A Short History of EI
Remember the old adage “There is nothing new under the sun”? It holds true for EI, too. The idea of emotional intelligence didn't emerge fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. It evolved over many years as these things do, with researchers building upon the ideas of those before, often in disparate but related fields, until they converged into the concepts we recognize as EI today.
Nonverbal Emotional Expression
Charles Darwin shook things up with his theory of evolution, but almost twenty years after the publication of his The Origin of Species, he published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). He found nonverbal expressions of fear, pleasure, anger, and other emotions in every living creature, even cows. He proposed that expressions were universal and inborn and that they had evolved over millennia. In his day, when the world was much smaller, people scoffed at the idea that a look of disgust in China would be recognizable to someone in England. Later research, of course, proved Darwin right.
In 1884, William James published “What Is an Emotion?” in the journal Mind. He recognized the body's connection to emotions, from flushed face to fidgeting to rapid breathing.
Repressed Emotions
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud understood that there was more to a person than rational thought. His insights helped make clear that human actions aren't always rational or logical. Freud built a practice helping people to recognize and release repressed emotions through a process called psychoanalysis. He recognized that people hide or disguise true feelings and believed that repressed emotions were the source of neurotic behavior.
Social Intelligence and Multiple Intelligence
In 1920s and 1930s, Robert Thorndike wrote about “different intelligences,” including abstract, mechanical, and social. A few years later, psychologist David Wechsler recognized the importance of the noncognitive (“nonintellective”) elements of intelligence, which he took to mean personal, affective, and social factors. He even proposed that these factors were essential for predicting a person's ability to succeed in life. In the late 1940s, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) came up with an assessment that included communication, sensitivity, initiative, and interpersonal skills, which AT&T used in the 1950s.
Also in the 1950s, the Ohio State Leadership Studies suggested that effective leaders were able to establish “mutual trust, respect, and a certain warmth and rapport” with others in their group. Howard Gardner picked up on the preceding concepts when he wrote about “multiple intelligence” in the 1980s. In 1985, psychologist Reuven Bar-On recognized that people with high IQs didn't always succeed. He coined the term “emotional quotient” (EQ) and developed an instrument to measure what he also calls human effectiveness.
Emotional Intelligence
There was plenty of research going on, but it took the imagination of Peter Salovey at Yale University and John D. Mayer, now at the University of New Hampshire, to come up with the catchy term “emotional intelligence” in 1990. They also developed instruments to measure EI and help understand the practical implications of a high or low EI score in a person's life. The way was paved for Daniel Goleman, a Harvard-trained psychologist and science writer for The New York Times, to bring the idea out of the research lab and into workplaces and the vernacular with the publication of his best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Bantam).
Today, EI is a topic of research studies, books, consulting practices, and doctoral dissertations by the hundreds in fields from neuroscience to clinical psychology to education. Martin Seligman studies “learned optimism.” In one study of freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania, he found that their scores on an optimism test were a better predictor of their freshman-year grades than their SAT scores or high school grades. Another study revealed one correlation between optimism and work: Optimistic insurance salesmen outsold their pessimistic counterparts by anywhere from 21 to 57 percent.
Other studies have shown that the ability to handle stress can predict net profits and sales per employee. One major financial services company discovered in the mid-1990s that the cause of low life insurance sales was emotional — a vicious cycle of negative emotions on the part of customers coupled with negative feelings on the part of the insurance advisers. When a group of advisers received twelve hours of emotional competence training, 90 percent of them increased their sales. Even the military has gotten in on the program. The U.S. Air Force used to dismiss up to 100 recruiters per year for failing to meet their quotas, losing as much as $3 million in training costs, as well as the missed quotas. In 1998, after administering EI tests to potential recruiters and hiring those who scored well on the test, turnover dropped to eight per year (
The Ten Habits of High EI People
High EI people share some behaviors and qualities. See how many of these describe you. High EI people:
Label feelings rather than people or situations
Distinguish between thoughts and feelings
Take responsibility for their feelings
Use their feelings to help them make decisions
Show respect for others' feelings
Feel energized, not angry
Validate other people's feelings
Practice getting a positive value from their negative emotions
Avoid commanding, controlling, judging, and lecturing others
Associate with other high EI people
