Emotional Intelligence: The State of the Fad Part II

“There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ’em.”

Yogi Berra

Current EI Issues and Controversies

Anyone confused about what emotional intelligence really is, how to define it and how to measure it?

You should be.  No doubt this list is incomplete but here are a few issues that have been hotly debated in both the academic and practitioner circles in the last few years:

• Confusion about an accepted definition of emotional intelligence
• Confusion about the relationships between other closely related concepts such as emotional health, interpersonal skill, social intelligence and emotional competency
• Unsupported claims about the power and predictive ability of emotional intelligence for job performance, career success, and business related outcomes
• Diverse and somewhat weak measures of the constructs underlying emotional intelligence models
• Overlap of many emotional intelligence measures with well established personality constructs (e.g., five factor personality models)

The Cascading Model of EI

Current research by Joseph and Newman suggests a “cascading” nature of emotional intelligence and emotional and social competence ((Joseph, D. & Newman, D. (2010).  Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 54-78)).

At the most basic level, Emotional Intelligence (EI) is typically defined as the ability to perceive, understand and manage your emotions and behavior as well as others effectively.  Although there is much controversy about different definitions models of EI, these three core elements seem to be most widely recognized as a way to define EI.

1. Emotion Perception:  This fundamental process is most strongly associated with the five factor personality construct of “conscientiousness“.  People who are organized, planned, detail oriented and diligent seem to most competent to pick up clues about the feelings and behaviors of others as well as themselves.

2. Emotion Understanding: Cognitive ability (general intelligence) appears to be most strongly associated with the ability to understand and label thoughts and feelings.

3. Emotion Management: The five factor personality construct of “emotional stability” appears to be most strongly associated with resilience, coping with emotions and managing strong feelings that might interfere with social interactions (e.g., practicing “sign language” when you get cut off while driving on the freeway).  This in one reason that topics such as stress management, repression, relaxation and coping sometimes seems to be part of the “kitchen sink” of how EI is often described (and measured).

This “cascading model” doesn’t appear to emphasize as much of the social skills that Goleman and others have focused on in recent popular works but can be easily accounted for by conceptualizing the diverse models of EI into “emotional and social competence “as Cherniss (2010) suggests ((Cherniss, C. (2010). Emotional Intelligence: Towards Clarification of a Concept. Industrial and Organizational Psychology,3, 110-126)).

Current Issues and Controversies With Diverse EI Measures

It seems as if just about every vendor now has some type of EI assessment.  Our own “mixed measure” of ESC called Emotional Intelligence View 360 based on the Goleman construct has some strengths and limitations as all measures.  Some of the issues in EI measurement include:

Ability Measures

• Independent of FFM
• Weak convergent validity with other cognitive ability measures
• Scoring issues
• Confounded with a measure of knowledge

Self-Report (Mixed) Measures of EI and ESC

• High correlations with five factor personality measures
• Limitations of 360-feedback (e.g., inflated self-ratings, moderate correlations between and within rater groups)
• Limitations of self-report (how do you measure EI in people who lack emotional intelligence?)
• Tend to ignore context, situation and setting (EI is not a useful predictor of performance in jobs that don’t have high emotional labor or are socially demanding)

The field is young and controversy is actually good to help clarify the various definitions, models and measures of both EI and ESC.

In any case what seems to be true is that it’s not how smart you  are but how you are smart that seems to make the most difference in work/life success and even health….Be well….

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)