Feeling Smart: The Science of Emotional Intelligence

Feeling Smart: The Scienceof Emotional Intelligence

A new idea in psychologi/ has matured and shows promise of explaininghow attending to emotions can help us in everyday life

Daisy Grewal and Peter Salovey

Over the past decade almost every-one tuned in to American popular

culture has heard the term emotional in-k'ltigena'. As a new concept, emotionalintelligence has been a hit: It has beenthe subject of several books, includinga best seller, and myriad talk-show dis-cussions and seminars for schools andorganizations. Today you can hire acoach to help you raise your "EQ," youremotional quotient—or your child's.

Despite (or perhaps because of) itshigh public profile, emotional intelli-gence has attracted considerable scien-tific criticism. Some of the controversyarises from the fact that popular andscientific definitions of emotional in-telligence differ sharply. In addition,measuring emotional intelligence hasnot been easy. Despite these difficul-ties, research on emotional intelligencehas managed to sustain itself and infact shows considerable promise asa serious iine of scientific inquiry. Itturns out that emotional intelligencecan indeed be measured, as a set of

Daisif Grewal is a doctoral student in the social

psi/cholo^ [irogram at Yale University. She re-

ceiivd her B.A. in psychology from the University

of California, Los Angeles iu 2002 and her M.S. in

psychology from Yale in 2004. Her research focuses

on gender stereotyfvs and prejudice, particularly in

organizational contexts. Peter Salovey, who earned

his Ph.D. from Yale in 1986, is Dean of Yale College

and Chris Arj^fris Professor qf Psychology at Yale,

where he directs the Health, Emotion, and Behavior

Lalwntori/ and holds additional professorships in

management, epideniiologif and public health, and

social and polici/ studies. His research emphases are

the psychological significance and function of nnxni

and emotion, and the application of principles from

social and jvrsonality psycholiygi/ to promotiiiff

healthy behavior. Address for Salovey: Yale Univer-

sity,Dqxirtment of Psychology, 2 Hillhouse Ave-

nue, Nm> Hmm, CT 06520-8205. Internet for both:

daisy.gre-u'[email protected]>[email protected]

mental abilities, and that doing so is aninformative exercise that can help in-dividuals understand the role of emo-tions in their everyday lives.

Ten years after the appearance ofthat bestselling book and a TIMEmagazine cover that asked "What'syour EQ?" it seems sensible to askwhat is known, scientifically, aboutemotional intelligence. In the historyof modern psychology, the conceptrepresents a stage in the evolution ofour thinking about the relation be-tween passion and reason and repre-sents an important outgrowth of newtheories of intelligence. Work in thissubfield has produced a four-factormodel of emotional intelligence thatserves as a guide for empirical re-search. In this article we will explainways of assessing emotional intel-ligence using ability-based tests andsome of tbe findings that have re-sulted from this method.

Before "Emotional Intelligence"Philosophers have debated the relationbetween thought and emotions for atleast two millennia. The Stoics of an-cient Greece and Rome believed emo-tion far too heated and tinpredictableto be of much use to rational thought.Emotion was also strongly associatedwith women, in their view, and there-fore representative of the weak, inferi-or aspects of humanity. The stereotypeof women as the more "emotional"sex is one that persists today. Eventhough various romantic movementsembraced emotion over the centuries,the Stoic view of emotions as more orless irrational persisted in one form oranother well into the 20th century.

But many notions were upendedduring the rapid development of mod-ern psychology in the 20th century. Set-

ting the stage for a new way of thinkingabout emotions and thought, psycholo-gists articulated broader definitions ofintelligence and also new perspectiveson the relation between feeling andthinking. As early as the 1930s, psy-chometrician Robert Thorndike men-tioned the possibility that people mighthave a "sodal intelligence"—an abilityto perceive their own and others' in-ternal states, motivations and behav-iors, and act accordingly. In 1934 DavidWechsler, the psychologist whose nametoday attaches to two well-known in-telligence tests, wrote about the "non-intellective" aspects of a person thatcontribute to overall intelligence. Thom-dike's and Wechsler's statements were,however, speculations. Even thoughsocial intelligence seemed a definitepossibility, Thorndike admitted thatthere existed little scientific evidence ofits presence. A similar conclusion wasreached by psychometric expert LeeCronbach, who in 1960 declared that,after half a century of speculatitm, so-cial intelligence remained "undefinedand unmeasured."

But the 1980s brought a surge of newinterest in expanding the definition ofintelligence. In 1983 Howard Gardnerof Harvard University became famousovernight when, in the book Frames ofMimi, he outlined seven distinct formsof intelligence. Gardner proposed an"intrapersonal intelligence" very simi-lar to the current conceptualization ofemotional intelligence. "The core capac-ity at work here," he wrote, "is access toone's own feeling life—one's range ofaffects or emotions: the capacity instant-ly to effect discriminations among thesefeelings and, eventually, to label them,to enmesh them in symbolic codes, todraw upon them as a means of under-standing and guiding one's behavior."

