What is Emotional Intelligence?
Makena Wood, B.Sc. Neuroscience student
There is something to be said about the ease that is added to life when we can accurately express ourselves and communicate our needs and emotions to others. The idea of being able to identify and understand your emotions, as well as the emotions of others, is known as emotional intelligence (Chystovska et al, 2022). Emotional intelligence is a particular developmental goal for children to work towards because much of our emotional intelligence is gained as we experience new things in life and the emotions that come with them. Children, with this lack of experience, may be faced with emotions they do not understand and that are frustrating for them, and likewise they may not be able to communicate this to others or their caregivers. Providing children with ways to develop their emotional intelligence, as well as participating in these kinds of activities to maintain emotional intelligence as adults, can help us all to better understand each other and communicate our needs. What’s more, higher degrees of emotional intelligence are related to greater resilience (Xing et al., 2023), which is important for brain development and cognitive function.
Fact or Fiction?
Emotional intelligence (EI) as a concept was first introduced by Salovey and Mayer in 1990, and since then has been up for intense debate in the world of neuropsychology. Like many issues in science, a single theory can be stretched in many different directions and used to convey what’s interesting, and not necessarily what’s important. As a result, a theory can develop “updated” models without necessarily gaining any consistent evidence and become unrecognizable and distinct from its original purpose. For example, have you ever heard that some people are “left-brained” and some people are “right-brained”? The idea of being left-or-right-brained has come to be associated with different personality traits (being either more logical or more creative), even though people who self-identify as one or the other do not actually have less activity in one side of their brain as a result. What is true is that each side of the brain performs different functions, and each is equally important for your day-to-day functioning; in the field of neuroscience, this concept is known as lateralization. So, while lateralization of the brain has actually been proven, it is much more popular to talk about being left-or-right-brained, and so this is the idea that is in popular media and even by companies looking to hire.
Emotional intelligence has experienced somewhat of a left-or-right-brain phenomenon as it has taken on many different roles and definitions in the field of psychology. Over time, EI has sometimes been associated with personality, and this has led some to believe that they simply cannot be emotionally intelligent based on certain traits that they may or may not have. If we ignore any shape-shifting definitions of EI and focus on EI as an ability, as it was intended by Salovey and Mayer, rather than a type of personality, then we can talk about the ways that we gain insight into our behaviour as well as the ways that we can stay healthy by exercising our emotional intelligence and in turn other areas of our brain.
Where EI can take us:
So, to offer a clear definition of EI as an ability to be gained or exercised, literature that discusses EI as an ability agrees that emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand emotions in oneself and in others (the latter is also known as empathy), in addition to being able to express and manage our personal emotions (Romanelli et al., 2006; Mayer & Salovey, 1997, as cited in Xing et al., 2023; Eisenberg, 2000, as cited in Xing et al., 2023; Hoffman, 2008, as cited in Xing et al., 2023; Salovey & Mayer, 1990, as cited in Antonakis et al., 2009).
Given this ability definition of emotion, there have been interesting investigations into what other aspects of our behaviour can be related to having an adept emotional intelligence. Romanelli et al. (2006) reference studies that have linked emotional intelligence to above-average cognitive performance and improvements in cognitive performance following instruction on emotional intelligence. While these are exciting prospects, Romanelli et al. also identify limitations that we know to be true for many behavioural experiments – human behaviours often create challenges in generalizability and replicability, given the high variation in our individual environments. A more concrete study by Xing et al. (2023), was able to show that empathy (an aspect of EI) significantly predicted resilience, and that this association between empathy and resilience was due to an individual’s ability to regulate their personal emotions; in other words, being empathetic predicts a person’s increased resilience because they have a greater ability to harness their emotional intelligence. If you’re an avid follower of Building Brains Together, then you know that one of our goals as an organization is to help children and youth become more resilient. Resilient children and youth tend to grow up to be resilient adults, and throughout this aging process, resilience protects brain development when a brain is faced with an adverse environment. Learn more about resilience in this video created by the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative: https://www.albertafamilywellness.org/resources/watch/brains-journey-to-resilience
EI activities:
So, if emotional intelligence can both serve as a tool to help us understand and express our thoughts and feelings, clarify our behaviours and interactions with others, and make us more resilient, then we really ought to find some ways to practice. Here are 5 things you can do to sharpen your emotional intelligence skills:
Chystovska et al. (2022):
1. Storytelling: giving children an opportunity to tell you stories about their day or something they find interesting can help them to identify their own emotional states as they tell the story.
2. Art: artistic endeavours combine attention, motor, and emotional-regulation skills with formation of aesthetic, and can also be very relaxing. These are all conducive to developing depth of and exploring emotions.
3. Mindfulness: many mindfulness techniques involve deep breathing, which helps us to self-regulate and identify tension in our body. Mindfulness encourages exploring how you may be feeling in each moment without passing judgement, which can be helpful in learning how to express negative emotions more calmly.
4. Physical exercise: physical exercise helps to develop sensorimotor and spatial skills. When we have more neural connections, we also have more knowledge about the world and can relate our emotions to past experiences.
5. Play! Play exercises your executive functions, which include emotional regulation. By gaining skills in emotional regulation, you gain more control over your emotions and how you choose to express them.
References
Antonakis, J., Ashkanasy, N.M, & Dasborough, M.T. (2009). Does leadership need emotional intelligence? The Leadership Quarterly, 20(1), 247-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.01.006
Chystovska, Y., Babiak, O., Honcharovska, H., Borets, Y., Dorofey, S., & Savytska, O. (2022). Neuropsychological means of developing emotional intelligence in children. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, 13(2), 152-165. https://doi.org/10.18662/brain/13.2/337
Romanelli, F., Cain, J., & Smith, K.M. (2006). Emotional intelligence as a predictor of academic and/or professional success. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 70(3), 8-69. https://doi.org/10.5688/aj700369
Xing, L., Deng, S.W., & Ho, G.W. (2023). From empathy to resilience: The mediating role of emotional intelligence. Psychological Reports, 0(0), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941231220299
https://www.britannica.com/story/are-there-really-right-brained-and-left-brained-people