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Top2. Evolution Of Emotional Intelligence
The early Twentieth century was an era marked by research on aspects of human intelligence. Researchers such as Thorndike suggested that human beings possess different types of intelligence. Among these, Thorndike proposed that one significant form was, “social intelligence” or, “the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls, and to act wisely in human relations”. In 1958 David Wechsler highlighted the role of affective, personal, and social factors in an individual, that contribute to his success. He defined this form as the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment”.
As the concept of intelligence found meaning in many researches, Howard Gardner elaborated the importance and role of a form of intelligence that could be adjacently understood with one’s intelligence quotient (Gardner, 1983).
In 1990, Peter Salovey and John Mayer emphasized that the concept of intelligence can be related and understood in terms of emotional intelligence and it has its foundational basis in the concept of social intelligence. Boyatzis and Sala (2004) defined emotional intelligence as an “ability to recognize, understand and use emotional information about oneself or others that leads to or causes effective or superior performance” more precisely it was defined as “the intelligent use of one’s emotions”.
On reviewing previous models, in the year 1998, Goleman devised a framework of emotional intelligence (EI) that focused on aspects of Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management, that would help an individual to achieve organizational success. Goleman defined emotional competence as, “a learned capability based on emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work” (Goleman, 1998)
The research on emotional intelligence has now gained significant focus from researchers and industry practitioners as the nature of contemporary work involves huge amounts of emotional labour.