Emotional intelligence: popular or scientific psychology?

John D. Mayer, PhD
University of New Hampshire

Emotional intelligence is a product of two worlds. One is the popular culture world of best-selling books, daily newspapers and magazines. The other is the world of scientific journals, book chapters and peer review.

Most people, I suspect, became familiar with emotional intelligence through the popular 1995 book, "Emotional Intelligence," by Dr. Daniel Goleman or through the many mass-market books, articles and television programs that followed in its wake. Attendees of last year's APA Annual Convention heard the popular version of emotional intelligence at the opening session. Others read about it in the APA Monitor.

Emotional intelligence, according to Time magazine, "may be the best predictor of success in life." According to the book "Emotional Intelligence," evidence suggests that it is "as powerful, and at times more powerful, than IQ," and provides "an advantage in any domain of life." Such enthusiasm may lead APA members to wonder what the scientific literature actually says. In this column, I will describe some of the scientific literature, and compare it to the popular accounts.

A scientific account of emotional intelligence

The popular accounts often refer to the 1990 articles on emotional intelligence that I published with my colleague, Dr. Peter Salovey. Those two articles contain the first formal definition of emotional intelligence, and provide a first demonstration that certain ability tasks may serve to measure the concept.

Increasingly, we have viewed emotional intelligence as a potentially standard intelligence (see our 1993 and 1996 articles in the journal Intelligence), and we revised our model accordingly in the 1997 book, "Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence" (Basic Books). There, emotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to reason with emotion in four areas: to perceive emotion, to integrate it in thought, to understand it and to manage it.

My colleagues, Dr. Salovey, Dr. David Caruso and I, have developed a new set of 12 ability tasks that assess this four-branch model. Sample tasks include asking people to identify emotions in faces, and asking people to identify a set of simple emotions which, when combined, match a more complex feeling. Research with these new scales suggests that emotional intelligence can be measured reliably, exists as a unitary ability, and is related to, but independent of, standard intelligence (see our forthcoming 1999 article in Intelligence).

Is the popular version accurate?

My colleagues and I appreciate the popular discussions of the above work. At the same time, the popular treatments have represented our concept in three ways that are cause for concern.

First, the meaning of emotional intelligence has been stretched. Emotional intelligence is now defined by popular authors in dozens of ways--typically as a list of personality characteristics, such as "empathy, motivation, persistence, warmth and social skills." Dr. Salovey, Dr. Caruso and I refer to these definitions as "mixed models" because they mix together diverse parts of personality.

Second, popular models of emotional intelligence imply that we can predict important life outcomes using such a diverse list of variables--which is, of course, correct. But let's be honest about such lists: They contain variables beyond what is meant by the terms "emotion" or "intelligence," or what reasonable people would infer from the phrase "emotional intelligence." Such popular models are using a catchy new name to sell worthy, old-fashioned personality research and prediction.

Third, the popular and scientific concepts of emotional intelligence are separated by a "claim" gap. Our own and others' ongoing research indicates that emotional intelligence may well predict specific, important life outcomes at about the level of other important personality variables (e.g., 2 percent to 25 percent of variance explained). We believe that such predictions are both useful in practical terms, and impressive theoretically. In contrast, the popular literature's implication--that highly emotionally intelligent people possess an unqualified advantage in life--appears overly enthusiastic at present and unsubstantiated by reasonable scientific standards.

Why it all matters

One point on which both the popular and scientific treatments do agree is that emotional intelligence--if substantiated--broadens our understanding of what it means to be smart. It means that within some of us who are labeled "romantics," "highly sensitive" or "bleeding hearts," serious information processing is taking place.

I believe the identification of such emotional processing is new and powerful enough to advance a psychological agenda, without recourse to stretched definitions or sensational claims. For that reason, I invite serious practitioners and researchers to distinguish between popular and scientific approaches, and to take a look at the research in the young field of emotional intelligence.

John (Jack) D. Mayer is a psychology professor in the department of psychology at the University of New Hampshire.

Source: APA Monitor

Suicide and Women

....Some shocking facts:

A woman commits suicide every 90 minutes in the U.S., but it is estimated that one woman attempts suicide every 78 seconds.

Women attempt suicide twice as much as men.

The higher rate of attempted suicide in women is attributed to the elevated rate of mood disorders among females, such as major depression, dysthymia and seasonal affective disorder.

In the U.S. in 1995, the suicide rate among women was 4.4 per 100,000, while for men it was 19.8 per 100,000.

Although women attempt suicide more often, men complete suicide at a rate four times that of women.

The suicide rates for women peak between the ages of 40-54 years old, and do so again after age 75.

The suicide rate for women ages 15-24 has doubled since 1950, while the rate for younger girls ages 10-14 has nearly tripled since 1980.

The rate for young African American females ages 10-14 has quadrupled from from .1 /100,000 in 1980 to .42 /100,000 in 1995.

Firearms are now the leading method of suicide in women, as well as men.

Suicide is more common among women who are single, recently separated, divorced, or widowed.

The precipitating life events for women who attempt suicide tend to be interpersonal losses or crises in significant social or family relationships.

Many women who suffer from depressive illness experience their first episode in the postpartum period. 60-80% of women experience transient depression, and 10-15% of women develop clinical depression during the postpartum period.

Women are more likely than men to have stronger social supports, to feel that their relationships are deterrents to committing suicide, and to seek psychiatric and medical intervention.

Although many effective treatments exist, suicide in women remains a much underrecognized, underdiagnosed, and undertreated problem.


*by Women's Health