Personality and Emotional Intelligence

The cover story in the November/December issue of Manager gave a practical account of how gaining a better understanding ofhuman behaviour can make 'superrnanagers' of us all. By acting constructively on this understanding we can '. take control and be in charge of yourself and the situation. ' As Occupational Psychologists working across industry sectors we have little argument with this premise, but question the value in taking an ' Emotionally Intelligent' approach to gaining this knowledge or understanding. The author, Liz Morris, rightly points out that, although the term Emotional Intelligence (EI) was initially defined by Mayer and Salovey in 1990, it is Daniel Goleman who has provoked more recent discussions around the utility of Emotional Intelligence in the work place (Goleman, 1995; Coleman, 1998;). In his books he presents the case for EQ (Emotional Quotient), rather than IQ (Intelligence Quotient), as an indicator for successful performance and goes on to state that of the seven essential qualities required by employers, six can be described as functions of EI. These he lists as: adaptability and resilience, personal management, motivation and confidence, and interpersonal skills. To readers who are familiar with the literature on personality psychology, they will note that these six EI areas bear a remarkable resemblance to the Five Factor Model of personality. This model was first postulated in the 1930's (Thurstone, 1934) and stipulates that individuals are characteristically described by others across five central areas. These five areas were further supported as being the basis of'public' personality - the way in which we present ourselves to others, in the 1960's by Norman (1963), and again clarified in several metaanalytic studies in the early 1990's (Barrick and Mount, 1991 and Goldberg, 1992). The research strongly indicates, therefore, that personality can be explained along five key characteistics. It is significant that these characteristics - and indeed this theoryhave endured across many decades. The Five Factor Model is now regarded as the central paradigm for defining and measuring personality in both the US and UK, and is widely represented in both the world of academia and practice. This is important because in the past there has been little agreement about the personality domain. The focus and content ofpersonality tests were driven largely by the particular theories of personality endorsed by their authors, or were 'rationally' derived to produce scales that appear to have some utility. Where tests have made claims to empirical foundations such as the 16 Personality Factor Test (known widely as the 16PF), these have not achieved general acceptance (see Psychological Testing by Anastasi 1988). The significance of the Five Factor Model is that it tells us what a personality assessment needs to cover. Based on the re-analysis oftens of thousands of test administrations using the most widely respected personality measures, researchers have been able to identify a common factor structure underlying these disparate approaches to personality assessment. This new consensus about the scope and structure of normal personality gives a balanced view of the total picture, rather than an arbitrary selection of traits or a bias towards any one doctrinaire view of personality. The similarity between theories of emotional intelligence and personality is further supported by Goleman himself. He adds several variables to the original concept of Emotional Intelligence that may be better defined as personality traits and classes the remainder as learned abilities or competencies. In combining his six "construct areas" in this way, using personality and competency descriptions, we feel he does little to identify the needs for behavioural change as an aspect of personal and organisational development. …