āLife is indeed colourful. We can feel in the pink one day, with our bank balances comfortably in the black, and the grass seemingly no greener on the other side of the fence. Then out of the blue, something tiresome happens that makes us see red, turn ashen white, even purple with rage. Maybe controlling our varying emotions is just ācolour managemenā by another name.ā
āAlex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe
The 1997 classic paper by J.D. Mayer and P. Salovey on āWhat is Emotional Intelligenceā started by recapitulating the real-world story of a little boy in his fourth grade who was found quivering in the school playground, by his teacher. Realizing that the poor boy could not actually afford to grant himself any warmer garment to combat the chilly winter, his teacher and the school-nurse decided to offer him one. Accordingly, they dropped in his place and the delighted mother outfitted the boy next morning for his school. Incidentally, two of his classmates, finding the boy in his new attire accused him of stealing it with such malevolence that no other child dared to defend the boy. Intervention by the concerned teacher and the nurse did not help much; one of the two boys abused the nurse and she retaliated equally harshly. Thus, the story of the kid that started with the goodness of a caring teacher did not end up with that tenderness. The class teacher was dumbfound to find her boys misbehaving; the school-nurse was penitent that she had retaliated; and the concerned teacher was upset to find her affection for the poor boy to have caused such agony to him. As pointed out by Mayer and Salovey (1997), reasoning about such situations and taking measures to restrict those to crop-up further, require a deliberate interaction between the heart and the brain. The school administrators might put a ban on teachers to give gifts to their students but such a āfeeling-blindā response would rule out emotions from decisions, discourage being tender, and would embarrass those who receive affection. Dealing with such situations must involve a perfect blending of reasoning with emotions: the heart must have its brain and the brain should have a heart. Such a blend between emotion and intellect coins a novel term: Emotional Intelligence.
In ancient world of thinking, while Greece put reasoning on top of emotions, European Sentimentalist Movement recognized and emphasized the presence of intrinsic, emotional knowledge. The Emotional Movement emphasized the āemotional expression of artsā. The definition of intelligence in fact differs across nations and some of them refuse to accept the notion of intelligence as all about the speed of mental processing (Berry 1984; Sternberg and Kaufman 1998; Sternberg et al. 1981). Even the Western theorists, who took intelligence to be strongly cognitive, could not deny the importance of depth along with the speed of mental processing in making the learning process complete and effective (Craik and Lockhart 1972). The oriental conception of intelligence added non-cognitive flavours to the concept of intelligence ever since the days of Confucius (Yang and Sternberg 1997a). Unlike traditional western conception of the notion, they emphasized freedom from conventional line of thinking and a complete understanding of true self and surroundings as integral part of oneās learning process: a notion similar to what later came to be known as Emotional Intelligence . Even the present-day Taiwanese philosophy of intelligence encompasses inter and intrapersonal intelligences, intellectual self assertion and self effacement along with the traditional notion of cognitive intelligence (Yang and Sternberg 1997b). Chen and Chen (1988) found similar results for the Chinese economy. The Buddhist and the Hindu philosophers have always blended emotional aspects with the traditional concepts of intellect (Das 1994). A large body of literature has grown to converse about the notion of intelligence in the African countries where intelligence includes the ability to foster congruent inter and intra-group relationships (Ruzgis and Grigorenko 1994). In countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya intellect is conceived to include social responsibility and other favourable humane and positive emotional traits (Serpell 1974; Super and Harkness 1986; Dasen 1984). Despite of the presence of some degree of dissimilarity across the tribes, their notion of intelligence incorporates some social aspects in one sense or other (Wober 1974; Harkness and Super 1983; Putnam and Kilbride 1980; Durojaiye 1993).
Ever since the eighteenth century, psychologists considered three separate segments of human mind (Hilgard 1980). The first sphere of cognitive excellence is concerned with the human-intellect; that is, with the skills to recognize, distinguish, memorize, analyze and to think logically. The second sphere considers affect that includes emotions, moods, humane feelings and considerations. The third aspect or motivation refers to the natural or acquired human desire to pursue a definite goal. In traditional line of thinking passions and reckoning were considered to be antithetical. Waves of emotions were apprehended to lead to muddled ideas, confused thoughts and irrational reactions. Traditional psychology textbooks used to describe emotions as ādisorganized responsesā, āsheer disturbancesā or āa state of complete loss of rational or analytical controlā. Recent literature however deems emotions to have strengthened cerebral control and facilitated analytical thinking. This is specifically the area where the concept of Emotional Intelligence intervenes to act as a bridge between the cognitive and the non-cognitive aspect of human behaviour. A readily comprehensible definition of Emotional Intelligence may be found in Mayer and Salovey (1997) who describe it as the āability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growthā.
With the opening up of new avenues, few considered the term Emotional Intelligence to be a highly obfuscated one and alleged it to have a tendency to overestimate the role of some human traits that may be appreciable but is far from to be qualified as āintelligenceā. Matthew et al. (2002) considered Emotional Intelligence to be āmore myth than scienceā while Hedlund and Sternberg (2000) raised doubt about the possibility of having more than one type of intelligence. Mayer and Salovey (1997) however opposed by emphasizing the presence of a mental skill that could be distinguished from āpreferred ways of behavingā or āhumane traitsā and may indeed be termed as āintelligenceā. They, along with Mayer and Mitchell (1998) viewed Emotional Intelligence āas a member of class of intelligences including the social, practical, and personal intelligences that we have come to call the hot intelligences ā.
This line of thought was subsequently enriched by the development of models to establish Emotional Intelligence as a separate branch of intelligence that may be acquired rather than being innate; and to quantify it. The majority of such models, in their attempts to describe, define and conceptualize Emotional Intelligence have incorporated components such as the capability to recognize, comprehend and articulate emotions; the ability to appreciate and respect othersā feelings; the proficiency in dealing with, specially disruptive, emotions; the skills in adapting to changing situations and needs; or the ability to generate an environment v...
