Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be defined as 'a set of skills concerned with the processing of emotion-relevant information and measured with ability-based scales' (Mayer, Caruso, Salovey, & Sitarenios, 2003, p. 97). It encompasses the human skills of empathy, self-awareness, motivation, self-control and adeptness in relationships. Emotionally intelligent people excel in human relationships, show marked leadership skills and perform well at work (Cadman & Brewer, 2001).

The label 'Emotional Intelligence' (EI) has quickly found a place in our vernacular, and the recognition and development of EI is promoted as an essential requirement for effective interpersonal relations in many domains, including management, education and nursing (Cadman & Brewer, 2001; Zeidner, Mathews, & Roberts, 2001).

However, the jury is still out on whether EI should be classified as a separate form of intelligence (Mayer, Caruso, Salovey, & Sitarenios, 2001; Zeidner et al., 2001).

Historically, definitions of intelligence have been relatively broad, including higher-level abilities (such as abstract reasoning, mental representation, problem solving and decision making), and the ability to learn from, and adapt to, the demands of the environment (Sternberg, 1997). However, the measurement of intelligence has focused upon a relatively narrow range of intellectual abilities, largely those required for 'academic' activities. It is at the interface between conceptualising intelligence and measuring intelligence for purposes of allocating people to educational and employment streams that current discussion of the concept of EI is most heated.

Sternberg (1997) argues that intelligence serves at least two broad functions. The first is to achieve external correspondence, where one understands a phenomenon in the environment. The second is to achieve internal coherence, where one's knowledge and beliefs about a phenomenon are well and consistently connected, and do not contradict each other. Sternberg proposes that external correspondence and internal coherence can have relevance to any environmental context, including physical, biological and cultural aspects, which may interact (p.1031). It is not difficult to conceive that EI could be one of many contributors to such an encompassing view of intelligence. Therefore:

it is questionable whether cognitive and emotional knowledge comprise separate domains … Within cognitive science, information of whatever kind is an abstract representation on which computational operations can be performed, irrespective of whether it refers to emotion, so to refer to non-cognitive information is an oxymoron. [Cognitive] processing subsystems are believed to be modularised, but we do not see the evidence as supporting distinct intellectual and emotional modules. Indeed, the processing that generates emotion may be distributed across a variety of modules, so that there is no simple mapping between classes of mental representations and the domains of expertise of human beings. (Zeidner et al., 2001, p. 271)

However, supporters of EI recognise that current performance measures used for applied decision-making purposes, such as intelligence tests, seem to overlook the EI skill groups. Mayer et al. (2001) provide an hierarchical, four-branch model of EI.

Branch	Description of measure	Relation to intelligence and personality
4. Managing emotion	Ability to manage emotions and emotional relationships for personal and interpersonal growth	Interface with personality and personal goals
3. Understanding emotion	Ability to comprehend emotional information about relationships, transitions from one emotion to another, linguistic information about emotions	Central locus of abstract processing and reasoning about emotions and emotional information
2. Facilitating thought with emotion	Ability to harness emotional information and directionality to enhance thinking	Calibrates and adjusts thinking so that cognitive tasks make use of emotional information
1. Perceiving emotion	Ability to identify emotions in faces, pictures	Inputs information to intelligence

(Mayer et al., 2001, p. 235)

Mayer et al. (2001) argue that they have successfully developed tests that can measure EI, thus making EI a practical construct for purposes such as recruitment, as recommended by Cadman and Brewer (2001). Meanwhile, Zeidner et al. (2001) and Kaufman and Kaufman (2001) caution that, until researchers more fundamentally establish how EI-related constructs project into more well-established domains of intelligence, such as ability and affective constructs, it is:

premature to actually use current performance measure of EI for applied purposes, namely clinical, occupational, or educational decision-making purposes. (Zeidner et al., 2001, p. 274)

References
Cadman, C. & Brewer, J. (2001). 'Emotional Intelligence: a vital prerequisite for recruitment in nursing.' Journal of Nursing Management, 9, 321-324.

Kaufman, A. S. & Kaufman, J. C. (2001). 'Emotional intelligence as an aspect of general intelligence: What would David Wechsler say?' Emotion, 1, 258-264.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., Salovey, P., & Sitarenios, G. (2001). 'Emotional intelligence as a standard intelligence.' Emotion, 1, 232-242.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., Salovey, P., & Sitarenios, G. (2003). 'Measuring emotional intelligence with the MSCEIT V 2.0.' Emotion, 3, 97-105.

Sternberg, R. J. (1997). 'The concept of intelligence and its role in lifelong learning and success.' American Psychologist, 52, 1030-1037.

Zeidner, M., Mathews, G., & Roberts, R. D. (2001). 'Slow down, you move too fast: Emotional Intelligence remains an "elusive" intelligence.' Emotion, 1, 265-275.