Emotional intelligence as a determinant of effective cognitive functioning

M.A.Human intelligence has been investigated from many different angles with various resulting definitions. Biological approaches to human intelligence investigate the relationship between the brain and the nervous system as a basis for intelligence. Cognitive approaches, on the other hand, complement the biological approaches by viewing intelligence as an underlying ability to perform a certain number of tasks of a given complexity. This forms the basis of fluid and crystallised intelligence. Crystallised intelligence refers to general knowledge the individual acquires throughout his/her life by means of the accumulation of knowledge and skills. Fluid intelligence can be seen as man's innate ability which can be put to many different uses. Among the cognitive theorists, it was generally accepted that man possesses a general type of intelligence that is common to all tasks requiring intelligence and then many different specific factors of intelligence according to each different type of task that needs to be performed. The systems view on intelligence attempted to find a more holistic and integrated approach to intelligence. This view included the external world of the individual and theorists considered the interaction between biology, cognition and social systems as a basis for human intelligence. The ability to adapt to new situations in real-life, change existing situations and perform familiar to extremely novel tasks in order to function effectively in the environment became focus points of intelligence. Especially the ability to perform novel tasks was seen as an important factor of human intelligence. Another systems approach incorporates various independent intelligences (Gardner, 1983) to form a theory of multiple intelligences. The different intelligences include, linguistic, logicalmathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic and personal intelligence. The personal intelligences are the specific focus of interest in this study. The personal intelligences form the basis of this investigation. The literature shows that two types of intelligences are included in the concept "personal intelligence", namely that of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence refers to man's ability to understand himself, his feelings and emotions. To accomplish this, one has to have sufficient knowledge of one's own feelings and have insight about why one behaves in certain ways. Interpersonal intelligence, on the other hand, involves the understanding of others as it manifests in interactions and relations to other people. This includes the ability to appraise and identify different moods, temperaments and intentions among other people. A related construct to personal intelligence is social intelligence, which is broadly defined as the ability to understand and manage people. The ability to show appropriate social behaviour, social interactions, interpersonal relationships, coping with daily, practical life problems, knowledge of one's own and others' emotional lives and the ability to function within a social context in a flexible and appropriate manner has been of great importance to psychologists. The related concept of emotional intelligence has recently been extensively described in popular as well as scientific journals. It was defined by Salovey and Mayer (1990; 1993) and seen as a subset of social intelligence and similar to that of intrapersonal intelligence. The concept involves the individual's ability to accurately appraise his own and others' feelings and emotions, discriminate among these emotions and use the emotional information to accomplish tasks and reach goals