Emotional Intelligence

Definition

“Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to

enhance thinking. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate
emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to
reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Emotional
intelligence has something specific to do with the intelligent intersection of the emotions and
thoughts”. (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2016)

Components of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is based on four major components such as

Emotional Self-Awareness

The first and foremost component of emotional intelligence defined as capacity to

perceive and comprehend your very own feelings is a basic piece of enthusiastic insight. Simply
perceiving your feelings earlier and monitoring the impact of your own behavior, states of mind,
and feelings of other individuals. So as to end up mindful, one should be equipped for checking
their very own feelings, perceiving diverse enthusiastic responses, and afterward accurately
recognizing every specific feeling. Mindful people additionally perceive the connections
between the things they feel and how they carry on. These people are likewise fit for perceiving
their own qualities and confinements, are available to new data and encounters, and gain from
their communications with others. (Goleman, 2001)

Emotional Self-Regulation

Technically monitoring your own feelings and the effect you have on others, passionate
knowledge expects you to have the option to direct and deal with your feelings is defined as
emotional self-regulation and classified as second component of emotional intelligence. This
doesn't mean putting feelings on lock-down and concealing your actual sentiments but it
basically means sitting tight for the perfect time, spot, and road to express your feelings. Self-
regulation is tied in with communicating your feelings properly. The individuals who are gifted
in self-regulation will in general be adaptable and adjust well to change. (Brackett, Rivers, &
Salovey, 2011)

Social Awareness or Empathy

Social awareness is the third essential component of emotional intelligence. It is the

capacity to see how others are feeling, is totally basic to passionate knowledge. Yet, this includes
something beyond having the option to perceive the passionate conditions of others. Being
empathetic likewise enables individuals to comprehend the power elements that frequently
impact social connections, particularly in working environment settings. Those capable around
there can detect who have control in various connections, see how these powers impact
sentiments and practices, and precisely decipher various circumstances that rely on such power
elements. (Brackett et al., 2011)

Relationship Management or Social Skills

It is fourth component of emotional intelligence and explained as having the option to

cooperate well with others is another significant part of enthusiastic insight. Genuine passionate
comprehension includes something beyond understanding your own feelings and the sentiments
of others and additionally one should most likely give this data something to do in your everyday
collaborations and interchanges. Persuasiveness, leadership, verbal and non-verbal
communication skills, and active listening are some of the most important social skills.
(Goleman, 2001)

Mayer and Salovey Emotional Intelligence Model

Mayer and Salovey (Mayer et al., 2016) proposed a four-branch ability model of
emotional intelligence that distinguished among four branches of problem-solving necessary to
carry out emotional reasoning stating:

Perceiving Emotion

 Identify deceptive or dishonest emotional expressions

 Discriminate accurate vs. inaccurate emotional expressions
 Understand how emotions are displayed depending on context and culture
 Express emotions accurately when desired
 Perceive emotional content in the environment, visual arts, and music
 Perceive emotions in other people through their vocal cues, facial expression, language, and
behavior
 Identify emotions in one’s own physical states, feelings, and thoughts

Facilitating Thought Using Emotion

 Select problems based on how one’s ongoing emotional state might facilitate cognition
 Leverage mood swings to generate different cognitive perspectives
 Prioritize thinking by directing attention according to present feeling
 Generate emotions as an aid to judgment and memory

Understanding Emotions

 Recognize cultural differences in the evaluation of emotions

 Understand how a person might feel in the future or under certain conditions
 Recognize likely transitions among emotions such as from anger to satisfaction
 Understand complex and mixed emotions
 Appraise the situations that are likely to elicit emotions
 Determine the antecedents, meanings, and consequences of emotions
 Label emotions and recognize relations among them

Managing Emotions

 Effectively manage other’s emotions to achieve a desired outcome

 Effectively manage one’s own emotions to achieve a desired outcome
 Evaluate strategies to maintain, reduce or intensify an emotional response
 Monitor emotional reactions to determine their reasonableness
 Stay open to pleasant and unpleasant feelings, as needed, and to the information they convey
(Mayer et al., 2016)
Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life

Relation to Cognitive Abilities

Each ability influences how individuals utilize emotions to facilitate thinking or regulate
emotions to focus on important information. For these reasons, emotional intelligence is
hypothesized to correlate moderately with other intelligences, like verbal-propositional
intelligence. A recent meta-analysis of 18 studies that used the MSCEIT and its predecessor test,
the Multi-factor Emotional Intelligence Scale validate that scores on the test correlate more
highly with measures of crystallized rather than fluid intelligence. The Understanding of
Emotion domain on the MSCEIT tends to have the strongest relationship to measures of general
cognitive function and these studies provide preliminary evidence for the neural correlates of
emotional intelligence.(Cherniss, Extein, Goleman, & Weissberg, 2006)

