Chapter 3: What is Emotional Intelligence?

Introduction

Imagine you are waiting in line to buy tickets to see your favorite band. Knowing tickets are limited and prices will rise quickly, you showed up 4 hours early. Unfortunately, so did everyone else. The line stretches for blocks and hasn’t moved since you arrived. Now, it starts to rain. You are close to Will Call when you notice three people jump ahead of you to join their friends, who appear to have been saving a spot for them. They talk loudly on their cellphones as you inch forward, following the slow procession of others waiting in line. You finally reach the ticket counter only to have the clerk tell you the show is sold out. You notice the loud group off to the side, waving their tickets in the air.

At this exact moment, a fiery line of emotion shoots through your whole body. Your heart begins to race, and you feel the urge to either slam your hands on the counter or scream in the face of those you believe have slighted you. What are these feelings, and what will you do with them?

Emotional intelligence (EI) involves the idea that cognition and emotion are interrelated. From this notion stems the belief that emotions influence decision making, relationship building, and everyday behavior. After spending hours waiting eagerly in the pouring rain and having nothing to show for it, is it even possible to squelch such intense feelings of anger due to injustice? From an EI perspective, emotions are active mental processes that can be managed, so long as individuals develop the knowledge and skills to do so. But how, exactly, do we reason with our emotions? In other words, how intelligent is our emotion system?

In 1990, Drs. Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer first explored and defined EI. They explained EI as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (Salovey & Mayer, 1990).

EI, according to these researchers, asserts that all individuals possess the ability to leverage their emotions to enhance thinking, judgment, and behavior. This module aims to unpack this theory by exploring the growing empirical research on EI, as well as what can be learned about its impact on our daily lives.

EI Ability Models & Measurement

In this section, we describe the Four-Branch model of Emotional Intelligence. This model proposes that four fundamental emotion-related abilities comprise EI.

Click on each heading to read a description of the four emotion-related abilities:

Perception/Expression of Emotion

Perception of emotion refers to people’s capacity to identify emotions in themselves and others using facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language (Brackett et al., 2013). Those skilled in the perception of emotion also are able to express emotion accordingly and communicate emotional needs.

For example, let’s return to our opening scenario. After being turned away at the ticket booth, you slowly settle into the reality that you cannot attend the concert. A group of your classmates, however, managed to buy tickets and are discussing their plans at your lunch table. When they ask if you are excited for the opening band, you shrug and pick at your food. If your classmates are skilled at perception of emotion, then they will read your facial expression and body language and determine that you might be masking your true feelings of disappointment, frustration, or disengagement from the conversation. As a result, they might ask you if something is wrong or choose not to talk about the concert in your presence.

Use of Emotion to Facilitate Thinking

Using emotion to enhance cognitive activities and adapt to various situations is the second component of EI. People who are skilled in this area understand that some emotional states are more optimal for targeted outcomes than others. Feeling frustrated over the concert tickets may be a helpful mindset as you are about to play a football game or begin a wrestling match.

The high levels of adrenaline associated with frustration may boost your energy and strength, helping you compete. These same emotions, however, will likely impede your ability to sit at your school desk and solve algebra problems or write an essay.

Individuals who have developed and practiced this area of EI actively generate emotions that support certain tasks or objectives. For example, a teacher skilled in this domain may recognize that her students need to experience positive emotions, like joy or excitement, in order to succeed when doing creative work such as brainstorming or collaborative art projects. She may plan accordingly by scheduling these activities for after recess, knowing students will likely come into the classroom cheerful and happy from playing outside. Making decisions based on the impact that emotional experiences may have on actions and behavior is an essential component of EI.

Understanding of Emotion

EI also includes the ability to differentiate between emotional states, as well as their specific causes and trajectories. Feelings of sadness or disappointment can result from the loss of a person or object, such as your concert tickets. Standing in the rain, by most standards, is merely a slight annoyance.

However, waiting in the rain for hours in a large crowd will likely result in irritation or frustration. Feeling like you have been treated unfairly when someone cuts in line and takes the tickets you feel you deserved can cause your unpleasantness to escalate into anger and resentment. People skilled in this area are aware of this emotional trajectory and also have a strong sense of how multiple emotions can work together to produce another.

