The phrase ‘emotional intelligence’ gets thrown around a lot. You see someone doing a social blunder, and people say, “He has no emotional intelligence.” Seems like emotional intelligence is an important type of intelligence to have and to develop if you lack it. But what does it really mean from a psychological point of view?
Simply put, Emotional Intelligence (EI) is being intelligent about your own and others’ emotions. It’s understanding that emotions have an intelligence of their own and working with them to produce the best outcomes for yourself and others.1Salovey, P., & Pizarro, D. A. (2003). The value of emotional intelligence (pp. 263-278). na.
What EI is not
EI or Emotional Quotient (EQ), as it is sometimes referred to, is not the same as emotional sensitivity, which means feeling emotions deeply. One may be emotionally sensitive but not emotionally intelligent. It’s not emotional suppression either, which is burying your emotions so you don’t have to face them. Also, EI is not being positive all the time. That kind of toxic positivity can be delusional. Lastly, EI is not about being a people-pleaser, far from it.
Components
EI is an umbrella term that covers a set of core emotional competencies, namely:
- Emotional awareness
- Understanding emotions
- Emotional self-regulation
- Utilizing emotions
- Empathy
- Motivation
- Social awareness
The above list combines some of the well-established models of EI.2Kanesan, P., & Fauzan, N. (2019). Models of emotional intelligence: A review. e-BANGI Journal, 16(7). Let’s dive into each component to understand what it means.
1. Emotional awareness
Emotional awareness is part of self-awareness. Self-awareness is the ability to be aware of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and how they’re interlinked. It’s the capacity to notice emotions as they arise in us. It’s noticing the obvious and subtle shifts in emotions and moods in response to life events. When you’re emotionally aware, you can perceive emotions accurately in yourself and others.
Having high emotional awareness does not mean you always perceive emotions accurately in yourself and others. Emotions are tricky, and even the most emotionally intelligent people sometimes make mistakes.
2. Understanding emotions
This is where you put the ‘intelligence’ in EI. When you’re able to understand your emotions, you understand their meaning, function, and purpose. As I said earlier, emotions have an intelligence of their own. Having a high EQ helps you intelligently understand that intelligence. In a way, you’re able to be logical about emotions. Something many people with low EQ find difficult, if not impossible, to do.
Understanding emotions is all about understanding the contexts and causes of emotions. You’re able to notice the patterns of emotions, what triggers them, and how they change over time.
3. Emotional self-regulation
When people think of EI, they usually think of emotional regulation. They think someone who has EI has control over their emotions. That’s partially true because emotional self-regulation or emotional self-control is one component of EI. You can have good control over your emotions, but still have low emotional awareness and/or understanding.
Someone with low emotional self-regulation is impulsive. They give in to their feelings and whims easily. But someone with high emotional self-regulation does not suppress their emotions. They likely still feel the same impulses, but they’re able to sit with their feelings and not act on them impulsively. They think about the consequences of impulsivity. Again, they put thinking or intelligence into their experience of emotions.
4. Utilizing emotions
Once you understand that emotions have a logic and purpose behind them, you can acknowledge and appreciate them. You don’t resist them. You let them do their job in making you feel the way they make you feel. Once you feel them, you have the choice not to act on them or utilize them to get the outcomes you want.3Eisenberg, E., Lombard, J., & Geher, G. (2024). Assessing the construct validity of emotional intelligence using evolutionary psychology. Personality and Individual Differences, 227, 112714.
Utilizing emotions is all about acting on them appropriately. Emotions are primarily designed to motivate action, but that doesn’t mean you have to always act on them. But when you channel them properly, they can prove to be a fuel for your actions. They can help you with creative thinking, problem-solving, planning, and motivation.4Olderbak, S., Semmler, M., & Doebler, P. (2019). Four-branch model of ability emotional intelligence with fluid and crystallized intelligence: A meta-analysis of relations. Emotion Review, 11(2), 166-183.
A big part of EI is knowing when to act on your emotions and knowing when to let them pass through you like a wave.
5. Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to resonate with others’ emotional states. It’s feeling what others feel. It’s not simply putting yourself in others’ shoes. That’s perspective-taking, a cognitive ability. But perspective-taking can, and does, lead to empathy. It’s not some spiritual or supernatural ability to feel the emotions of others. When you see things from others’ perspectives, you have the same thoughts about a situation as them. The same thoughts lead to the same emotions as theirs.
6. Motivation
Motivation is the positive utilization of emotions and emotional energy.5Takšić, V. (2002). The importance of emotional intelligence (competence) in positive psychology. Trabajo presentado en 1st International Positive Psychology Summit, Washington, DC. You can use the emotions generated in you as a source of motivation to reach your goals. You can also generate the same emotions in others so that they’re motivated as well. That’s influence.
Emotionally intelligent motivation is driven by values, not impulse.
“If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot.”
– Jim Rohn
7. Social awareness
It is the capacity to ‘read the room’; to read the emotional dynamics of social contexts. When you get good at perceiving, understanding, and utilizing your emotions, you’ll inevitably get good at doing the same with others’ emotions. Because others’ emotions function in more or less the same ways as do yours, since they originate in our evolved instincts.6Patterson Jr, B. (2015). Evolutionary Emotional Intelligence for Social Workers: Status and the Psychology of Group Violence. Journal for Deradicalization, (2), 119-137.
Outcomes
When you develop and hone the EI components, you gain positive outcomes for yourself and others, such as:
1. Emotional expression
Emotional expression emerges from:
- Emotional awareness
- Understanding emotions
- Emotional self-regulation
It’s hard to express emotions clearly and intelligently without mastering these three components. If you don’t master them, your emotional expression is going to be haphazard, unclear, and confusing. Healthy and intelligent emotional expression isn’t just about expressing emotions non-verbally, but also verbally and at the right time.
2. Adaptability
It emerges from:
- Emotional self-regulation
- Utilizing emotions
Since emotions motivate action, if they are rigid and limited, your actions will be rigid and limited. A big chunk of EI, specifically emotional self-regulation, is the ability to make your emotions flexible. That can be done by making your cognition flexible. That means making your thinking about your emotions flexible and open to change. This is at the root of CBT, and it’s called cognitive reframing. Changing how you think about a situation changes how you feel about it and act on it, fostering adaptability and resilience.
3. Decision-making
It emerges from:
- Understanding emotions
- Utilizing emotions
Many people think that emotions should have no role in logical decision-making. While that may be true in some contexts, I’d argue that in most cases, emotional information aids logical decision-making. Intuition vs rationality has long been a subject of debate. In my opinion, both intuition and logic/rationality/data should feed and aid each other when making decisions.
4. Conflict resolution
Emerges from:
- Emotional self-regulation
- Empathy
- Social awareness
One or both conflicting parties unable to regulate emotions, show empathy, and social awareness can turn a conflict unhealthy and toxic. Individuals who scored high on the ‘managing emotions’ scale of MSCEIT, a widely used scale of EI, reported positive relations with others and fewer negative interactions with close friends.7Lopes, P. N., Salovey, P., & Straus, R. (2003). Emotional intelligence, personality, and the perceived quality of social relationships. Personality and individual Differences, 35(3), 641-658.
5. Social skills
Emerge from:
- Understanding emotions
- Empathy
- Motivation
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.”
– Dale Carnegie
Dealing with people is largely about dealing with their emotions. When you increase your EI, you develop a good relationship with yourself and your emotions. This automatically enables you to develop good relationships with others and their emotions, provided you have the motivation to do so. How deeply you understand others depends on how deeply you understand yourself. People will say to you, “You get me”. That’s because you get yourself.
People may have different thoughts, opinions, and personalitlies but on an emotional level, we're all the same.
6. Positive influence
Emerges from:
- Understanding emotions
- Empathy
- Motivation
Mastering these components will help you in positively influencing others, provided you have the motivation to do so. As I said earlier, when you see how your own emotions fuel you, you can generate the same emotions in others to fuel them. Unfortunately, EI can also be used for negative influence or manipulation.
