What We Know about Emotional Intelligence: How It Affects Learning, Work, Relationships, and Our Mental Health (MIT Press)

What We Know about Emotional Intelligence: How It Affects Learning, Work, Relationships, and Our Mental Health (MIT Press)

Moshe Zeidner, Gerald Matthews, Richard D. Roberts

Language: English

Pages: 463

ISBN: B004FTQEG6

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Emotional intelligence (or EI)--the ability to perceive, regulate, and communicate emotions, to understand emotions in ourselves and others--has been the subject of best-selling books, magazine cover stories, and countless media mentions. It has been touted as a solution for problems ranging from relationship issues to the inadequacies of local schools. But the media hype has far outpaced the scientific research on emotional intelligence. In What We Know about Emotional Intelligence, three experts who are actively involved in research into EI offer a state-of-the-art account of EI in theory and practice. They tell us what we know about EI based not on anecdote or wishful thinking but on science. What We Know about Emotional Intelligence looks at current knowledge about EI with the goal of translating it into practical recommendations in work, school, social, and psychological contexts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reflect the trend in competitive sports—as well as many other aspects of life—where “no one loses” and everyone gets a “Thanks for participating” trophy. The emphasis is on a heightened sense of entitlement, of comfort, and of rights and privileges. Twenge (2006) claims that today’s young adults—called the “Me Generation”—are characterized by excessive individualism and narcissism that feeds into social disconnection and depression. Her thesis is supported by several studies tracking changes in

EI-performance relationship appears to be both measure dependent, found to be higher for self-report than ability measures, as well as criterion-dependent. A more compelling argument, though, may be that EI indirectly mediates success by protecting students from salient barriers to classroom learning such as mental distress, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, truancy, delinquency, and violence (Hawkins et al. 2004). Equally the criterion space for studying academic success has so far been rather

intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and interpersonal intelligence. The final two intelligences covered by Gardner concern the individual’s attempts to understand their own, and other peoples, behaviors, motives, and/or emotions. Clearly, both of these constructs are relevant to emotional intelligence. Still Gardner’s model has been subject to certain criticisms. These criticisms include an inability to operationalize each of these constructs in the form of reliable, fair, and valid

to be highly correlated with personality constructs (see chapter 4). Unlike many self-report measures of EI, however, ability scales show discriminant validity evidence with respect to the five factor personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—a finding that has now been consistently replicated across a series of studies (e.g., Brackett and Mayer 2003; Palmer et al. 2003; Roberts et al. 2001). All correlations are less than 0.40; with both the

EQ-i The evidence we have reviewed provides a case study in the difficulties of assessing emotional and social competencies via self-report. In some ways the test development efforts seem well-founded. The facets of EI that the questionnaire aims to assess are among those commonly listed by researchers in the area (although the conceptual model is vague). Bar-On (1997) was assiduous in gathering normative data, and the EQ-i meets some reliability and validity criteria. Nevertheless, the empirical

Download sample

Download