In a 2015 sur­vey, 72 per­cent of employ­ees ranked «respect­ful treat­ment of all employ­ees at all lev­els» as the top fac­tor in job sat­is­fac­tion. That’s no big sur­prise, but what exact­ly does it mean for orga­ni­za­tions and man­agers? One sim­ple answer could be: hire more employ­ees with a high Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence Quo­tient (EQ), enabling them to under­stand and man­age their own and oth­ers’ emo­tions. How­ev­er, mea­sur­ing EQ is not as straight­for­ward as it may seem, and the con­cept of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence itself has been sub­ject to sci­en­tif­ic scruti­ny and criticism.

Daniel Gole­man’s book, «Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence,» sky­rock­et­ed to fame in the 90s, claim­ing a direct cor­re­la­tion between Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence (EI) and pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess and stat­ing that EI was more cru­cial to suc­cess than IQ – despite a lack of empir­i­cal evi­dence to sup­port this rela­tion­ship. And as allur­ing as the con­cept may be, the sci­ence behind it has been under scruti­ny for years. The sheer amount of skills and com­pe­ten­cies that Gole­man groups togeth­er under Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence rais­es eyebrows:

• Emo­tion­al self-aware­ness — being aware of one’s emo­tions at any giv­en moment and rec­og­niz­ing the influ­ence these moods have on others
• Self-reg­u­la­tion — man­ag­ing or redi­rect­ing one’s emo­tions; con­sid­er­ing the con­se­quences before act­ing impulsively
• Moti­va­tion — using emo­tion­al fac­tors to accom­plish goals, enjoy the learn­ing process, and per­sist in over­com­ing obstacles
• Empa­thy — under­stand­ing the emo­tions of others
• Social skills — han­dling rela­tion­ships, moti­vat­ing oth­ers, and elic­it­ing desired respons­es from them

<h2»>A «mis­lead­ing and unnec­es­sary concept»

Thus, enter the crit­ics: Landy’s cri­tique (1995) of EI empha­sizes the absence of suf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to sup­port its unique rela­tion­ship with job suc­cess. He high­lights the fact that much of the data on EI and work-relat­ed behav­ior is con­fined to pro­pri­etary data­bas­es, lim­it­ing the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty’s abil­i­ty to thor­ough­ly exam­ine the mea­sure­ment tools and their pre­dic­tive val­ue. This lack of trans­paren­cy and open access to data rais­es ques­tions about the true mer­its of EI in the work­place, cast­ing doubt on its valid­i­ty as a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound con­struct. Landy’s con­cerns remind us of the impor­tance of uphold­ing rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic stan­dards and ensur­ing data trans­paren­cy when eval­u­at­ing pop­u­lar con­structs like Emo­tion­al Intelligence.

Schuler (2002) has voiced his con­cerns about the sci­en­tif­ic basis of Gole­man’s con­cept. He argues that EI is a «mis­lead­ing and unnec­es­sary con­cept», Gole­man’s con­cept of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence becomes elu­sive and trans­forms into an art of living.

«You can’t just invent a trait. You have to define it and mea­sure it and dis­tin­guish it from oth­er traits and use it to pre­dict the impor­tant ways that peo­ple vary.»

And Eysenck (2000) wrote: Gole­man «exem­pli­fies more clear­ly than most the fun­da­men­tal absur­di­ty of the ten­den­cy to class almost any type of behav­ior as an ‹intel­li­gence›… If these five ‹abil­i­ties› define ‹emo­tion­al intel­li­gence›, we would expect some evi­dence that they are high­ly cor­re­lat­ed; Gole­man admits that they might be quite uncor­re­lat­ed, and in any case, if we can­not mea­sure them, how do we know they are relat­ed? So the whole the­o­ry is built on quick­sand: there is no sound sci­en­tif­ic basis.» In addi­tion to Eysenck­’s cri­tique, anoth­er psy­chol­o­gist, Jor­dan B. Peter­son, shares sim­i­lar con­cerns about the valid­i­ty of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence as a con­struct. He argues, «You can’t just invent a trait. You have to define it and mea­sure it and dis­tin­guish it from oth­er traits and use it to pre­dict the impor­tant ways that peo­ple vary.»

