EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: COMPARISONS OF CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY ACROSS CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL VARIANTS OF MEASUREMENT

Emotional intelligence is a reasonably new construct that is little more than 15 years old within the research literature, but has existed in some form since the time of Darwin (Bar-On, Handley, & Fund, 2006). Although this concept has been around for quite some time, it has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Therefore, the current study aimed to provide a clearer understanding of the construct and how to best measure emotional intelligence. Using two samples of undergraduate students who were either currently employed or had been employed in the past we were able to test several hypotheses. More specifically, we were interested first in the relationship among various measures of emotional intelligence. A positive relationship among the measures was hypothesized. Additionally, we were interested in determining whether the methodologies (ECI Self, ECI Other, MSCEIT, and EI Interview) or conceptualizations of emotional intelligence (Facilitating, Managing, Perceiving, and Understanding Emotions) were underlying the data. Finally, past research has suggested that emotional intelligence may be used to predict job performance. Therefore, we were interested in examining the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance further. Through the use of structural equation modeling, correlational analyses, and regressions, we were able to address each of our hypotheses and research questions. More specifically, a low positive relationship was found between measures of emotional intelligence. Additionally, using structural equation modeling in the larger of our two samples, we found that the methodologies were driving the data rather than the conceptualizations of emotional intelligence. Finally, we were unable to find a significant predictive relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance in either sample. These results provide not only an in-depth look at the relationship between various measures of emotional intelligence, but they also show that more research is needed to fully understand emotional intelligence. Future research should focus on finding a unified definition of emotional intelligence and pinpoint the best uses of emotional intelligence in the workplace