Mental Health and Well Being

The most common complaints that lead people to psychotherapy are anxiety and
depression. The skills associated with emotional intelligence, therefore, should help individuals
to deal effectively with unpleasant emotions and to promote pleasant emotions in order to
promote both personal growth and wellbeing. MSCEIT scores correlate with psychopathologies
that have roots in emotional disturbances, including depression, social anxiety disorder, and
schizophrenia. It also appears that individuals with higher MSCEIT scores are more likely to
seek psychotherapy in times of need and emotional intelligence is a protective factor for serious
psychological problems among adolescents. (Grewal & Salovey, 2005)

Social Functioning

Emotional intelligence is postulated to promote positive social functioning by helping

individuals to detect others’ emotion states, adopt others’ perspectives, enhance communication,
and regulate behavior. Indeed, people with higher MSCEIT scores tend to be more socially
competent, to have better quality relationships, and to be viewed as more interpersonally
sensitive than those with lower MSCEIT scores. Most of these associations remain statistically
significant even after controlling for established personality traits such as neuroticism and
general intelligence. (Grewal & Salovey, 2005)
Academic Performance

Emotional intelligence is hypothesized to aid in prioritizing thinking and to enable one to

manage emotions in anxiety-provoking situations, such as taking standardized tests. Evidence
supporting the role of emotional intelligence in academic settings is mixed. In two studies with
college students, MSCEIT total scores and grades were correlated modestly. However, the
correlations in these studies became non-significant once verbal intelligence scores were
controlled and administered at the start of the academic year, correlated with final grades after
controlling for both personality and academic intelligence. (Cherniss et al., 2006)

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership, Climate and Organizational Performance

Research demonstrates the evidence suggests that emotionally intelligent leadership is

key to creating a working climate that nurtures employees and encourages them to give their
best. That enthusiasm, in turn, pays off in improved business performance. The relationship
between EI strengths in a leader and performance of the unit led appears to be mediated by the
climate the leader creates. Climate reflects people’s sense of their ability to do their jobs well.
Climate indicators include the degree of clarity in communication; the degree of employees’
flexibility in doing their jobs, ability to innovate, and ownership of and responsibility for their
work; and the level of the performance standards set.

Leadership style seems to drive organizational performance across a wide span of

industries and sectors and appears to be a crucial link in the chain from leader to climate to
business success. Visionary leaders are empathic, self-confident, and often act as agents of
change. Affiliative leaders, too, are empathic, with strengths in building relationships and
managing conflict. The democratic leader encourages collaboration and teamwork and
communicates effectively particularly as an excellent listener. And the coaching leader is
emotionally self-aware, empathic, and skilled at identifying and building on the potential of
others. The coercive leader relies on the power of his position, ordering people to execute his
wishes, and is typically handicapped by a lack of empathy. Granted, the factors influencing
organizational performance are diverse and complex. But the EI theory of performance at the
collective level predicts positive links between EI leadership, organizational climate, and
subsequent performance. (Sadri, 2012)
Implications of Emotional Intelligence and Higher Education

It is believe research on emotional intelligence will be especially valuable if focused on

individual differences in emotional processes and a topic we hope will continue to generate more
empirical interest. The science of emotion thus far has stressed principles of universality.
Ekman’s work on faces, mentioned above, and similar cross-cultural findings offer important
insights into the nature of human emotional experience. However, in any given culture, people
differ from one another in their abilities to interpret and use emotional information. Because
individual deficits in emotional skills may lead to negative outcomes, anyone interested in
improving emotional skills in various settings should focus on how and why some people, from
childhood, are better at dealing with emotions than others. Such knowledge provides the hope of
being able to successfully teach such skills to others.

But as of this writing, when it comes to preparing young people in the essential emotional
intelligence skills that matter most for their success in the workplace, for piloting their careers,
and for leadership, we face a serious gap. The SEL programs cover the early school years but not
higher education. Only a scattered handful of pioneering SEL courses exist at the college or
professional level. And yet the data showing the crucial role EI skills play in career success make
a compelling case for re-envisioning higher education in order to give these capabilities their
place in a well-rounded curriculum. (Mayer et al., 2016)
References

Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., & Salovey, P. (2011). Emotional intelligence: Implications for

personal, social, academic, and workplace success. Social and Personality Psychology

Compass, 5(1), 88–103.

Cherniss, C., Extein, M., Goleman, D., & Weissberg, R. P. (2006). Emotional intelligence: what

does the research really indicate? Educational Psychologist, 41(4), 239–245.

Goleman, D. (2001). An EI-based theory of performance. The Emotionally Intelligent

Workplace: How to Select for, Measure, and Improve Emotional Intelligence in Individuals,

Groups, and Organizations, 1, 27–44.

Grewal, D., & Salovey, P. (2005). Feeling Smart: The Science of Emotional Intelligence: A new

idea in psychology has matured and shows promise of explaining how attending to

emotions can help us in everyday life. American Scientist, 93(4), 330–339.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2016). The ability model of emotional intelligence:

Principles and updates. Emotion Review, 8(4), 290–300.

Sadri, G. (2012). Emotional intelligence and leadership development. Public Personnel

Management, 41(3), 535–548.