Emotional Intelligence

The term Emotional Intelligence (EI) was popularised by the American psychologist Daniel Goleman. 

As per Goleman, “Emotional intelligence(EI) is the capacity for recognising our feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and our relationships.”

He argues that emotional intelligence is as crucial as IQ for success, shaping personal and professional effectiveness in various spheres of life.

In this chapter, we shall study the concept of Emotional Intelligence and its role in civil services.

What is Intelligence?

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and use knowledge and skills, to adapt effectively to the environment, and to overcome obstacles through careful thought. It is the capacity to learn, abstract, understand, and apply logic, reasoning and creativity for problem-solving. 

For Example, the ability to learn any language perfectly is known as linguistic intelligence.

What is an emotion?

Emotion is a perplexing chain of loosely connected incidents that commence with a stimulus. It also includes feelings, psychological changes, impulses to action and specific goal-directed behaviour. Emotions are experienced in response to a particular internal or external event. They arise out of our sensations, perceptions and thoughts related to objects, persons and situations. Emotions are a motivation to take action – seeking things and activities that provide pleasure and avoiding those that give rise to pain or unpleasantness. Its intensity varies depending on how we perceive and interpret something. For Example, being irritated and upset are the milder forms of anger, whereas furious and enraged are high-intensity anger feelings.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

According to John Mayer and Peter Salovey, EI is “the capability to: 

• Recognise individuals and other people’s emotions, 
• to discriminate among different emotions and label them appropriately, and 
• to utilise emotional information to exhibit thinking and behaviour and 
• manage emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goals.”

As you can see, we have broken his definition into four clear components of Emotional Intelligence.

This enables us to identify components of Emotional Intelligence.

Components of emotional intelligence:

Broadly, emotional intelligence can be viewed as having four distinct yet interrelated components: recognising, discriminating, utilising, and managing emotions. 

Let us explain each of these components below. 

Recognising emotions: 

This is the basic ability to register and recognise emotions in ourselves and other people. This is the most fundamental skill because without recognising the experience of an emotion, it is very difficult to understand it or change it in any way.

For Example, observing that a friend is hanging their head low and has reduced their interactions with others might indicate they are upset or sad about something.

Discriminating emotions: 

It means discerning between different feelings and labelling them appropriately. This component refers to using the specific information that various emotions provide and knowing how that might affect their behaviour. 

For Example, experiencing the sensation of “butterflies in the stomach” and knowing that they are feeling anxiety.

People who are high in emotional intelligence are able to identify when they are experiencing a particular emotion and are able to use their vocabulary to label the feeling. 

Utilising emotions:

It involves the skill of leveraging emotions to enhance our thinking, decision-making and relationships. Emotionally intelligent people are able to ‘read’ this information and use it to guide their behaviour. 

For Example, concealing one’s nervousness about public speaking by clapping to show excitement. 

Managing emotions:

When one recognises their emotions quickly and understands their meaning, it becomes relatively easier for them to manage the next steps regarding how to change them. 

This applies to the self as well as others. For Example, saying sorry to an angry friend may reduce anger or sadness. This can help us in achieving our goals.

What Emotional Intelligence ‘is’ and is ‘not’:

To have an accurate understanding of the concept of emotional intelligence, it is important to draw clear distinctions between what it refers to and which aspects of it are inaccurate.

What emotional intelligence ‘is’	What emotional intelligence is ‘not’
Being aware of oneself	Ignoring or suppressing emotions
Being able to manage emotions	Allowing emotions to dominate thinking and decision-making
Being socially aware	An indicator of cognitive and academic intelligence
field of scientific study	A permanent trait

Thus, emotional intelligence refers to the non-cognitive abilities of a person that include the ability to be aware of one’s own emotions and those of others and also to be able to manage these emotions.

Did you Know?

The term Emotional Intelligence first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch. However, it gained popularity in the 1995 book by that title, written by author and science journalist Daniel Goleman.  Since this time, Goleman’s 1995 analysis of EI has been criticized within the scientific community, despite prolific reports of its usefulness in the popular press.

Models Of Emotional Intelligence(EI):

The field of emotional intelligence (EI) is comprised of several theories and models that attempt to explain the interrelated concepts therein and propose assessment measures so that they can be mapped. Among them, we will study the three main models of EI. 