330 American Scientist, Volume 93

l / . U U THE INSIDE STORY I

TIA4EWHAT'S YOUR

Its iK)t your IQ. Its nol even anunilx^r. But fniotioiuil intelligent >11 iiiy lie tlie lu'.st pn-cJictor ofSUCX.VSS in life, Rxlt-finingwliatit means to he .smart.

emohonfll intellioence game

Figure 1. Society lus embraced Ihe concept of emotional intelligence since it was introduced in the 1990s. Parents can learn about enhancing theirchildren's "EQ"—the emotional counterpart to IQ—and businesses sometimes hire EQ coaches. The authore report that research has validatedtests of emotional intelligence and defined it as a set of skills useful in guiding thinking and social interactions. The TIME cover that popularizedEQ was published in 1995; other images are examples of products currently available on the Internet. (Product images courtesy of, clockwise fromtop right: Creative Therapy Associates, Inc.; Triangol Strategy SL; Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Network; and Susan Dunn.)

Is "emotional intelligence," then,simply a new name for social intel-ligence and other already-defined "in-telligences"? We hope to clear up thisthorny question by explaining just whatwe attempt to measure when assessingemotional intelligence. Certainly it canbe seen as a tjqie of social intelligence.

but we prefer to explicitly focus on theprocessing of emotions and knowledgeabout emotion-related information andsuggest that this constitutes its own formof intelligence. Social intelligence is verybroadly defined, and partly for this rea-son the pertinent skills involved haveremained elusive to scientists.

www.americanscientist.org

Emotional intelligence is a more fo-cused concept. Dealing with emotionscertainly has important implications forsocial relationships, but emotions alsocontribute to other aspects of life. Eachof us has a need to set priorities, orientpositively toward future endeavors andrepair negative moods before they spiral

2005 July-August 331

Figure 2. Emotion was considered irratio-nal by the Stoics, a view that has persistedinto modern times and is epitomized by thecharacter of Spock, played by Leonard Ni-moy on the Star Trek television series. Spockhailed from the planet Vulcan, where purelogic is exalted, making him the consummateStarfleet science officer; yet his Vulcan fatherhad married a human schoolteacher, givingSpock a vulnerable emotional side.

disadvantageous decksnet loss $250 every 10 cards picked

patient withventromedial

lesion

into anxiety and depression. The conceptof emotional intelligence isolates a spe-cific set of skills embedded within theabilities that are broadly encompassedby the notion of social intelligence.

Emotion and ThinkingNew understandings of the relationbetween thought and emotion havestrengthened the scientific foundationof the shady of emotional intelligence.Using a simple decision-ma king task,neurologist Antonio R. Damasio andhis colleagues at the University of Iowahave provided con\ incing evidencethat emotion and reason are essentiallyinseparable. When making decisions,people often focus on the logical prosand cons of the choices they face. How-ever, Damasio has shown that withoutfeelings, the decisions we make maynot be in our best interest.

advantageous decksnet gain $250 every 10 cards picked

1-20 21-40 41-60 61-80 81-100 1-20 21-40

card selection over 100 trials

41-60 61-80 81-100

antagaous decks — disadvantageous decks

In the early 1990s Damasio had peo-ple participate in a gambling task inwhich the goal is to maximize profiton a loan of play money. Participantswere instructed to select 100 cards, oneat a time, from four different decks.The experimenter arranged the cardssuch that two of the decks providedlarger payoffs ($100 compared to onlyS50) but also doled out larger penaltiesat unpredictable intervals. Players whochose from the higher-reward, higher-risk decks lost a net of $250 every 10cards; those choosing the $50 decksgained a net of $250 every 10 cards.

One group of participants in thisstudy had been identified as havinglesions to the ventromedial prefrontalcortex of the brain. Patients with thistype of brain damage have normal in-tellectual function but are unable touse emotion in making decisions. Theother group was normal, meaning thattheir brains were fully intact. Becausethere was no way for any of the play-ers to calculate precisely which deckswere riskier, they had to rely on their"gut" feelings to avoid losing money.

Damasio's group demonstrated thatthe brain-lesion patients failed to payattention to these feelings (which hedeems "somatic markers") and subse-quently lost significantly more moneythan the normal participants. Therefore,defects in the brain that impair emotionand feeling detection can subsequentlyimpair decision-making. Damasio con-cluded that "individuals make judg-ments not only by assessing the se\'erityof outcomes, but also and primarily interms of their emotional quality" Thisexperiment demonstrates that emotions

Figure 3. Recent research contradicts theStoic view that dismisses emotion as an im-pediment to rational thought. In a gamblingexperiment at the University of Iowa, pa-tients with brain damage that impaired theiruse of emotions in decision-making foundthemselves continually losing money. Pa-tients with lesions to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex performed the same task asnormal patients, choosing cards from fourdecks with the goal of maximizing a play-money profit. The decks with high-payoffcards ($100 eachi also contained high-penaltycards, so that over 10 cards the net loss was$250. Other decks had low-payoff ($50) cardscombined with smaller penalties, yieldinga gain of $250 every 10 cards. The normalpatients, paying attention to their "gut feel-ings," maximized their gains by taking moreand more cards from the advantageous decks;the lesioned patients continued losing. (Datafrom Bechara et al. 2000.)


and thought processes are closely con-nected. Whatever notions we draw fromour Stoic and Cartesian heritages, sepa-rating thinking and feeling is not neces-sarily more adaptive and may, in somecases, lead to disastrous consequences.

