UNIVERSITY OF WAH.

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY.

RESEARCH ARTICLE.
TOPIC:
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.
SUBMITTED BY:
SANA ANWER GULL.
SUBMITTED TO:
MAM SAIMA ARZEEN.
COURSE TITLE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING.
COURSE CODE:
PSY-504.
BS (hons) PSYCHOLOGY (V).
1

Emotional intelligence (EQ)

Emotional intelligence theory (EQ Emotional Quotient)

Emotional Intelligence - EQ - is a relatively recent behavioural model,
rising to prominence with Daniel Goleman's 1995 Book called
'Emotional Intelligence'. The early Emotional Intelligence theory was
originally developed during the 1970's and 80's by the work and
writings of psychologists Howard Gardner (Harvard), Peter Salovey
(Yale) and John Mayer (New Hampshire).

Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to organizational

development and developing people, because the EQ principles
provide a new way to understand and assess people's behaviors,
management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills, and potential.
Emotional Intelligence is an important consideration in human
resources planning, job profiling, recruitment interviewing and
selection, management development, customer relations and customer
service, and more.

Emotional Intelligence links strongly with concepts of love and

spirituality: bringing compassion and humanity to work, and also to
'Multiple Intelligence' theory which illustrates and measures the range
of capabilities people possess, and the fact that everybody has a value.

The EQ concept argues that IQ, or conventional intelligence, is too

narrow; that there are wider areas of emotional intelligence that
dictate and enable how successful we are. Success requires more than
IQ (Intelligence Quotient), which has tended to be the traditional
measure of intelligence, ignoring essential behavioural and character
2

elements. We've all met people who are academically brilliant and yet
are socially and inter-personally inept. And we know that despite
possessing a high IQ rating, success does not automatically follow.

Emotional intelligence - two aspects

This is the essential premise of EQ: to be successful requires the
effective awareness, control and management of one's own emotions,
and those of other people. EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:

Understanding
yourself,
your
responses, behaviour and all.

Understanding others, and their feelings.

Emotional
domains

intelligence

goals,

intentions,

the

five

Goleman identified the five 'domains' of EQ as:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Knowing your emotions.

Managing your own emotions.
Motivating you.
Recognizing and understanding other people's
emotions.
5. Managing relationships, i.e., managing the emotions
of others.

Emotional Intelligence embraces and draws from numerous other

branches of behavioural, emotional and communications theories, such
3

as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Transactional Analysis, and

empathy. By developing our Emotional Intelligence in these areas and
the five EQ domains we can become more productive and successful at
what we do, and help others to be more productive and successful too.

The process and outcomes of Emotional Intelligence development also

contain many elements known to reduce stress for individuals and
organizations, by decreasing conflict, improving relationships and
understanding, and increasing stability, continuity and harmony.

Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence (EI), often measured as an Emotional
Intelligence Quotient (EQ), describes an ability, capacity, or skill to
perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others,
and of groups. It is a relatively new area of psychological research. The
definition of EI is constantly changing.

Origins of the concept

The most distant roots of Emotional intelligence can be traced back to
Darwins early work on the importance of emotional expression for
survival and adaptation. In the 1900's, even though traditional
definitions of intelligence emphasized cognitive aspects such as
memory and problem-solving, several influential researchers in the
intelligence field of study had begun to recognize the importance of
the non-cognitive aspects. For instance, as early as 1920, E. L.
Thorndike at Columbia University used the term social intelligence to
describe the skill of understanding and managing other people.

Similarly, in 1940 David Wechsler described the influence of nonintellective factors on intelligent behavior, and further argued that our
models of intelligence would not be complete until we can adequately
describe these factors. In 1975, Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
introduced the idea of Multiple
Intelligences which included both Interpersonal intelligence (the
capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other
people) and Intrapersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand
oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations). In
Gardner's view, traditional types intelligence, such as IQ, fail to fully
explain cognitive ability. Thus, even though the names given to the
concept varied, there was a common belief that traditional definitions
of intelligence are lacking in ability to fully explain performance
outcomes.

Defining emotional intelligence

There are a lot of arguments about the definition of EI, arguments that
regard both terminology and operationalizations. The first published
attempt toward a definition was made by Salovey and Mayer (1990)
who defined EI as the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings
and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information
to guide one's thinking and actions

Mixed models of EI
The
Emotional
(Goleman) model

Competencies

The EI model introduced by Daniel Goleman [13] focuses on EI as a wide

array of competencies and skills that drive managerial performance,
measured by multi-rater assessment and self-assessment (Bradbury
and Greaves, 2005). In Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998),
5

Goleman explored the function of EI on the job, and claimed EI to be

the strongest predictor of success in the workplace, with more recent
confirmation of these findings on a worldwide sample seen in Bradbury
and Greaves, "The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book" (2005).
Goleman's model outlines four main EI constructs:

1.

Self-awareness

The ability to read one's emotions and recognize their impact while
using gut feelings to guide decisions.

2.

Self-management

Involves controlling one's emotions and impulses and adapting to

changing circumstances.
3.

Social awareness

The ability to sense, understands, and reacts to other's emotions

while comprehending social networks.
4.

Relationship management

The ability to inspire, influences, and develops others while

managing conflict.

Goleman includes a set of emotional competencies within each

construct of EI. Emotional competencies are not innate talents, but
rather learned capabilities that must be worked on and developed to
achieve outstanding performance. Goleman posits that individuals are
born with a general emotional intelligence that determines their
potential for learning emotional competencies.

