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What is Emotional Intelligence?

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Posted by Your Guide on October 16, 2005 3:28 PM

Emotional Intelligence is defined as the �capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships,� according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, (Bantam, 1998). Goleman, a former science reporter with a doctorate in psychology from Harvard, says that emotional intelligence, or EI, or EQ, is a stronger indicator of human success than IQ, the old standby of a person�s intellectual intelligence.

He also says that people who have high emotional intelligence are more likely to succeed in work and in life, because they�re the people who are able to love and be loved, to be self-aware, and to empathize with others. These are key attributes to finding success in life. Without them, IQ won�t get you too far.

Dr. Peter Salovey and Dr. John Mayer also have been instrumental in the findings of Emotional Intelligence. They say that Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions. These leading researchers began their work in the subject in 1990. In 1997, they laid out a definition that includes four branches of emotional intelligence. These branches include:

Emotional Perception, which is identifying emotions in faces, music, and stories.
Emotional Facilitation of Thought, which involves relating emotions to other mental sensations, such as taste and color, and using emotion in reasoning and problem solving.
Emotional Understanding, which involves solving emotional problems, such as knowing which motions are similar or dissimilar and what relations they convey.
Emotional Management, which involves understanding the implications of social acts on emotions and the regulation of emotion in self and others.

Next Page: How does Emotional Intelligence differ from IQ?

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