Tests of cognitive ability are measures of performance

Despite these voic­es, the EI train has shown no signs of stop­ping. The allure of the Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence con­struct is unde­ni­able; it sim­ply sounds too good to be true — and per­haps that’s pre­cise­ly the issue, as its cap­ti­vat­ing appeal may be mask­ing a less-than-sol­id foun­da­tion in real­i­ty. In fact, the con­cept has gained wide­spread pop­u­lar­i­ty in lit­er­a­ture, coach­ing, job post­ings, and even found its way into cov­er let­ters and resumes. But why?

One answer might lie in the May­er-Salovey-Caru­so Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence Test (MSCEIT), an instru­ment designed to mea­sure EI. Inter­est­ing­ly, this test might have been dubbed «Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence» for mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es rather than sci­en­tif­ic accu­ra­cy. In real­i­ty, the test eval­u­ates an indi­vid­u­al’s abil­i­ty to per­ceive, under­stand, and reg­u­late emo­tions, as well as their capac­i­ty to use emo­tions to facil­i­tate think­ing. How­ev­er, these abil­i­ties may not exclu­sive­ly rep­re­sent Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence as a dis­tinct con­struct. Rather, they could be inter­pret­ed as a com­bi­na­tion of cog­ni­tive and social skills, as well as aspects of per­son­al­i­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, the MSCEIT might not pro­vide a clear or com­pre­hen­sive mea­sure of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, fur­ther cast­ing doubt on the valid­i­ty of Gole­man’s concept.

«There is no evi­dence that the con­structs mea­sured by the test are relat­ed to impor­tant social outcomes.»

How­ev­er, the MSCEIT too is not with­out its con­tro­ver­sies. Brody (2004) rais­es sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about the test in his paper titled «What Cog­ni­tive Intel­li­gence Is and What Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence Is Not.» He argues that the test does­n’t effec­tive­ly mea­sure Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence as a dis­tinct con­struct, but rather con­flates it with cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Brody asserts that the MSCEIT appears to be more of a mea­sure of gen­er­al cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, like prob­lem-solv­ing and rea­son­ing, than a true reflec­tion of one’s emo­tion­al apti­tude. «There is no evi­dence that the con­structs mea­sured by the test are relat­ed to impor­tant social out­comes.» This crit­i­cism under­scores the need for a clear­er dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between cog­ni­tive intel­li­gence and Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, as well as the impor­tance of devel­op­ing more accu­rate assess­ment tools to mea­sure the lat­ter. Brody’s cri­tique adds to the grow­ing body of evi­dence ques­tion­ing the sci­en­tif­ic valid­i­ty of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence and its mea­sure­ment through tests like the MSCEIT.

Approach EI with a healthy dose of skepticism

Although the tra­di­tion­al approach to Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence may be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly shaky, there are alter­na­tive mod­els and mea­sure­ment tools that adhere more close­ly to sci­en­tif­ic cri­te­ria, as we can see. One exam­ple ist the Mul­ti­fac­tor Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence Scale (MEIS), a 12-sub­scale abil­i­ty test for Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence. Stud­ies showed that Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, as mea­sured by the MEIS, met the clas­si­cal cri­te­ria of a stan­dard intel­li­gence. This sug­gests that the under­ly­ing ideas of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence can be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, and the focus should be on more robust mod­els and meth­ods to bet­ter under­stand the true rela­tion­ships and appli­ca­tions of these abilities.

A bit ear­li­er, Sowor­ka (1995) pro­posed the con­struct of social com­pe­tence, which offers a more focused and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound frame­work. Social com­pe­tence revolves around strik­ing a bal­ance between assertive­ness and the abil­i­ty to build and main­tain rela­tion­ships, which is a more direct­ly relat­able fac­tor to pro­fes­sion­al success.

In con­clu­sion, while the idea of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence is unde­ni­ably appeal­ing, we must approach it with a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism. The com­plex­i­ty of emo­tions and intel­li­gence deserves care­ful exam­i­na­tion and rig­or­ous research to devel­op a more accu­rate and com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of their inter­play. As we con­tin­ue to explore these inter­twined aspects of human cog­ni­tion and behav­ior, it is essen­tial to main­tain high sci­en­tif­ic stan­dards and remain open to new evi­dence that chal­lenges or refines our cur­rent under­stand­ing. By doing so, we can work towards a more nuanced per­spec­tive on the role of emo­tions and intel­li­gence in our lives, and ulti­mate­ly devel­op bet­ter tools and strate­gies to har­ness their poten­tial in both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al contexts.