For decades, the IQ test was the accepted measure of human abilities. It seemed logical that verbal, mathematical, reasoning, and spatial skills would predict a person's future success. If you were smart, why wouldn't you do well in work and in life?

But people with high IQs are by no means always the most successful. Who hasn't been in a situation when overthinking made it worse? Research has shown that IQ by itself isn't a very good predictor of job performance. Estimates of its value in measuring success vary from between 4 and 25 percent. There was obviously another piece to the puzzle, and that piece turned out to be emotional intelligence.

What Is IQ?

Many regard IQ as a genetically given “score,” and nothing you can do or learn can change it. It's a different story for emotional intelligence. It would be disheartening to think that someone who lacked any degree of perseverance, empathy, or self-awareness now could never improve those competencies. Fortunately, research and practical applications of social and emotional learning have proven otherwise.

Some consider emotional intelligence to be an innate potential, and by training it, you gain emotional competencies. Most agree that the skills associated with it are teachable and learnable. Certainly Redford and Virginia Williams do. In their book, In Control (Rodale), they maintain that people can learn to master such skills as remaining cool and calm in emotionally charged situations to the benefit of individuals, workplaces, and society in general.

IQ and EI are inexorably linked, of course, and research indicates that the latter actually helps the former. In studies of children and even of adult PhDs, who by definition possess a certain level of cognitive abilities, the results have shown that what made the biggest difference in how well they did later in life were their social and emotional abilities. Remember those kids in the “marshmallow studies”? Walter Mischel tracked down those same kids as teenagers and found that the two-thirds who waited for their treat at four years old scored remarkably higher on the SAT than the one-third who didn't.

EI Requires Contact

Emotional intelligence probably could be learned from books, but it isn't likely. Like values, one's emotional intelligence is learned through family relationships and behaviors, by interacting with other people on a daily basis and seeing how others act toward you.

A child who spends most of his waking hours alone, communing with a computer, isn't going to have much opportunity to develop emotional competencies. Despite the popularity of e-mailing, online chat rooms, and instant messaging, they are pale substitutes for honest-to-goodness, face-to-face human contact. The emotions have yet to be invented that can convey all of the subtleties of human expression.

,p>A child who has plenty of opportunities to learn how to interpret her own feelings, interpret the way others are feeling, and understand how her actions affect other people is going to be able to develop a high emotional intelligence.

Today, many schools have programs in “social and emotional learning,” or SEL. In many states, it's a required part of the curriculum, its proponents arguing that it's just as important to recognize one's own emotions and feel empathy for others as it is to construct legible sentences or balance a checkbook. It makes sense, too, especially if such programs can prevent bullying, violent behaviors, or drug abuse in favor of improved self-confidence and academic achievement.