What is Emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is considered a subset of social intelligence. It is defined as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”. It has been a contradictory term in the past. Under western thoughts, emotions are viewed as disorganized interruptions of mental activity, must be controlled. Young defined them as “acute disturbance of individual as a whole”. The modern introductory text described emotions as a “disorganized response, largely visceral, resulting from the lack of an effective adjustment”. Wordsworth suggested to include the emotions of younger children in the measurement scale of IQ. Later emotions are started observing as a part of cognitive activities and actions. They started considering emotions as motivating forces to arouse, sustain and direct activities. Modern theories also accepted emotions as part of cognitive activities. Artificial intelligence is also being viewed with emotions for their processing.

Conceptualization:

Emotional intelligence is conceptualized in appraisal and expression of emotion, regulation of emotion and utilization of emotion. The appraisal and expression is further divided into self and other and then self to verbal and non-verbal, whereas ‘other’ lead to non-verbal perceptions and empathy. It is suggested that accurate appraising and expressing emotions tend to perceive or respond to their emotion more quickly and better communicate them to others. Similar way ‘regulation of emotion’ is categories in self and others. The better construct of emotional intelligence are more adaptive and reinforcing to meet the requirements of a particular goal. The utilization of emotion is viewed in ‘flexible planning’, ‘creative thinking’, ‘redirected attention’ and ‘motivation’. The process of conceptualization is common for everyone but are differentiated incapacity to understand and express emotions and the processing in between. Individual of high emotional intelligence has the ability to harness their emotions to generate multiple ideas, diverse and integrated cognition, different level of processing and also at performing complex intellectual tasks. Thus, emotional intelligence people are good inflexible planning, creative thinking, mood directed attention and emotion led motivation to perform a challenging task.

Domains:

There are four domains of emotional intelligence self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand their emotions/feelings. It is about awareness of their own emotions, their causes and ability to react accordingly. All other emotional performance depends on how accurate one perceives one’s emotions. Self-management is about the ability of self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation and positive outlook of their emotional. It is about the ability to utilize their emotions to perform other cognitive tasks. Emotional intelligence and fully aware of mood swings and have the ability to changes their mood according to the task. Social awareness is about empathy and organizational awareness. High emotional people can identify the emotional cure and ability to empathize easily. They are fully aware of their social environment, group influence and dynamics of power.  They can adjust to their changing social environment. Relationship management is about influence, coach and mentor, conflict management, teamwork and inspirational leadership. High emotional intelligent people have strong communication skills, ability to inspire and influence others, developing consensus to reach their goals. They are good at building positive relationships, forming trust and credibility.

Measurement:

The first of measuring emotional intelligence is self-report; people asked to rate themselves on the no of characteristics, a psychologist believe it measures emotional intelligence. It is difficult to access emotional intelligence score of people who is less aware of his/her emotions or intentionally report questions in a socially desirable manner. Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is a 40-minute battery test can be performed on computer and paper. It measures the score on each domain as well as the total score. The emotional intelligence test is kept attunement to the social norms. Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) also score individual based on their social competencies.

Conclusion:

Emotional intelligence is a set of interpersonal skills that are relevant to process information accurately in a more efficient manner. To utilize these skills, one must be fully aware of oneself and the people whom one interacts. People can differ in their emotional intelligence for different emotions in different situations. Emotional intelligence is essential for developing interpersonal relations, social competencies and psychological well-being of a person. It is more important for determining the success rate of a person than IQ.