The Four-Branch ModelThe term "emotional intelligence"was perhaps first used in an unpub-lished dissertation in 1986. One of us(Salovey), along with John D. Mayerof the University of New Hampshire,introduced it to scientific psychology in1990, defining emotional intelligence as"the ability to monitor one's own andothers' feelings, to discriminate amongthem, and to use this information toguide one's thinking and action."

Some critics have seen the conceptof emotional intelligence as a mereoutgrowth of the late-20th-centuryZeitgeist—and indeed, as we reflectin the conclusion to this article, todaythe term has a vibrant pop-culture lifeof its own. But withiji psychology, theconcept developed out of a growingemphasis on research on the interac-tion of emotion and thought. In thelate 1970s psychologists conducted ex-periments that looked at a number ofseemingly unrelated topics at the inter-face of feeling and thinking: the effectof depression on memory, the percep-tion of emotion in facial expressions,the functional importance of regulat-ing or expressing emotion.

Emotional intelligence is one of theconcepts that emerged from this work.It integrates a number of the results intoa related set of skills that can be mea-sured and differentiated from personal-ity and social skills; within psychologyit can be defined as an intelligence be-cause it is a quantifiable and indeed ameasurable aspect of the individual'scapacity to carry out abstract thoughtand to learn and adapt to the envi-ronment. Emotional intelligence canbe shown to operate on emotional in-formation in the same way that othertypes of intelligence might operate ona broken computer or what a photogra-pher sees in her viewfinder.

Interested in helping the field ofemotions develop a theory that wouldorganize the numerous efforts to findindividual difference in emotion-re-lated processes, Salovey and Mayerproposed a four-branch model of emo-tional intelligence that emphasizedfour domains of related skills: (a) theability to perceive emotions accurately;

perceivingemotions

facilitatingthought

what can Ido about

these things?

understandingemotions # f l /m

can I describe whatI'm feeiing in words?

managingemotions

can I managethese emotions?

Figure 4. Emotional intelligence is a set of skills that author Peter Salovey and colleague John D.Mayer organized into four domains: the ability to perceive emotions accurately, the ability to useemotions to facilitate thinking and reasoning, the ability to understand emotions and the abilityto manage emotions both in oneself and in others (Mayer and Salovey 1997). Differences in theseskills are seen to have consequences at home, school and work, and in social relations.

(b) the ability to use emotions to fa-cilitate thinking and reasoning; (c) theability to understand emotions, espe-cially the language of emotions; and (d)the ability to manage emotions both inoneself and in others. This four-branchemotional intelligence model proposesthat individuals differ in these skillsand that these differences have con-sequences at home, school and work,and in social relations.

Perceiving and Using EmotionsThe first domain of emotional intelli-gence, perceiving emotions, includes theabilities involved in identifying emo-tions in faces, voices, pictures, musicand other stimuli. For example, theindividual who excels at perceivingemotions can quickly tell when hisfriend is upset by accurately decodinghis friend's facial expressions.

One might consider this the mostbasic skill involved in emotional intel-ligence because it makes all other pro-cessing of emotional information pos-sible. In addition, our skill at readingfaces is one of the attributes humansshare across cultures. Paul Ekman of

the University of California, San Fran-cisco showed pictures of Americans ex-pressing different emotions to a groupof isolated New Guineans. He foundthat the New Guineans could recognizewhat emotions were being expressed inthe photographs quite accurately, eventhough they had ne\'er encountered anAmerican and had grown up in a com-pletely different culture.

But emotion perception does varyacross individuals. A study by Seth D.Pollak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000, for example, dem-onstrated that physical abuse mightinterfere with children's ability toadaptively perceive facial expressions.

Pollak asked abused and nonabusedchildren, aged 8 to 10, to come into thelaboratory to play "computer games."The children were shown digitallymorphed faces that displayed emo-tional expressions that ranged fromhappy to fearful, happy to sad, angryto fearful, or angry to sad. In one ofthe games, the children were showna single picture and asked to identifywhich emotion it expressed. Becauseall the faces expressed varying degrees

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of a certain emotion, the investigatorswere able to discover how the childrenperceived different facial expressions.They found that the abused childrenwere more likely to categorize a faceas angry, even when it showed only aslight amount of anger.

In addition, Pollak measured thebrain activity of the children whilecompleting this task using electrodesattached to their scalps. The abusedchildren also exhibited more brainactivity when viewing an angry face.This research shows that life experi-ences can strongly shape the recogni-tion of facial expression. We can specu-late that this difference in likelihood

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Figure 6. Positive emotions can improve per-formance on a task. In a Cornell Universityexperiment, students were given a simpleproblem-.solving task after they had watcheda comedy film or a neutral film. The stu-dents who had viewed the comedy film had amuch higher success rate ihan those who hadwatched a neutral film or seen no film. View-ing a comedy film was almost as "helpful" asa display providing useful clues. (Data fromIsenc^.i/. 1987.)

