Lecture 20: Emotional Intelligence

Question 1

What is emotional intelligence?

Answer 1

• Appraisal and expression of emotion, utilization of emotion, and regulation of emotion.
• The ability to perceive, understand and manage emotions in self and others.
• Involves inhibition, e.g., delay of gratification - marshmallow test.
• Involves social emotional problem solving and affective social competence
• Often referred to as EL or EQ - emotional quotient.
• People Skills
• Howard Gardner (1983) - intrapersonal intelligence
• These include cognitive abilities, practical intelligences, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills.
• Reading nonverbal emotional communication
• Everyday knowledge and skills; real life intelligence.
• Practical knowledge can be very sophisticated & complex but unrelated to IQ & academic performance.
• Managing anger, frustration, and loneliness.

Question 2

How is emotional intelligence measured?

Answer 2

• Social emotional problem solving and competence
• Self - report
• Skill based assessment
• Skill based instruction
• Specific skills - empathy
• Emotions & moral reasoning.
• Delay of gratification
• marshmallow test
• Future consequences.
• Ability based measures of Emotional Intelligene
• Multi - factor intelligence scale (MEIS)
• Mayer - Salovey - Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) Mayer et al, 2002.
• Bar on (1997) Bar on emotional Quotient Inventory.

Question 3

What are the advantages and disadvantages to the self report method?

Answer 3

advantages
*easy to administer
*Freely available 
Disadvantages
*Not based on performance 
*Free of contextual information

Question 4

What are the 4 branches of Emotional Intelligence?

Answer 4

• Perceiving emotional - accurate perception of emotion in self & others.
• Facilitating thought - Ability to use emotions.
• Understanding emotions - Understanding of emotion, especially language of emotion.
• Managing emotions - Ability to manage in self & others.

Question 5

What does emotional intelligence predict in terms of the delay in gratification?

Answer 5

• Measures impulse control in preschoolers (4 years +)
• Delay gratification in preschoolers predicts
• Self regulation & coping in adolescence & adults.
• Resistance to temptation - tolerance of frustration
• Confidence
• Dependability in teenagers
• Sat Scores.
• Life time of similar impulse
• Behavioural and brain basis of impulse control as an adult.
• If a preschooler had a low delay ability, then as an adult there is a greater activation of ventral striatum in his emotional inhibition task.
• Resistance to temptation - relatively stable individual characteristics.
• Brain correlates of self - control strategies do not involve cognitive control in general, but in particular responses to positive stimuli.
• Resisting temptation involves both fronto striatal activations.

Question 6

What considerations should be made for future consequence scale?

Answer 6

• Construct - measures our tendency to consider potential distant outcomes of current behaviour and influence on current behaviour.
• How is this EI:
• Management of emotions in self
• Inhibit emotional reactions to immediate reward - recruit cognition.
• Higher scores on this scale positively linked with
• Conscientiousness, optimism, hope, internal locus of control
• General concern for health
• People with higher scores tend to be more green.

Question 7

What skills of emotional competence are there?

Answer 7

(Saarni, 1999)

• Awareness of one’s emotional state
• Recognise & understand others’ emotions
• Use the vocabulary of emotion
• Empathetic & sympathetic involvement with others’ emotions.
• Inner emotional state need not correspond to outer expression
• Adaptive coping by self regulation strategies.
• Emotional self - efficacy.

Question 8

What is Affective social competence?

Answer 8

• Builds upon Saarni’s ideas (different from EI)
• Less concerned with estimating intelligence
• More concerned with emotional understanding within relationships
• Three basic components
• Sending affective messages
• Receiving affective messages
• Experiencing affect
• Within each component, 4 progressions to success
• Awareness
• Identification
• Working within social context
• Management & regulation.

Question 9

How does EQ relate to IQ and personality?

Answer 9

• EI not correlated with IQ
• Not correlated with neuroticism
• EI related to personality dimensions
• EI related to self esteem, life satisfaction and relationship quality.
• IQ and EI related to ability to manage moods.