Emotional intelligence: ability, trait and an ongoing debate
Emotional intelligence became a buzzword in the 1990s. In research it comes in two very different versions, and the debate over what it adds beyond personality is still open.
Where the model comes from
The term took scientific shape with Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), who defined emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage emotions. In their model it is an intelligence in the strict sense: a set of abilities that can be measured with tasks that have better and worse answers, such as identifying the emotion in a face.
In 1995 science journalist Daniel Goleman published a bestseller that popularized the concept and broadened it to include motivation, empathy and social skills. Goleman and Richard Boyatzis later organized the model into four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.
What the research says
The literature separates ability models, measured with performance tests, from mixed or trait models, measured by self-report (Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 2008; Petrides & Furnham, 2001). The two kinds of measure correlate weakly with each other, which means they don't capture the same thing.
Ability emotional intelligence relates to general intelligence and to the quality of social relationships. Self-reported emotional intelligence overlaps heavily with familiar traits such as emotional stability, extraversion and conscientiousness. A meta-analysis concluded that emotional intelligence predicts job performance mainly in emotionally demanding roles, and that part of what mixed measures add is due to that overlap (Joseph & Newman, 2010).
Criticisms and debates
Critics such as Edwin Locke (2005) argue that the concept was stretched to cover almost any desirable quality and lost precision. Popular claims that emotional intelligence "matters more than IQ" are not supported by the data. Even so, specific emotional skills can be trained and have practical value.
Limitations
Ethea's test is self-report, so it sits closer to trait models: it measures how you see yourself, not your actual ability to read or regulate emotions. And because it uses forced choice among four domains, it shows which domain you recognize most in yourself, not your overall level. Someone strong in every domain will still see a profile with differences. The test has not been validated against research measures.
How Ethea adapts the model
Ethea's version uses the four domains of Goleman's model, anchored in Salovey and Mayer's definition, across 16 blocks of four statements; you mark the most and the least like you, and each domain appears 16 times. The result shows your strongest and least prioritized domain, with practical suggestions for developing it.
Test created by Giovanni Oliveira.
References
Links with a DOI go to the original article. Where no DOI is given, the link opens a Google Scholar search.
- Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
- Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
- Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits?. American Psychologist, 63(6), 503–517. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.503(opens in a new tab)
- Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2001). Trait emotional intelligence: Psychometric investigation with reference to established trait taxonomies. European Journal of Personality, 15(6), 425–448. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
- Locke, E. A. (2005). Why emotional intelligence is an invalid concept. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 425–431. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
- Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 54–78. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
- Hicks, L. E. (1970). Some properties of ipsative, normative, and forced-choice normative measures. Psychological Bulletin, 74(3), 167–184. DOI: 10.1037/h0029780(opens in a new tab)
- Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2011). Item response modeling of forced-choice questionnaires. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 71(3), 460–502. DOI: 10.1177/0013164410375112(opens in a new tab)
- Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2013). How IRT can solve problems of ipsative data in forced-choice questionnaires. Psychological Methods, 18(1), 36–52. DOI: 10.1037/a0030641(opens in a new tab)