Figure 5. Perceiving emotions might seem to be a basic skill shared by all human beings.Cross-cultural studies show that people perceive emotions in predictable ways. But individualskills can vary—for instance, in children who have suffered abuse. In a Wisconsin experiment,abused children encountering digitally morphed faces (above) in a computer "game" weremore prone than normal children to categorize the faces as angry. Electrodes attached to theirscalps (left) recorded higher brain activity in these children when they viewed an angry face.(Images courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

to perceive anger may have importantconsequences for the children's inter-actions with other people.

The second branch of emotional in-telligence, using emotions, Ls the abilityto harness emotional information to fa-cilitate other cognitive acti\'ities. Certainmoods may create mind-sets that arebetter suited for certain kinds of tasks.

In a clever experiment done duringthe 1980s, Alice Isen of Cornell Univer-sity found that being in a happy moodhelps people generate more creativesolutions to problems. Isen broughtundergraduates into the laboratoryand induced either a positive mood(by showing them comedy clips) ora neutral mood (by showing them ashort segment from a math film).

After watching one of the Hlms, eachstudent was seated at an individual ta-ble and given a book of matches, a boxof tacks and a candle. Above the tablewas a corkboard. The students weregiven 10 minutes to provide a solutionto the following challenge: how to affixthe candle to the corkboard in such away that it would burn without drip-ping wax onto the table. Those stu-dents who had watched the comedyfilms, and were therefore in a happiermood, were more likely to come upwith an adequate solution to the prob-lem: They realized that the task can beeasily accomplished by emptying thebox, tacking it to the wall and usingit as a platform for the candle. It ap-pears that emotional intelligence canfacilitate certain tasks; the emotionallyintelligent person can utilize pleasantfeelings most effectively.

Understanding and Managing EmotionMayer and Salovey classified the thirdand fourth branches of the emotion-al intelligence model as "strategic"(rather than "experiential") intelli-

gence. The third branch, understandingemotions, is the ability to comprehendinformation about relations betweenemotions, transitions from one emo-tion to another, and to label emotionsusing emotion words. A person whois good at understanding emotionswould have the ability to see differ-ences between related emotions, suchas between pride and joy. The sameindividual would also be able to rec-ognize, for instance, that irritation canlead to rage if left unattended.

Boston College psychologist LisaFeldman Barrett has demonstrated thatthe ability to differentiate one's emo-tional states has important implicationsfor well-being. Feldman Barrett and hercolleagues asked a group of 33 under-graduates to keep a daily diary of theiremotions for two weeks. Specifically,they assessed the most intense emo-tional experience they had each dayby rating the intensity of their experi-ence of nine emotions, represented bywords, on a scale from 0, not nt nil, to 4,vciy nuicii. Four of the emotion wordsrelated to positi\'e emotion (happiness,joy, enthusiasm, amusement); five relat-ed to negative emotion (nervous, angry,sad, ashamed, guilty).

Feldman Barrett and her colleaguesthen calculated the correlations betweenreported experiences of positive emo-tions and also kx>ked at how correlatedwere reported experiences of negativeemotions. A subject whose reports ofpositive emotions are highly correlatedis perceiving less differentiation be-tween positive states. Similarly, largercorrelations betwtH.'n the reports of eachnegative emotion indicate less differen-tiation between negative states.

At the end of the study, all partici-pants completed a questionnaire as-sessing the extent to which they en-gaged in various emotion-regulation


strategies during the previous twoweeks (for example, "talking to oth-ers"). Greater differentiation betweenpositive emotional states had no effecton regulation strategies. But differen-tiation of negative states clearly did.That is, participants who were able tomore specifically pinpoint wliat nega-tive emotion they were feeling eachday also engaged in more strategies formanaging their emotions. This showsthat the ability to distinguish and labelemotions may represent an importantskill in learning how to handle emo-tions successfully.

The fourth branch of emotional intel-ligence is the ability to manage one'semotions as well as the emotions of oth-ers. This skill of managing emotions isperhaps the most commonly identifiedaspect of emotional intelligence. Emo-tional intelligence is far more than sim-ply being able to regulate bad moodseffectively. It can also be importantto maintain negative emotions whenneeded. For example, a speaker tryingto persuade her audience of some injus-tice should have the ability to use herown outrage to shr others to action.

An exampie of how using differentstrategies for managing emotions canhave different consequences is foundin the work of James S. Gross of Stan-ford University. In experiments duringthe mid-1990s. Gross showed under-graduates video clips from medicalprocedures, such as amputation, thatelicit disgvist. The students were divid-ed into three different groups. In thesuppression condition, the studentswere instructed to hide their emotionsduring the film as much as possible bylimiting their facial expressions. In thereappraisal condition, students wereinstructed to view the film as objec-tively as possible and to remain emo-tionally detached from what they wereseeing. The third group was given nospecial instructions before viewing thefilm. All of the students' reactions tothe films were recorded by video cam-era, and their physiological reactions,such as heart rate and skin conduc-tance, were also measured. In addition,participants were asked to make self-reports of their feelings before, duringand after watching the film.

