Psychology: Emotional Intelligence
The Journal article that will be reviewed in this paper is titled “Emotional Intelligence” written by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey. The article was developed to present a model for emotional intelligence. By reviewing literature on social intelligence, it reiterates the authors’ views on emotion, on intelligence and on emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence or EI is described as the power of perceiving, controlling, and evaluating emotions. According to some experts, emotional intelligence is discovered, learned, and reinforced, whereas others confirm that it is an inborn feature.
John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey have been the top experts on emotional intelligence since 1990. In their prestigious article “Emotional Intelligence”, the authors have referred to EI as a set of social intelligence involving the capability of monitoring one’s own feelings and emotions along with that of others’, so as to distinguish between them for applying this information in order to channelize one’s actions and thinking.
Furthermore, Mayer and Salovey proposed a framework to determine four distinct elements of emotional intelligence, as:
1. Perception of Emotions: The researchers suggest that as the initial step to understand emotions, one need to precisely perceive them. This may involve interpreting non-verbal expressions like Facial expressions, body language, etc.
2. Ability to Reason with Emotions: Second factor of emotional intelligence is promoting thinking and cognitive actions via emotions. In other words, the Mayer and Salovey stated that emotions help one to prioritize things to which attention and reaction is given, one responds emotionally to things that grab their attention.
3. Understanding Emotions: According to Mayer and Salovey, the emotions perceived by humans have a vast array of meanings to it. If a person is displaying angry emotions, the perceiver should understand and interpret the reason for their anger and its true meaning. For instance, if your colleague is behaving in rage, it may mean that he’s been fighting with his spouse or he is not happy with his junior’s work. The observer, before being too judgmental, needs to accurately understand others’ emotional behaviour.
4. Managing Emotions: The duo confirm that effective management of emotions is a pivotal part of emotional intelligence. Determining emotions, reacting suitably, and reacting to the emotional behaviour of others are all crucial in effectively managing emotions.
According to Mayer and Salovey, their framework comprises of four subdivisions which are set up from lower or basic psychological processes to higher, more psychologically unified processes. For instance, the most basic branch refers to the comparatively simple capabilities of perception and expression of emotion. As against the highest level branch that refers to the conscious, thoughtful governance of emotion.
According to John D. Mayer, “In regard to measuring emotional intelligence – I am a great believer that criterion-report (that is, ability testing) is the only adequate method to employ. Intelligence is an ability and is directly measured only by having people answer questions and evaluating the correctness of those answers."
References:
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. (1990). ‘Emotional intelligence’. Imagination, cognition, and
Personality 9(3), 185-211.
