PDF Ebook Emotional Intelligence: Personality revisited or something else?
Over the past decade, emotional intelligence has been the subject of much debate regarding its conceptual definition, its empirical relationship to personality and traditional cognitive abilities, and how best to measure the construct. Salovey and Mayer (1990) initially proposed a definition of emotional intelligence as a set of skills and abilities contributing to the appraisal of emotions, the regulation of emotions, and the use of emotions in reasoning. Since then, other researchers have proposed alternative theories (Bar-On, 1997; Epstein & Meier, 1989; Goleman, 1995, 1998). While some of the differences in these theories may appear due to differences in the level of focus (Epstein, 1998; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002), many of the conceptual differences are due to differences in the scope of the definition.
Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000) have asserted that there are two basic classes of emotional intelligence models – mixed models and ability models. Models that incorporate aspects of both the original definition of emotional intelligence and aspects of personality are classified as mixed models of emotional intelligence. Models that propose a pure ability definition of emotional intelligence are considered ability models.
Petrides and Furnham (2000) also suggested that there are two types of models of emotional intelligence; trait models and information processing models. These authors argue that trait models of emotional intelligence focus on behavioral consistency across situations, assess typical behavior, rather than maximal behavior, and include vague concepts such as optimism or impulsivity. In contrast, information processing models of emotional intelligence are more explicit in the relationships between emotional intelligence and cognitive ability. These categorization schemes are summarized in Figure.
Both of these classifications also propose that the measurement method is important to categorizing new and extant models of emotional intelligence. Mayer et al. (2000) assert that while mixed models use self-reports to assess an individual’s emotional intelligence, an ability model requires the use of task-based assessment procedures. They liken self-report methods of assessing emotional intelligence to self-reports of intelligence in general, which is to say, these reports are not likely to be accurate. Petrides and Furnham (2000) extend this argument one step further by stating the measurement method defines the model. If a measure of emotional intelligence is self-report, then it must be assessing trait emotional intelligence. However, given the lack of strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that emotional intelligence is an intelligence in the same manner as verbal or spatial ability, (Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001), the importance placed on the measurement method in defining a model of emotional intelligence by these authors may be inappropriate at this time.
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PDF Ebook Emotional Intelligence: Personality revisited or something else?
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