients has been emerging for close to 30 years now. The terms became popular in the 1990s and have now become common jargon in almost all languages of the world. Many people consider it a naturally alluring construct, but what exactly do they mean when they say “He has been a successful leader for years due to his high emotional intelligence”? The chapter will discuss emotional intelligence in detail.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
In simple words, emotional intelligence defines the level of ability to:
- Identify and understand your emotions and its consecutive reactions, i.e., self-awareness
- Manage, control and adapt to your mood, emotions, responses and reactions, i.e., self-management
- Bind together your emotions to motivate the self to take the right action, follow through, commit and work towards achieving your goals, i.e., motivation
- Recognize other’s feelings and emotions, understand them and utilize that knowledge to relate to others in a better manner, i.e., empathy
- Build relationships, relate to social situations, lead the way, settle conflicts and work as a team, i.e., social skills
Daniel Goleman popularized the term emotional intelligence in 1995, but the first person to refer to said term was Michael Beldoch in 1964. Simply put, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, manage and evaluate emotions. It is the capability to observe your own emotions as well as other people’s emotions, distinguish between the emotions, label the emotions and use that information to channel an effective thought process and behavioral pattern. But the scientific community doesn’t agree with this definition. According to them, emotional intelligence involves recognizing, comprehending and managing emotions!
Researchers wanted to study the neurological area of the human brain that contributes to emotional intelligence. They created the first detailed map of the regions of the brain that contribute to emotional intelligence by studying 152 veterans of Vietnam who were fighting brain injuries. They found that emotional intelligence and general intelligence overlapped significantly, not only in the areas of the brain but also in the behavioral patterns. Veterans who had scored high on general intelligence tests also demonstrated higher performance on measures of emotional intelligence. Many of the same brain regions were found to be crucial for both!
Individuals with high emotional intelligence tend to solve a variety of problems related to emotions quickly and perfectly. These people can perceive the emotions in other's faces and use it as a tool to find a solution to the problem. These individuals can utilize these emotional episodes in their lives to motivate a specific thought process. For instance, the analytical thought process is high when you are sad; anger in certain people can be dangerous, and cheerfulness would result in wanting to mingle with others.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to distinguish emotions, to access and create emotions to assist the thought-process; to comprehend emotions and emotional knowledge; and to pensively control emotions to help emotional and intellectual growth.
Precisely put, there are four parts to emotional intelligence:
- Sensing emotions
- Use emotions to aid thought
- Comprehend emotions
- Regulate emotions
Emotional Intelligence and History
Although the concept of emotional intelligence has been gaining importance and popularity in the past few years, it actually has a much longer history - thousands of years, to be specific.
“All learning has an emotional base.” - Plato had written this 2000 years ago and since then many educators, philosophers and scientists have worked to prove or contradict the importance of emotions. But for the most of those two millennia, the generic assumption was that emotions were in the way ? a disturbance that keeps humans from making the right decision. They don’t help with focus. However, extensive research conducted over the last 30 years proved exactly the opposite.
In the early 1950’s, when Abraham Maslow wrote about how people could improve their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strengths, the human civilization had witnessed the best celebration of humanism since the Renaissance - the Human Potential movement. This became the reason for several major developments in the field of science. New sciences of human capacity were founded in the 1970s and 80s. Peter Salovey was one of these researchers who contributed to the development ? he is currently a provost and professor at Yale University. According to him, the last few decades saw a series of changes when it came to beliefs about intelligence and emotions. Initially, intelligence was linked to perfection in an individual, but more studies and researches added that there were more things in life. A long time ago, emotions were considered an eternal punishment, but slowly people realized that they had a substantive value (an independent existence).
Dorothy Van Ghent had mentioned in her book English Novel in 1953 (way before people got the idea that intelligence and emotions could connect) that many Jane Austen characters possessed high emotional intelligence. Around 1966, German psychoanalyst Barbara Lerner believed that women with low emotional intelligence had suffered early separation from their mother, which caused more emotional issues in them when compared to their other counterparts. She suggested that LSD might help women overcome this problem. Wayne Payne was probably the first person to use the term emotional intelligence in his thesis in 1986, where he used the term extensively to argue how important emotional awareness was for the development of children.
John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, the two psychologists, had introduced the theory of emotional intelligence in 1990 where the concept was formulated, and the way to measure EI was demonstrated in two of the journal articles. They coined the term Emotional Intelligence and described it as,
“A form 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 action.”
It was during this period that IQ (Intellectual Intelligence) was held to high standards and was considered the golden norm for excellence in life. Both the psychologists initiated research programs to explore the significance of the emotional quotient in humans. In a particular study, a group of people was tested on emotional clarity ? the ability to recognize and label the mood they were experiencing. These people were then asked to watch an upsetting film, and those who had scored high on the emotional clarity test were able to recover more quickly from the film when compared to the ones who had scored low.
