The Science of Emotional Intelligence

This article provides an overview of current research on emotional intelligence. Although it has been defined in many ways, we focus on the four-branch model by Mayer and Salovey (1997), which characterizes emotional intelligence as a set of four related abilities: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions. The theory provides a useful framework for studying individual differences in abilities related to processing emotional information. Despite measurement obstacles, the evidence in favor of emotional intelligence is accumulating. Emotional intelligence predicts success in important domains, among them personal and work relationships. KEYWORDS—emotional intelligence; emotions; social interaction In the past decade, emotional intelligence has generated an enormous amount of interest both within and outside the field of psychology. The concept has received considerable media attention, and many readers of this article may have already encountered one or more definitions of emotional intelligence. The present discussion, however, focuses on the scientific study of emotional intelligence rather than on popularizations of the concept. Mayer and Salovey (1997; see also Salovey & Mayer, 1990) proposed a model of emotional intelligence to address a growing need in psychology for a framework to organize the study of individual differences in abilities related to emotion. This theoretical model motivated the creation of the first ability-based tests of emotional intelligence. Although findings remain preliminary, emotional intelligence has been shown to have an effect on important life outcomes such as forming satisfying personal relationships and achieving success at work. Perhaps most importantly, ability-based tests of emotional intelligence reliably measure skills that are relatively distinct from commonly assessed aspects of personality. THE FOUR-BRANCH MODEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Emotional intelligence brings together the fields of emotions and intelligence by viewing emotions as useful sources of information that help one to make sense of and navigate the social environment. Salovey and Mayer (1990, p. 189) proposed a formal definition of emotional intelligence as ‘‘The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action. ’’ Later this definition was refined and broken down into four proposed abilites that are distinct yet related: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). The first branch of emotional intelligence, perceiving emotions, is the ability to detect and decipher emotions in faces, pictures, voices, and cultural artifacts. It also includes the ability to identify one’s own emotions. Perceiving emotions may represent the most basic aspect of emotional intelligence, as it makes all other processing of emotional information possible. The second branch of emotional intelligence, using emotions, is the ability to harness emotions to facilitate various cognitive activities, such as thinking and problem solving. We can illustrate the skills in this branch through a hypothetical scenario. Imagine that you have to complete a difficult and tedious assignment requiring deductive reasoning and attention to detail in a short amount of time; would it be better, as far as completing the task goes, to be in a good mood or in a sad mood? Being in a slightly sad mood helps people conduct careful, methodical work. Conversely, a happy mood can stimulate creative and innovative thinking (e.g., Isen, Johnson, Mertz, & Robinson, 1985). The emotionally intelligent person can capitalize fully upon his or her changing moods in order to best fit the task at hand. The third branch of emotional intelligence, understanding emotions, is the ability to comprehend emotion language and to appreciate complicated relationships among emotions. For Address correspondence to Peter Salovey, Department of Psychology, Yale University, PO Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205; e-mail: peter.salovey@yale.edu. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 14—Number 6 281 Copyright r 2005 American Psychological Society example, understanding emotions encompasses the ability to be sensitive to slight variations between emotions, such as the difference between happy and ecstatic. Furthermore, it includes the ability to recognize and describe how emotions evolve over time, such as how shock can turn into grief. The fourth branch of emotional intelligence, managing emotions, consists of the ability to regulate emotions in both ourselves and in others. Everyone is familiar with times in their lives when they have temporarily, and sometimes embarrassingly, lost control of their emotions. The fourth branch also includes the ability to manage the emotions of others. For example, an emotionally intelligent politician might increase her own anger and use it to deliver a powerful speech in order to arouse righteous anger in others. Therefore, the emotionally intelligent person can harness emotions, even negative ones, and manage them to achieve intended goals. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN CONTEXT Intrinsic to the four-branch model of emotional intelligence is the idea that these skills cannot exist outside of the social context in which they operate. In order to use these skills, one must be aware of what is considered appropriate behavior by the people with whom one interacts. This point is central to our discussion of how to measure emotional intelligence. We consider the role of emotional intelligence in personality to be similar to that played by traditional, analytic intelligence. Specifically, emotional intelligence is a set of interrelated skills that allows people to process emotionally relevant information efficiently and accurately (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999). Although emotional intelligence correlates to some extent with tests that measure verbal abilities, it overlaps only modestly with standard measures of personality such as those organized by the Big Five personality traits: openess to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Our conceptualization therefore defines emotional intelligence as a set of skills or competenencies rather than personality traits. Whether these skills as a whole operate similarly in every social context is a question requiring further research. It is possible that people may differ in emotional intelligence for different kinds of emotions or that some individuals are better able to harness their emotional intelligence in social or other situations. These sorts of contextual questions require much more investigation. As noted earlier, one of the primary purposes in proposing a model of emotional intelligence was to provide a framework for investigators exploring individual differences in the processing of emotion-relevant information. In recent years, a number of researchers have made important discoveries suggesting places to look for such differences. For example, positive emotions can temporarily broaden a person’s repertoire of thoughts, leading to creative problem solving (Frederickson, 1998). People vary in their abilities to differentiate their emotions; that is, some people can recognize fine-grained distinctions in what they are feeling (e.g., ‘‘I feel angry and guilty, and a little bit sad too’’), whereas other people can only recognize their feelings in a vague way (e.g., ‘‘I feel bad’’; Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001). In addition, sharing traumatic personal experiences can often help people achieve emotional closure, leading to better long-term emotional and physical health (Pennebaker, 1997). Based on the four-branch model of emotional intelligence, we can interpret Frederickson’s work as important to branch two, using emotions. Furthermore, Barrett et al.’s (2001) research on emotional differentiation relates to the third branch of emotional intelligence, understanding emotions. Pennebaker’s (1997) findings tie in nicely with the fourth branch, managing emotions. Emotional intelligence provides an organizing heuristic that helps us to understand the relationships among reported findings and guides directions for future research. MEASURING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE The first tests of emotional intelligence consisted of self-report scales, which ask people to rate themselves on a number of characteristics (e.g. displaying patience, having good relationships, tolerating stress well) that the authors of such tests believe represent emotional intelligence. However, scores on self-report tests of emotional intelligence such as these are highly correlated with standard personality constructs such as extroversion and neuroticism (Brackett & Mayer, 2003). Such tests raise two difficult questions: whether people are sufficiently aware of their own emotional abilities to report upon them accurately, and whether people answer the questions truthfully instead of reporting in a socially desirable manner. To address these problems, ability-based tests such as the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) were constructed (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002). The MSCEIT is a 40-minute battery that may be completed either on paper or computer. By testing a person’s abilities on each of the four branches of emotional intelligence, it generates scores for each of the branches as well as a total score (see Figs. 1–4 for items similar to those on the MSCEIT for each of the four branches). Central to the four-branch model is the idea that emotional intelligence requires attunement to social norms. Therefore, the MSCEIT is scored in a consensus fashion, with higher scores indicating higher overlap between an individual’s answers and those provided by a worldwide sample of thousands of respondents. In addition, the MSCEITcan be expert scored, so that the amount of overlap is calculated between an individual’s answers