Definition/History of EI Intelligence

How to harness our best potential and the potential of our employees. Everyone is born with a unique potential for emotional sensitivity, emotional memory, emotional processing and emotional learning ability. These four inborn components which form the core of one's emotional intelligence. I also believe it is helpful to make a distinction a person's person's innate potential versus what actually happens to that potential over their lifetime

Academic Definition and History of the Term "Emotional Intelligence":

Publications began appearing in the twentieth century with the work of Edward Thorndike on social intelligence in 1920. Many of these early studies focused on describing, defining and assessing socially competent behavior (Chapin, 1942; Doll, 1935; Moss & Hunt, 1927; Moss et al., 1927; Thorndike, 1920). Edgar Doll published the first instrument designed to measure socially intelligent behavior in young children (1935). Possibly influenced by Thorndike and Doll, David Wechsler included two subscales (“Comprehension” and “Picture Arrangement”) in his well-known test of cognitive intelligence that appear to have been designed to measure aspects of social intelligence. A year after the first publication of this test in 1939, Wechsler described the influence of non-intellective factors on intelligent behavior which was yet another reference to this construct (1940). In the first of a number of publications following this early description moreover, he argued that our models of intelligence would not be complete until we can adequately describe these factors (1943).

Scholars began to shift their attention from describing and assessing social intelligence to understanding the purpose of interpersonal behavior and the role it plays in effective adaptability (Zirkel, 2000). This line of research helped define human effectiveness from the social perspective as well as strengthened one very important aspect of Wechsler’s definition of general intelligence: “The capacity of the individual to act purposefully” (1958, p. 7). Additionally, this helped position social intelligence as part of general intelligence.

The early definitions of social intelligence influenced the way emotional intelligence was later conceptualized. Contemporary theorists like Peter Salovey and John Mayer originally viewed emotional intelligence as part of social intelligence (1990, p. 189), which suggests that both concepts are related and may, in all likelyhood, represent interrelated components of the same construct.

At about the same time that researchers began exploring various ways to describe, define and assess social intelligence, scientific inquiry in this area began to center around alexithymia (MacLean, 1949; Ruesch, 1948), which is the essence of emotional-social intelligence in that it focuses on the ability (or rather inability) to recognize, understand and describe emotions.

In 1985 a graduate student at an alternative liberal arts college in the USA wrote a doctoral dissertation which included the term "emotional intelligence" in the title. This seems to be the first academic use of the term "emotional intelligence."

Two new directions that paralleled and possibly evolved from alexithymia were psychological mindedness (Appelbaum, 1973) and emotional awareness (Lane & Schwartz, 1987).

Then in 1990 the work of two American university professors, John Mayer and Peter Salovey, was published in two academic journal articles. Mayer, (U. of New Hampshire), and Salovey (Yale), were trying to develop a way of scientifically measuring the difference between people's ability in the area of emotions. They found that some people were better than others at things like identifying their own feelings, identifying the feelings of others, and solving problems involving emotional issues.

Since 1990 these professors have developed two tests to attempt to measure what they are calling our "emotional intelligence." Because nearly all of their writing has been done in the academic community, their names and their actual research findings are not widely known.

Instead, the person most commonly associated with the term emotional intelligence is actually a New York writer named Daniel Goleman. Goleman had been writing articles for the magazine Popular Psychology and then later for the New York Times newspaper. Around 1994 and early 1995 he was evidently planning to write a book about "emotional literacy." For that book he was visiting schools to see what programs they had for developing emotional literacy. He was also doing a lot of reading about emotions in general. In his reading he came upon the work of Mayer and Salovey. At some point it seems Goleman or his publisher decided to change the title of his upcoming book to "Emotional Intelligence." (For a very interesting and well written story on the history of emotional intelligence see this Article by Annie Paul)

So in 1995 the book "Emotional Intelligence" was published. The book made it to the cover of Time Magazine, at least in the American market. Goleman began appearing on American television shows such as Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue. He also began a speaking tour to promote the book. As a result of his own and his publisher's efforts, the book became an international best seller. It remained on the New York Times best-seller list for approximately one year, which one can assume made Daniel Goleman a multi-millionaire.