For instance, it is possible that you may feel contempt for the people who cut in front of you in line. However, this feeling of contempt does not arise from anger alone. Rather, it is a combination of anger and disgust by the fact that these individuals, unlike you, have disobeyed the rules.

Successfully discriminating between negative emotions is an important skill related to understanding of emotion, and it may lead to more effective emotion management.

Management of Emotion in Oneself and Others

Emotion management includes the ability to remain open to a wide range of emotions, recognize the value of feeling certain emotions in specific situations, and understand which short- and long-term strategies are most efficient for emotion regulation. Anger seems an appropriate response to falling short of a goal (concert tickets) that you pursued both fairly and patiently. In fact, you may even find it valuable to allow yourself the experience of this feeling.

However, this feeling will certainly need to be managed in order to prevent aggressive, unwanted behavior. Coming up with strategies, such as taking a deep breath and waiting until you feel calm before letting the group ahead of you know they cut in line, will allow you to regulate your anger and prevent the situation from escalating.

Using this strategy may even let you gain insight into other perspectives—perhaps you learn they had already purchased their tickets and were merely accompanying their friends.

Self-Report Assessments

Self-report assessments are surveys that ask respondents to report their own emotional skills. Self-report measures are usually quick to administer. However, many researchers argue that their vulnerability to social-desirability biases and faking are problematic (Day & Carroll, 2008).

Although tensions between ability and mixed or trait model approaches appear to divide the field, competing definitions and measurements can only enhance the quality of research devoted to EI and its impact on real-world outcomes.

Limitations and Future Directions

Although further explorations and research in the field of EI are needed, current findings indicate a fundamental relationship between emotion and cognition.

Returning to our opening question, what will you do when denied concert tickets? One of the more compelling aspects of EI is that it grants us reign over our own emotions—forces once thought to rule the self by denying individual agency.

But with this power comes responsibility. If you are enraged about not getting tickets to the show, perhaps you can take a few deep breaths, go for a walk, and wait until your physiological indicators (shaky hands or accelerated heartbeat) subside. Once you’ve removed yourself, your feeling of rage may lessen to annoyance. Lowering the intensity level of this feeling (a process known as down regulating) will help re-direct your focus on the situation itself, rather than the activated emotion.

In this sense, emotion regulation allows you to objectively view the point of conflict without dismissing your true feelings. Merely regulating the emotional experience down to facilitates better problem solving.

Now that you are less activated, what is the best approach? Should you talk to the ticket clerk? Ask to see the sales manager? Or do you let the group know how you felt when they cut the line? All of these options present better solutions than impulsively acting outrage.

EI in the Workplace

Research conducted in the workplace supports positive links between EI and enhanced job performance, occupational well-being, and leadership effectiveness.

Chances are you can think of a time that you had an emotional response at work, whether it’s positive or negative. Expressing excitement over accomplishments or negative responses in challenging situations are noticed by others. EI has been associated with performance indicators such as company rank, percent merit increase, ratings of interpersonal facilitation, and affect and attitudes at work. Emotion management affects your job performance by influencing social and business interactions across a diverse range of industries.

Leaders and managers also benefit from EI awareness in daily tasks like problem solving, determining employee layoffs, adjusting claims, and negotiating successfully, etc. Experts in the field of organizational behavior are beginning to view leadership as a process of social interactions where leaders motivate, influence, guide, and empower followers to achieve organizational goals. This is known as transformational leadership—where leaders create a vision and then inspire others to work in this direction.

Conclusion

Whether you are in a leadership or management role in your company, or how you interact standing in line for tickets at a concert, Emotional Intelligence is an opportunity to understand your own feelings and actions.

To cite this specific chapter use this format:

Brackett, M.. (2025). Chapter 3: What is Emotional Intelligence. In Pouska, B. (Ed.), Business Professionalism. New Mexico Open Educational Resources Consortium Pressbooks. Https://nmoer.pressbooks.pub/businessprofessionalism/

Licenses and Attributions

CC Licensed Content — Original

Brackett, M. (2025). Emotional intelligence. Noba Project. (Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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Original chapter source: Adapted from Emotional Intelligence by Marc Brackett, Sarah Delaney, and Peter Salovey.