Improving emotional intelligence

The last decade has seen the emergence of the construct of emotional intelligence (EI; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Emotional intelligence has its origins in research on social intelligence or social competency and it has the capacity to draw together many disparate fields in psychology. Salovey and Mayer conceptualise emotional intelligence as a set of mental abilities that account for the accuracy and appropriate use of emotional information. There are four abilities in this model, appraisal and expression of emotion, use or facilitative quality of emotion, the ability to understand emotion and its information conveying aspects and regulation of emotion, both intra and interpersonally. One of the claims that has emerged from both the academic and popular literature is that through awareness and education one's ability to behave in emotionally inteliigent ways. This hypothesis was tested with volunteers from the university of Canterbury (N=39) who participated in a between group repeated measures evaluation of a programme to improve three of the four areas of the emotional intelligence construct. No significant changes were observed. Reasons for this are examined and implications for future research are discussed