Emotional Intelligence:
Meaning, Components and
Evidences
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DVERTISEMENTS:
Read this article to learn about the meaning, components and evi-
dences of emotional intelligence.
Meaning of Emotional Intelligence:
In recent years, a growing group of psychologists has come to the
conclusion that the old concept of IQ (intelligence quotient) revolved
around a narrow band of linguistic and math skills and doing well in
IQ tests was most directly a predictor of success in academics but less
so as life’s paths diverged from academic fields.
These psychologists have taken a wider view of intelligence, trying to
reinvent it in terms of what it takes to lead life successfully. In fact,
one psychologist Daniel Goleman (1995, 1988) has argued strongly
that this other kind of intelligence is more important for a happy,
productive life than IQ. Goleman terms this kind of intelligence as
Emotional Intelligence (or EQ in short) and defines it as:
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“Emotional intelligence is a cluster of traits or abilities relating to the
emotional side of life-abilities such as recognizing and managing
one’s own emotions, being able to motivate oneself and restrain one’s
impulses, recognizing and managing other’s emotions and handling
interpersonal relationships in an effective manner.”
Major Components of Emotional Intelligence:
Goleman has suggested that EQ consists of five major compo-
nents:
(i) Knowing our own emotions
(ii) Managing our emotions
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(iii) Motivating ourselves
(iv) Recognizing the emotions of others
(v) Handling relationships.
He contended that each of these components plays an important role
in shaping the outcomes we experience in life.
These components are explained as follows:
(i) Knowing our Own Emotions (Self Awareness):
Recognizing a feeling as it happens is the keystone of emotional intel-
ligence. The ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is
crucial to psychological insight and self understanding. An inability to
notice our own true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with
greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives
having a sure sense of how they really feel about personal decisions.
To the extent, individuals are not aware about their own feelings,
they cannot make intelligent choices. Moreover since such persons
aren’t aware of their own emotions, they are often low in expressive-
ness, they don’t show their feelings clearly through facial expres-
sions, body language or other cues most of use to recognize other’s
feelings. This can have adverse effects on their interpersonal relation-
ships, because other people find it hard to know how they are feeling
or reacting. For these reasons, self awareness seems to be quite
important.
(ii) Managing our Own Emotions:
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Handling feelings so that they are appropriate is an ability that builds
on self awareness. This component will examine the capacity to
soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom or irritability and
the consequence of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who
are poor in this ability are constantly battling feeling of distress,
while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from
life’s setbacks and upsets.
Managing our own emotions is very important both for our own men-
tal health and from the point of view of interacting effectively with
others. For example, consider those people who cannot control their
temper. Are they bound for success and a happy life? No, they will
probably be avoided by many people and will not get the jobs, promo-
tions or lovers and friends they want.
(iii) Motivating Ourselves:
Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, once remarked “Success is two
percent inspiration and ninety eight percent perspiration”. While
inspiration or creativity is certainly important, but by perspiration
we would mean more than simply hard-work. Marshalling emotions
in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self moti-
vation and mastery and for creativity. Emotional self control-delaying
gratification and stifling impulsiveness-underlies accomplishment of
every sort. Being able to get into the ‘flow’ state enables. Outstanding
performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more
highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake.
(iv) Recognizing the Emotions of others:
Another component of emotional intelligence is the ability to read
others accurately to recognize the mood they are in and what emotion
they are experiencing. This skill is valuable in many practical set-
tings. For example, if you can accurately judge the other person’s cur-
rent mood, you can tell whether it is the right time to ask him or her
for a favour. Similarly, people who are skilled at generating strong
emotions in others are often highly successful in such fields such as
sales and politics. They can get other people to feel what they want
them to feel.
(v) Handling Relationships:
The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions
in others. Some people seem to have a knack for getting along with
others, most people who meet these people like them and as a result
they have many friends and often enjoy high level of success in their
careers.
These are the abilities which ensure popularity, leadership and inter-
personal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well in
anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others. They are
social stars. In contrast to these, there are some others, who seem to
make a mess of virtually all their personal relationships. According to
Goleman, such differences are another reflection of differences in
emotional intelligence or as some researchers would phrase it, differ-
ences in interpersonal intelligence.
