The Psychology of Emotional Intelligence

             For years, human resource professionals and managers have differentiated between individuals of equal or nearly equal technical skills by perceived "people skills." Those with people skills are expected to be better performers and favored for job openings and promotions. There's considerable interest in replacing the vague and ambiguous term, people skills, with an objective and measurable, concept. The new measure is commonly referred to as emotional intelligence (EI).
             What is emotional intelligence? One way to define the concept is to identify the skills it provides: "emotional intelligence is involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them" (Mayer and Salovey 1997a). This is not to imply that there is consensus among those researching and applying EI as to how it should be defined or measured. We briefly discuss below the three major schools of thought on the concept, and the two major instruments to measure EI We then consider how such an improved measure of intelligence might help business managers, using IQ as a point of departure.
             Can EI be developed? Our Internet search of the exact phrase "emotional intelligence" combined with the word "training" yielded 127,000 hits, and below we sample some claims of a few of the training organizations listed. We also discuss how social and emotional learning is becoming a curriculum topic from pre-school to high school.
             We conclude our discussion with some suggested applications of EI in the workplace.
             The term emotional intelligence (EI) appears to have been coined in 1990 by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer. They defined EI as the ability to recognize the meaning of emotions and their relationships, and to reason and solve problems by them (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Originally, they described EI as consisting of three mental processes: appraising and expressing emotions...

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The Psychology of Emotional Intelligence. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 09:30, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/6356.html