Emotional Intelligence

The concept of emotional intelligence was formalised by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 as a set of cognitive abilities related to emotions. Their four-branch model includes emotion perception, emotional facilitation of thought, emotion understanding, and emotion management. This perspective places emotional intelligence within the framework of mental abilities, measurable through performance-based tests similar to traditional intelligence assessments.

Daniel Goleman popularised the term in 1995 with his bestselling book, expanding the concept to include social competencies, motivation, and self-regulation. His version had an enormous impact on business and education, where emotional intelligence training programmes were developed. Goleman argued that EQ could be more important than IQ for predicting professional success — a claim that generated both enthusiasm and academic controversy.

Critics have questioned whether emotional intelligence is truly an independent construct or simply a combination of already-known personality traits. Petrides and Furnham proposed the distinction between ability EI and trait EI, the latter measured through self-report questionnaires. Moreover, the proliferation of models and measurement instruments has made it difficult to reach scientific consensus on what emotional intelligence actually measures and the extent to which it predicts life outcomes beyond established personality factors.