They are ability, mixed and trait models.

Editor’s Note: It is not important to learn about the following models for the UPSC Exam per se. But you must still read them to get a better understanding of what is emotional intelligence.

Ability model:

The ability model is a four-branch framework of emotional intelligence put forth by Mayer, Salovey & Caruso in 2004. 

It defines emotional intelligence (EI) as “the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional meanings, and to reflectively regulate emotions in ways that promote emotional and intellectual growth.”

 According to this model, individuals vary in their ability to 

1. Process information of an emotional nature. 
2. Relate emotional processing to a wider cognition.

Thus, the ability model emphasises the emotional information – knowing and regulating the emotions, and at the same time, the role of reasoning and other cognitive functioning in the accurate processing of this emotional information.

It is a step-wise developmental model of EI from childhood to adulthood, proceeding from basic to more complex tasks involving increasing complex skills. 

The four branches comprise:                  

• Emotional Perception :

• It refers to the ability to identify emotions in faces and pictures.

• It involves recognising emotions expressed through facial expressions and body language and is the most basic and early developing branch.

• It helps the individual perceive, apprise, and express emotions in oneself and others. 

• This helps in providing appropriate input to the cognitive system in the next tier.

• Emotional Facilitation:

• It refers to the capacity of emotions to assist and aid thinking so that an individual can act in a planned manner. 
• It refers to the ability to facilitate thought with emotional inputs. 
• Here, emotional information is used to enhance, adjust and prioritise thinking and facilitate judgement and decision.

• Emotional Understanding:

• It is about analysing and making sense of emotions by labelling them and differentiating among them. 
• It refers to the ability to understand the emotions and the dynamics in their inter-relationship. Thus, it involves the abstract processing of emotional information.

• Emotional Management:

• It is the most complex and distinct from the others and focuses on utilising emotions to optimise reactions to one’s environment, such as reframing and changing appraisals to regulate emotions.

• It includes the ability to manage emotions to help in personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Trait model:

This model was developed by Konstantin Vasily Petrides in 2009. The trait emotional intelligence model is defined as “a constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies”. 

Petrides terms this as a trait of emotional self-efficacy. It means:

• Emotions are subjective and emotional intelligence is, quite simply, an individual’s perception of his/ her ability to work with emotions. 

• There is no standard profile of an emotionally intelligent person because certain traits are adaptive, functional and useful in some situations. In contrast, the same traits may hamper individuals in other contexts. For Example, being reserved would be useful in a research-based job but may not be suited to a job like customer service. 

Thus, the trait model of EI focuses on particular personality traits that are helpful in perceiving and regulating emotions. It emphasises the emotional self-perceptions and emotional traits in one’s personality as playing a significant role in one’s emotional intelligence.

Mixed model:

Mixed models of emotional intelligence are those that combine the construct with personality characteristics. This concept was given by Goleman in 1995.

• As per Goleman, “There is an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character“.

• The mixed model considers both abilities and personality traits in explaining and measuring emotional intelligence. Thus, the assessment of EI involves self-reporting, performance measures, or both.

Components of Emotional Intelligence

Based on the above models we can conclude that there are five components of Emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness:

It refers to Knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.

Self-awareness leads to clarity in our behaviour, which in turn induces self-confidence.

1. Self-regulation:

It refers to regulating one’s internal states, impulses, and resources. Self-awareness promotes self-regulation, which involves controlling emotions and thus strengthening self-control. 

Self-regulation leads to patience and tolerance in extreme situations, which in turn prevents conflicts.

1. Self-motivation:

When a person is aware of his emotions and is able to regulate them well, he develops high self-motivation to be successful in all spheres of life, leading to achievement orientation. Self-motivation improves self-esteem and an optimistic outlook for his work as well as personal relations. 

1. Empathy:

It refers to sensing others’ feelings and perspectives and taking an active interest in their concerns. It leads to a better understanding of people and situations and promotes cooperation for a peaceful society.

1. Relationship management:

According to Goleman, an emotionally intelligent person is more able to handle relationships both in personal as well as public life. It Concerns the skill or adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.

Handling relationships involves knowing the strengths and weaknesses of others and, at the same time, cultivating respect for the same. This promotes a collaborative approach for better results in teamwork, whether at home or the workplace.

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