Interpersonal intelligence involves such skills as being able to co-or-
dinate the efforts of many people and to negotiate solutions to com-
plex interpersonal problems, being good at giving others feedback
that does not make them angry or resentful and being a team player.
Again these skills are distinct from the ones needed for getting good
grades or scoring high on tests of intelligence, but they play a very
important role in important life outcomes.
Emotional Intelligence in Practice:
People differ in their abilities in each of the above mentioned compo-
nents of emotional intelligence. Some of us may be quite adept at
handling say, our own anxiety, but relatively inept at soothing some-
one else’s upsets. The underlying basis of our level of ability is no
doubt, neutral but as we will see, the brain in remarkably elastic con-
stantly learning. Lapses in emotional skills can be remedied: to a
great extent each of these components represents a body of habit and
response and that with the right effort can be improved upon.
Evidence on the Existence of Emotional Intelligence and Affects:
Researchers have put the concept of emotional intelligence to test,
trying to determine whether the distinct skills described by Goleman
cluster together as a single factor and whether this factor influences
important life outcomes.
At present, we do not have adequate methods for measuring all
aspects of emotional intelligence. Further, these components may, in
fact, be somewhat independent of each other. Thus we may not be
able to assign individuals a single overall EQ score comparable to the
single IQ score yielded by many intelligence tests. In a sense, though,
this is not surprising. After all, the more, the psychologists study
intelligence, the more they recognize that it probably consists of a
number of distinct components—Verbal, Spatial, Speed of” processing
and many others.
So the fact, that we also possess distinct and perhaps largely inde-
pendent abilities relating to the emotional side of life simply mirrors
this pattern. One point is thus, clear, that at present, we do not have
adequate tests for measuring emotional intelligence. Until we do, we
will not be able to determine its role in important aspects of our life.
The idea of emotional intelligence is an appealing one with important
implications so it is certain to be the topic of research by psycholo-
gists in the years ahead.
IQ and Emotional Intelligence:
IQ and EQ are hot opposing competencies but rather separate ones.
We all mix intellect and emotional ability. People with a high IQ but
low EQ or low IQ high EQ are despite the stereotypes very rate.
Indeed there is a slight correlation between IQ and some aspects of
EQ though small enough to make clear that these are largely inde-
pendent entities.
Unlike the familiar tests of IQ, there is, as yet, no single paper and
pencil test that yields an EQ score and there may never be one. Alt-
hough, there has been ample research on each of its components.
Some of them, such as empathy, are best tested by sampling a per-
son’s actual ability at the task for example, by having them read a
person’s feelings from a video of their facial expressions. Jack Block a
psychologist at the university of California at Berkeley, has made a
comparison of two pure types—People high in IQ vs. people high in
emotional aptitudes.
The differences found by him are:
(1) The high IQ pure type (setting aside EQ) is almost a caricature of
the intellectual, adept in the realm of mind but inept in the personal
word. The profiles differ slightly for men and women.
The traits of a high IQ male and female are:
High IQ Male:
Ambitions, productive, predictable, dogged, untroubled by concerns
about himself, critical, condescending, fastidious, inhibited, uneasy
with sexuality and sensual experience, unexpressive and detached
and emotionally bland and cold.
High IQ Females:
Fluent in expressing their thoughts, value intellectual matters, have a
wide range of intellectual and aesthetic intellectual and aesthetic
interests, introspective, prone to anxiety, rumination and guilt, hesi-
tant to express their anger directly although they do it indirectly).
2. The profit of high EQ pure types are:
High EQ Male:
Socially poised, outgoing and cheerful, not prone to fearfulness or
worried rumination, commitment to people or causes, taking respon-
sibility, having an ethical outlook, sympathetic and caring in relation-
ships, rich emotional life comfortable with themselves, others and the
universe they live in.
High EQ Females:
Assertive, express their feelings directly, feel positive about them-
selves, outgoing and gregarious. Adapt well to stress, easily reach out
to new people, playful, spontaneous, open to sensual experience,
rarely feel anxious or guilty or sink into rumination. The above men-
tioned problems are extremes. All of us mix IQ and Emotional intelli-
gence in varying degrees. But they offer an instructive look at what
each of these dimensions adds separately to a person’s qualities. Of
the two, emotional intelligence adds far more of the qualities that
make us more human.