Similarly, in another study, it was found that individuals who scored higher in the ability to recognize, understand and assess other’s emotions accurately were flexible in adapting to the changes in their respective social environments. They were confidently able to build up supportive social networks in their circle.
Daniel Goleman, a science writer for the New York Times who specialized in behavior and brain research, heard about Mayer and Salovey's work in the 1990s. He had trained at Harvard as a psychologist where he worked with David McClelland who was one among the group of researchers who was more concerned about cognitive intelligence. McClellan believed that cognitive intelligence is a must-have for an individual to be successful in life, but Goleman didn't agree with his concept. According to him, cognitive intelligence doesn't guarantee business success, but emotional intelligence does. This eventually led to his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ.
Goleman explained that emotionally intelligent individuals came with four major characteristics:
- The ability to understand their own emotions
(self-awareness)
- The ability to manage their emotions
(self-management)
- The ability to empathize with other people’s emotions (social awareness)
- The ability to handle other people’s emotions
(social skills)
He had to fight hard to prove these because it was the days when people believed that IQ is more important than emotions. There was a hot debate where few argued that IQ is genetic, while few others believed that it was possible to acquire a higher IQ with experience. But it all changed in 1995 when Goleman introduced new reports of research that mentioned emotional intelligence as an important ingredient to succeed in life. His work included many other scientific developments (in the field of neuroscience, which explored about how emotions are usually regulated in the brain since infancy!)
Three Models of Emotional Intelligence
After a series of research done on emotional intelligence by John Mayer, Peter Salovey, Daniel Goleman and Konstantin Vasily Petrides, the three models of emotional intelligence were introduced. They are:
- The Ability Model
- The Mixed Model
- The Trait Model
But even today, most people focus on the Mixed Model derived and explained by Daniel Goleman.
Ability Model
John Mayer, University of New Hampshire and Peter Salovey, Yale University had together developed this model of emotional intelligence. They defined emotional intelligence as the ability to reason out one’s emotions and use them to enhance the thinking process. To determine a person’s emotional quotient, he has to be evaluated in four separate but interlinked abilities. They are:
- Perceiving emotions (comprehend nonverbal signs or cues ? facial expressions or body language)
- Reason with emotions (use the emotions to encourage the right mode of thinking and cognitive action)
- Understand emotions (ability to interpret the emotions of people around you. For instance, if a person is angry you should be able to understand if his anger is towards you or the situation)
- Manage emotions (regulate the emotions and respond consistently and appropriately)
Mixed Model
David Goleman developed this model based on emotional intelligence and other personality traits that are neither related to intelligence or emotions. He used five categories or components to describe emotional intelligence:
- Self-Awareness (self-confidence and emotional awareness ? the ability to recognize feelings)
- Self-Regulation (controlling impulsive behaviors, innovation ? creative thinking, trustworthiness ? honesty & integrity, conscientiousness ? taking responsibility for one’s actions and, adaptability ? ability to handle changes)
- Motivation (Drive ? sticking to goals even in times of pressure or obstacles, commitment ? holding on to integrity, initiative ? taking the lead, optimism ? looking to improve consistently)
- Empathy (understanding other’s emotions, diversity ? building relationships with people different from you, service orientation ? ability to anticipate other’s needs, political awareness)
- Social Skills (Communication skills, leadership, handling conflicts)
The Emotional Competency Inventory developed by Goleman helps measure the emotional intelligence in this model. You can also take the emotional intelligence appraisal for a self assessment.
Trait Model
Konstantin Vasily Petrides published this model recently in 2009 where he defines emotional intelligence as the self-perception of an individual's emotional abilities that include both the self-perceived and behavioral abilities. He defined his model as "a constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality."
The two components that determine a person’s emotional intelligence are:
- The perception and understanding of one’s emotions
- The use of personality framework to study the trait emotional intelligence.
The respondent's self-report is the way to measure this model, and it can be done through the TEIQue (Trait Emotional Questionnaire).
Comparison of the other Emotional Intelligence Models
While you look at the intricacies of all the models, all of them touch on comprehending your emotions, taking control of your feelings, and applying the result to improve your ability to interact with others.
A high IQ can get you onto a shortlist of candidates for a particular job but for you to make an impact in the interview process; you will need the required emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is essential in one’s day-to-day life but if you are going to ask ? which is better to have ? IQ or EQ? Then it is a wrong question, as the two bits of intelligence should complement each other for an individual to lead a higher quality of life!