The students in the suppression andreappraisal conditions had strikinglydifferent experiences from watchingthe film. In the suppression condition,participants were able to successful-ly reduce the outward experience of

finger pulse temperature skin conduclance

Figure 7. Studies have shown that people skilled at managing emotions are not necessarily sup-pressing negative emotions or controlling their e>q?ression. A Stanford experiment showed theresuits of following two intentional strategies in dealing with an unpleasant experience: remainingobiective and detached ("reappraise"), and hiding emotion by limiting facial expression ("sup-press"). Students were shown a medicai video chosen to elicit disgust. Controls (the "watch" group!were observed to have disgusted expressions (top left); they reported feeling disgusted and dis-played spikes in physiological reaction measures (bottom panels). The reappraisal group generallyscored lower on observed and self-reported behavioral reactions and had comparable physiologicalresponses; the suppression group conbulled their fadal expressions but had unusually strong phys-iological responses. (Image courtesy of James Gross, Stanford University; data from Gross 1998.)

their emotions by reducing their fa-cial expressions and other behavioralreactions to the film. However, theyshowed heightened physiologicalarousal and reported feeling as muchdisgust as controls. The participants inthe reappraisal condition reported low-er levels of disgust upon watching thefilm while not displaying any height-ened physical arousal (compared tocontrols). Gross's work demonstratesthat there might be important, andsometimes hidden, physical costs forthose individuals who chronicallysuppress expression of their negativeemotions; nevertheless, monitoringand evaluating one's emotions may bestrategically useful.

Measuring Emotional IntelligenceAny attribute being suggested as a formof intelligence must meet the standardsof f^ychometrics, the field of psychologi-cal measurement. Scientists must be ableto show that tests do not merely capturepersonality traits or information aboutother abilities. Three approaches to mea-suring emotional intelligence have beenused: self-report tests, reports made by

others and ability-based tests. Self-reporttests were developed first and continueto be widely used, owing to the easewith which they can be administeredand scored. Test-takers agree or dis-agree with items that attempt to capturevarious aspects of perceived emotionalintelligence. For example, the popularSelf-Report Emotional Intelligence Test(SREIT), authored by Nicola Schutte,asks respondents to rate how much theyagree with such items as "I have controlover my emotions," and "(^ther peoplefind it easy to confide in me."

Reports made by others are com-monly collected using "360" instru-ments. People who frequently interactwith one another (such as friends andcolleagues) are asked to rate one an-other's apparent degree of emotionalintelligence. These instruments com-monly contain items similar to thoseused in self-report tests, such as thestatement "This person has controlover his or her emotions."

Unfortunately, self-report tests as-sess self-estimates of attributes thatoften extend beyond definitions ofemotional intelligence. They tend to

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mcorporate facets of personality andcharacter traditionally measured byexisting personality tests.

Assessing emotional intelligencethrough self-report measures also pres-ents the same dilemma one would facein trying to assess standard analyticintelligence by asking people, "Do youthink you're smart?" Of course mostpeople want to appear smart. Also, in-dividuals may not have a good idea oftheir own strengths and weaknesses,especially in the domain of emotions.Similarly, although reports made byothers seem more promising in pro-\ iding accurate information, they arealso highly vulnerable to biased view-points and subjective interpretationsof behavior.

In an attempt to overcome these prob-lems, the first ability-based measure ofemohonal intelligence was introducedin 1998 in the form of the Multi-factorEmotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS). Animproved M\d professionally publishedversion of the MEIS, from wHch prob-lematic items were eliminated, was re-leased in 2002 in the form of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional IntelligenceTest (MSCEIT, named for Mayer, Sa-lovey and collaborator David R. Carusoof the El Skills Group).

The MSCEIT consists of eight dif-ferent tasks—two tasks devoted toeach of the four branches of emotion-al intelligence. For example, the firstbranch, perceiving emotions, is testedby presenting participants with a pho-tograph of a person and then askingthem to rate the amount of sadness,happiness, fear etc. that they detectin the person's facial expression. Skillin using emotions is tested by havingpeople indicate how helpful certain

moods, such as boredom or happiness,would be for performing certain ac-tivities, such as planning a birthdayparty. The understanding-emotionsportion of the test includes questionsthat ask participants to complete sen-tences testing their knowledge of emo-tion vocabulary and how emotionscan progress from one to another.The test section addressing the fourthbranch, managing emotions, presentsparticipants with real-life scenarios.Participants are asked to choose, fromseveral options, the best strategy forhandling the emotions brought up ineach scenario. After completing theMSCEIT, scores are generated for eachof the four branches as well as an over-all total score.