Examples of EI in daily life
I’ll provide a couple of examples of how EI manifests in daily life based on two EI outcomes: adaptability and conflict resolution.
1. Adaptability example
Scott is a business owner whose business took a major hit recently. He felt all kinds of negative emotions you do when such a thing happens. He lost motivation, became hopeless, and wanted to quit. But because he had EI, he could regulate these emotions. He didn’t act on them impulsively. Instead, he used them as fuel to increase motivation. Sufficiently motivated, he began searching for ways to recover his business. Not only did he recover his business, but he’s now in a better position than before.
Contrast this with Rick, who faced the same situation but had low EI. He gave in to his desire to quit and couldn’t work on his business anymore. He couldn’t tolerate the painful emotions of fear and uncertainty. Even though he could’ve recovered, he didn’t believe he could because he let his emotions get the better of him.
2. Conflict resolution example
John was arguing with his friend over a differing political ideology. But he was able to diffuse the argument quickly and tactfully. That’s because he put himself in his friend’s shoes and tried to understand why the latter was rigidly attached to his belief. When he understood the reasons for the rigidity that had to do with the friend’s upbringing and personality, he decided to just drop it. He understood that convincing his friend with logic would not work. He could control his frustration and show empathy.
In contrast, Mark’s same argument with his friend soon escalated into a heated altercation and bitter feelings between the two. That’s because Mark kept pushing his point, and his friend kept defending himself. Mark couldn’t see things from his friends’ perspective. He couldn’t control his anger and frustration. He falsely believed that if he pushed his point harder or more logically, he’d be able to convince his friend.
How to develop EI
Whether EI is inherited or developed over time has been a subject of debate in psychology. It’s likely a mix of both. For some, it may come easier than for others. I see it as a skill that can be developed with practice. But first, you have to know and overcome the common barriers to EI.
Barriers to EI
EI boils down to thinking consciously or logically about your emotions. The brain region that can help you do that is the prefrontal cortex. Unfortunately, the prefrontal cortex is a recently evolved, weaker part of the brain that is not as strong as our ‘emotional brain’. Therefore, EI is rare.
1. Stress
You’ll notice that when you’re not stressed, you’re more emotionally intelligent. You tend to have a good handle on your emotions. Once you’re stressed, to your brain, you’re experiencing a threat, and it puts you in the fight-or-flight mode. This ‘reactive’ or ‘impulsive’ mode is often characterized by low EI. Your brain is concerned with survival, and it doesn’t have time to think logically about emotions. As a result, you find you make impulsive decisions.
The better you’re able to manage your stress levels, the more emotionally intelligent you’ll be. Avoidance is better than resistance. I’d recommend identifying the stressors in your life and eliminating them, rather than trying to manage them.
2. Trauma
Trauma is caused by chronic or acute stress. It’s essentially stress that stays with you. As a result, the negative effects of stress, such as reduced EI and increased impulsivity, stay with you too. Childhood trauma, in particular, can lead to a phenomenon called emotional numbing or paralysis, whereby you’re disconnected from your emotions. This negatively affects the relationship you have with yourself and others because it blocks perception, understanding, and utilization of emotions.8Walker, S. A., Double, K. S., Kunst, H., Zhang, M., & MacCann, C. (2022). Emotional intelligence and attachment in adulthood: A meta-analysis. Personality and individual differences, 184, 111174.
3. Social influence
Even if you manage to eliminate/reduce the stressors in your life and heal your trauma, you’re still susceptible to emotionally unintelligent behaviors of others. Humans mimic and follow what other humans do around them. Partly it is not risking the disapproval of others, and partly it is wanting to belong. These are powerful social instincts that can make you behave in emotionally unintelligent ways simply because the people around you are behaving in emotionally unintelligent ways.
Surrounding yourself with high EI people can do wonders for your EI, and it won’t seem like much of an effort.