How Good Is the Test?Marc A. Brackett of Yale University andMayer calculated the extensive overlapbetween self-report tests of emotionalintelligence and commonly used testsof personality. Many studies of person-ality are organized around The Big Eivemodel of personality; they ask partici-pants to self-rate how much they ex-hibit the following traits; neuroticism,extraversion, openness, agreeablenessand conscientiousness.

Brackett and Mayer administeredscales assessing The Big Five to a groupof college students along with theMSCEIT and the SREIT. They foundthat scores on Big Eive personality traitswere more highly correlated with par-ticipants' scores on the SREIT than onthe MSCEIT. The trait of "extraversion,"for example, had a correlation of 0.37with scores on the SREIT but only cor-related 0.11 with scores on the MSCEIT.Therefore, it appears that self-report

tests of emotional intelligence may of-fer limited information about a personabove and beyond standard pei^sonalityquestionnaires.

The biggest problem one faces intrying to use an ability-based mea-sure of emotional intelligence is howto determine correct answers. Unliketraditional intelligence tests, emotionalintelligence tests can lack clear right orwrong solutions. There are dozens ofways one could handle many emotion-laden situations, so who should decidewhich is the emotionally intelligentway of doing things? Intrinsic to thefour-branch model of emotional intel-ligence is the hypothesis that emotionalskills cannot be separated fiom their so-ciai context. To use emotions in a usefulway, one must be attuned to the socialand cultural norms of the environmer\tin which one interacts. Therefore, themodel proposes that correct answerswill depend highly upon agreementwith others of one's own social group.Furthermore, experts on emotion re-search should also have the ability toidentify correct answers, since scientificmethods have provided us with goodknowledge on correct alternatives toemotion-related problems,

Consequently, the MSCEIT is scoredusing two different methods: generalconsensus and expert scoring. In con-sensus scoring, an individual's an-swers are statistically compared withthe answers that were provided by adiverse worldwide sample of 5,000 re-spondents aged 18 or older who com-pleted the MSCEIT prior to May 2001.The sample is both educationally andethnically diverse, with respondentsfrom seven different countries includ-ing the United States.

Tom felt anxious and became a bit stressedwhen he thought about all the work heneeded to do. When his supervisor broughthim an additional project, he felt

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I igure 8. Many attempts at testing emotional intelligence rely on self-reporting or the ratings of friends and colleagues. These tests often cap-ture personality or character attributes. The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), released in 2002, attempts to providean ability-based measure less susceptible to bias. These panels show sample questions similar to those used in the MSCEIT.


expert opinion

general consensus

perceiving facilitating understanding managing

faces pictyres facilitation sensations changes blends emotion emotionalmanagement relationships

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understanding

managing

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In the cotisensus approach, greaterstatistical overlap with the sample'sanswers reflects higher emotional in-telligence. In expert scoring, a person'sanswers are compared with those pro-vided by a group of emotion experts,in this case 21 emotion investigatorselecteci to the International Society forResearch on Emotions (ISRE).

The amount of overlap betweenconsensus and expert scoring has beencarefully examined. Participants' re-sponses have been scored first using theconsensus method and then the expertmethod, and these results are then cor-related with each other. The average cor-relation between the two sets of scoresis greater than 0.90, indicating sizableoverlap between the opinions of expertsand the general consensus of test-tak-ers. Laypeople and emotion experts,in other words, converge on the most"emotionally intelligent" answers. Thescores of the experts tend to agree wittione another more than do those of theconsensus group, indicating that emo-tion experts are more likely to possessa shared social representation of whatconsti bates emotional intelligence.

The MSCEIT has demonstrated goodreliability, meaning that scores tend tobe consistent over time and that the testis internally consistent. In sum, given itsmodest overlap with commonly usedtests of personality traits and analyticintelligence, the MSCEIT seems to testreliably for something that is distinctfrom both personality and IQ.

Putting Research to WorkResearch on emotional intelligence hasbeen put to practical use with unusual

Figure 9. To be considered an intelligenceby psychologists, a set of abilities must meetseveral criteria. For starters, Ihe abilities test-ed must form a related set. The table aboveshows intercorrelations among the eight abili-ties tested by the MSCEIT based on a world-wide sample ("general consensus") and theopinions of emotion experts asked to choosebest answers. Both measures show conver-gence. By comparison, self-report measuresdo not correlate well with performance onthe MSCEIT. At right the self-report scoresof test takers (purple) are plotted against theirMSCEIT performance by quartile. People tendto overestimate (bottom quartile) or underesti-mate (top quartile) their skills in self-reporttests. (Data above from Mayer et al. 2003; dataat right courtesy of Marc Brackett.)

Speed. The reason may be simple: Ex-periments suggest that scores on abil-ity-based measures of emotional intel-ligence are associated with a numberof important real-world outcomes.

Emotional intelligence may help oneget along with peers and supervisorsat work. Paulo N. Lopes of the Univer-sity of Surrey in the United Kingdomspearheaded a study conducted at aEortime 500 insurance company whereemployees worked in teams. Eachteam was asked to fill out sur\'eys thatasked individuals to rate other teammembers on personal descriptors re-lated to emotions such as, "This per-son handles stress without getting tootense," or "This person is aware of thefeelings of others."

Supervisors in the company werealso asked to rate their subordinateson similar items. Everyone who par-ticipated in the study also took theMSCEIT. Although the sample of par-ticipants was small, employees who

100-

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bottom I second I third I top I

MSCEiT performance quartile

scored higher on the MSCEIT receivedmore positive ratings from both theirpeers and their supervisors. Theirpeers reported having fewer conflictswith them, and they were perceivedas creating a positive atmosphere atwork. Supervisors rated their emo-tionally intelligent employees as moreinterpersonally sensitive, sociable, tol-erant of stress and possessing moreleadership potential. Higher scoreswere also positively associated withrank and salary in the company.

Emotional intelligence may also beimportant for creating and sustain-ing good relationships with peers. Adifferent study conducted by Lopesand his collaborators asked Germancollege students to keep diaries thatdescribed their everyday interactionswith others over a two-week period.For every social interaction that last-ed at least 10 minutes, students wereasked to record the gender of the per-son they interacted with, how they


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motionalintelgence

Why it can mattermore than IQ

Daniel GolemanAu[ii..t. i.iL;s,sr,Mri \- ' I HS

I'igure 10. Lmotional intelligence is sumelimes dismissed as an expression of the Zeitgeist ofthe 1990s. When published in 1995, Daniel Goleman's book Eitwtiotiat InteUigence quicklybecame a best seller. The controversy provoked by The Bell Ciirt'e (1994) had left many peoplewith the unhappy sense that their life prospects were doomed by their relatively immutableIQ. The chance to succeed by building and harnessing emotional skills was appealing. Al-though popularization of the concept has distorted the original scientific definition, the au-thors conclude that publicity has been more beneficial than harmful, stimulating interest inemotion among employers and educators.

felt about the interaction, how muchthey had wanted to make a certainimpression, and to what extent theythought they succeeded in makingthat impression.

Scores on the using-emotions branchof the MSCEIT were positively relatedto how enjoyable and interesting stu-dents found their interactions to be, aswell as how important and safe theyfelt during them. Scores on the manag-ing-emotions branch seemed most im-portant in interactions with the oppo-site sex. For tliese interactions, studentsscoring high on managing emotionsreported more enjoyment, intimacy, in-terest, importance and respect. In addi-tion, managing emotions was positivelyrelated to the students' beliefs that theyhad made the desired impression ontheir opposite-sex partners (comingacross as friendly, say, or competent).

Brackett also investigated how scoreson the MSCEIT relate to the quality ofsocial relationships among college stu-dents. American college students com-pleted the MSCEIT along with t]ues-tionnaires assessing the quality of theirfriendships and their interpersonalskills, In addition, these students wereasked to recruit two of their friends to

evaluate the quality of their friendship.Individuals scoring high in managingemotions were rated as more caring andemotionally supportive by their friends.Scores on managing emotions were alsonegatively related to friends' reports ofconflict with them. In another recentsfudy by Nicole Lemer and Brackett,Yale students who scored higher inemotional intelligence were evaluatedmore positively by their roommates;that is, their roommates reported expe-riencing less conflict with them.

Emotional intelligence may also helppeople more successfully navigate theirrelationships with spouses and roman-tic partners. Another study headed byBrackett recruited 180 young couples(mean age 25 years) from the Lon-don area. The couples completed theMSCEIT and then filled out a variety ofquestionnaires asking about aspects ofthe couples' relationships, such as thequality of the interactions with theirpartners and how happy they werewith the relationship. Happiness wascorrelated with high scores for bothpartners, and where one partner hada high score and the other a low score,satisfaction ratings tended fo fall in theintermediate range.

The Future of Emotional IntelligenceContext plays an important role in shap-ing how these skills are put into action.We can all name people—certain nota-ble politicians come to mind—who seemextremely talented in using their emo-tions in their professional lives whiletheir personal lives seem in shambles.People may be more adept at using theskills of emotional intelligence in somesituations than in others. A promisingdirection for future research is a focuson fluid skills rather than crystallizedknowledge about emotions.

Although it has proved valuable sofar as a test of general emotional intel-ligence, the MSCEIT requires refine-ment and improvement. We view theMEIS and the MSCEIT as the first in apotentially long line of improved waysof assessing emotional abilities.

We believe research on emotionalintelligence will be especially valuableif focused on individual differences inemotional processes—a topic we hopewill continue to generate more empiri-cal interest. The science of emotion thusfar has stressed principles of universal-ity Ekman's work on faces, mentionedabove, and similar cross-cultural find-ings offer important insights into thenature of human emotional experience.However, in any given culture, peoplediffer from one another in their abilitiesto interpret and use emotional infor-mation. Because individual deficits inemotional skills may lead to negativeoutcomes, anyone interested in improv-ing emotional skills in various settingsshould focus on how and why somepeople, from childhood, are better atdealing with emotions than others.Such knowledge provides the hope ofbeing able fo successfully teach suchskills toothers.

The Popularization of "EQ"Media interest in emotional intelligencewas sparked by NrtV York Times sciencewriter Daniel Goleman's bestsellingbook EniotionnI Intelligence in 1995. InOctober of the same year came the TIMEmagazine cover and additional mediacoverage proclaiming emotional intel-ligence the new way to be smart and thebest predictor of success in life.

The lafe 1990s provided the perfectcultural landscape for the appearanceof emotional intelligence. The latest ina string of IQ controversies had brokenout with the 1994 publication of TheBell Curve, which claimed that modernsociety has become increasingly strafi-


fied not by money, power or class, butby traditionally defined intelligence.

The BL'U Ctiivc was read as advocat-ing a view that intelligence is the mostimportant predictor of almost every-thing that seems to matter to most peo-ple: staying healthy, earning enoughmoney, even having a successful mar-riage. Yet half the population, by defi-nition, has below-average IQs; more-over, IQ is seen as difficult to changeover one's lifespan. For many readers.The Bell Cunv contained an extremelypessimistic message. As if to answerthe growing fear that a relatively im-mutable IQ is the primary predictorof success in life, Goleman's book onemotional intelligence included thephrase, "Why it can matter more thanIQ," right on the cover. The public re-sponded favorably to this new prom-ise, and the book soon became a stapleon airport newsstands worldwide.

Skepticism over narrow definitionsof the word "intelligence" resonatedpowerfully with a public that seemedto agree that something else—some-thing more intangible—may morestrongly determine the quality' of one'slife. Evidence that the Scholastic Apti-tude Test (SAT), which is highly corre-lated with IQ, fails to predict academicsuccess especially well beyond the firstyear of college continued to fuel interestin how emotional skills, or somethingelse beside traditional intelligence, maymore significantly determine one's fu-ture accomplishments. Americans havealways prided themselves on a strongwork ethic; the motto that "slow andsteady wins the race" represents an at-titude that fits well with public concep-tions of emotional intelligence as a markof good character. Americans also havea strong collective self-image of equal-ity, which popular views of emotionalintelligence support by characterizingsuccess as dependent on a set of skillsthat anyone can leam.

Goleman's book continues to be oneof the most successful and influentialof its genre, and other trade books con-cerned with emotional intelligence {orEQ, as it is referred to in the popu-lar literature) have appeared in recentyears. More than just a passing fad, ortemporary backlash against standard-ized testing, emotional intelligencehas captured the long-term interestof employers and educators. In justa few years, what started as a some-what obscure area of science-drivenresearch in psychology burgeoned

into a multi-million-dollar industrymarketing books, tapes, seminars andtraining programs aimed at increasingemotional intelligence.

Popularization has in some cases dis-torted the original scientific definitionof emotional intelligence. Many peo-ple now equate emotional intelligencewith almost everything desirable in aperson's makeup that cannot be mea-sured by an IQ test, such as character,motivation, confidence, mental stabil-ity, optimism and "people skills." Re-search has shown that emotional skillsmay contribute to some of these quali-ties, but most of them move far beyondskill-based emotional intelligence. Weprefer to define emotional intelligenceas a specific set of skills that can be usedfor either prosocial or antisocial pur-poses. The ability to accurately perceivehow others are feeling may be used bya therapist to gauge how best to helpher clients, whereas a con artist mightuse it to manipulate potential victims.Being emotionally intelligent does notnecessarily make one an ethical person.

Although popular claims regardingemotional intelligence run far ahead ofwhat research can reasonably support,the overall effects of the publicity havebeen more beneficial than harmful. Themost positive aspect of this populariza-tion is a new and much needed empha-sis on emotion by employers, educa-tors and others interested in promotingsocial welfare. The popularization ofemotional intelligence has helped boththe public and research psychology re-evaluate the functionality of emotionsand how they serve humans adaptivelyin everyday life. Although the continu-ing popular appeal of emotional intel-ligence is both warranted and desir-able, we hope that such attention willstimulate a greater interest in the sci-entific and scholarly study of emotion.It is our hope that in coming decades,advances in cognitive and affective sci-ence will offer intertwining perspec-tives from which to study how peoplenavigate their lives. Emotional intelli-gence, with its focus on both head andheart, may adequately serve to point usin the right direction.

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Lopes, P. N., M. A. Brackett, J. Nezlck, A.Schutz, I. Sellin and P. Salovey. 2004. Emo-tional intelligence and social interaction.Personaliti/ and Social Pfii/elioUT^y Bulletin30:1018-1034.

Lopes, P. N., S. Cote, D. Grewal, ]. Kadis, M.Gall and P Sakn'ey. Subniitteti. Evidence thatemotitina! intelligence is related hi job perfor-mance, interpersonal facilitation, affect andattitudes at work, and leadership potential.

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Salovey, P, ]. D. Mayer and D. Caruso. 2002.The positive psychology of emotional intel-ligence. In Ha)idbook of Positive Psifchologi/,ed. C. R. Snyder and S. J. Lopez, pp. 159-171. New York: Oxford University Press.

For relevant Web links, consult thisissue of American Scientist Online:

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Feeling Smart: The Science of Emotional Intelligence

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