Measurement
of
the
Emotional
Competencies (Goleman) model
Measurement tools based on Golemans model of emotional
intelligence include the Emotional Competency Inventory (ECI) and the
Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, which can be taken as a self-report or
360-degree assessment (Bradbury and Greaves, 2005) (EIA).

Alexithymia and EI
Alexithymia from the Greek words and (literally "lack of
words for emotions") is a term coined by Peter Sifneos in 1973 to
describe people who appeared to have deficiencies in understanding,
processing, or describing their emotions. Viewed as a spectrum
between high and low EI, the Alexithymia construct is strongly
inversely related to EI, representing its lower range. The individual's
level of Alexithymia can be measured with self-scored questionnaires
such as the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) or the Bermond-Vorst
Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) or by observer rated measures such
as the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS).

Criticism
of
foundation of EI

the

theoretical

EI is too broadly defined and the

definitions are unstable
7

One of the arguments against the theoretical soundness of the concept

suggests that the constant changing and broadening of its definitionwhich has come to encompass many unrelated elements - had
rendered it an unintelligible concept:

EI cannot be recognized as a form of intelligence

Goleman's early work has been criticized for assuming from the
beginning that EI is a type of intelligence. Eysenck (2000) writes that
Goleman's description of EI contains unsubstantiated assumptions
about intelligence in general, and that it even runs contrary to what
researchers have come to expect when studying types of intelligence:

"Goleman exemplifies more clearly than most the fundamental

absurdity of the tendency to class almost any type of behavior as
intelligence... If these five 'abilities' define 'emotional intelligence', we
would expect some evidence that they are highly correlated; Goleman
admits that they might be quite uncorrelated, and in any case if we
cannot measure them, how do we know they are related? So the whole
theory is built on quicksand; there is no sound scientific basis".

EI has no substantial predictive value

Landy (2005) has claimed that the few incremental validity studies
conducted on EI have demonstrated that it adds little or nothing to the
explanation or prediction of some common outcomes (most notably
academic and work success). Landy proposes that the reason some
studies have found a small increase in predictive validity is in fact a
methodological fallacy - incomplete consideration of alternative
explanations:

"EI is compared and contrasted with a measure of abstract

intelligence but not with a personality measure, or with a
personality measure but not with a measure of academic
intelligence." Landy (2005)

Criticism on measurement issues

1. Ability based measures are measuring conformity,

not ability

One criticism of the works of Mayer and Salovey comes from a study
by Robertss et.al. (2001), which suggests that the EI, as measured by
the MSCEIT, may only be measuring conformity. This argument is
rooted in the MSCEIT's use of consensus-based assessment, and in the
fact that scores on the MSCEIT are negatively distributed (meaning
that its scores differentiate between people with low EI better than
people with high EI)

2. Ability based measures are measuring knowledge

(not actual ability)

Further criticism has been offered by Brody (2004), who claimed that
unlike tests of cognitive ability, the MSCEIT "tests knowledge of
emotions but not necessarily the ability to perform tasks that
are related to the knowledge that is assessed". The main
argument is that even though someone knows how he should behave
in an emotionally laden situation, it doesnt necessarily follow that he
could actually carry out the reported behavior. Emotional Intelligence is
extremely crucial.

3. Self report measures are susceptible to faking good

More formally termed socially desirable responding (SDR), faking good

is defined as a response pattern in which test-takers systematically
represent themselves with an excessive positive bias (Paulhus, 2002).
This bias has long been known to contaminate responses on
personality inventories (Holtgraves, 2004; McFarland & Ryan, 2000;
Peebles & Moore, 1998; Nichols & Greene, 1997; Zerbe & Paulhus,
1987), acting as a mediator of the relationships between self-report
measures (Nichols & Greene, 1997; Ganster et al., 1983).

4. Claims for the predictive power of EI are too

extreme

Landy distinguishes between the 'commercial wing' and 'the academic

wing' of the EI movement, basing this distinction on the alleged
predictive power of EI as seen by the two currents. According to Landy,
the former makes expansive claims on the applied value of EI, while
the later is trying to warn users against these claims.

5. Corporate uses and misuses of EI testing

Whenever a new assessment tool is proposed for hiring purposes, the

concern arises that it might lead to unfair job discrimination. The use of
EI tests, whose validity has not been established, may lead to arbitrary
discrimination practices

Emotional Intelligence and Workplace Applications.

10

Hopkins, M. M., & Bilimoria, D. (2008). Social and

emotional competencies predicting success for male
and female executives. Journal of Management
Development, 27(1), 13-35.

This study examined the relation between emotional and social

intelligence competencies, as measured by the 360-degree version of
the ECI 2.0, and organizational success, as determined by annual
performance and potential ratings. Participants were 105 top-level
executives in one financial services organization. The results showed
no significant differences between male and female leaders in their
demonstration of emotional and social intelligence competencies. The
most successful men and women were also more similar than different
in their competency demonstration.
However, gender did moderate the relationship between the
demonstration of these competencies and success. Male leaders were
assessed as more successful even when the male and female leaders
demonstrated an equivalent level of competencies. Finally, four
competencies significantly separated the most successful male and
female leaders from their typical counterparts: Self Confidence,
Achievement Orientation, Inspirational Leadership and Change
Catalyst.

Koman, E. S., & Wolff, S. B. (2008). Emotional

intelligence competencies in the team and team
leader: A multi-level examination of the impact of
emotional intelligence on team performance. Journal
of Management Development, 27(1), 55-75.

This study examines the relationships among team leader EI

competencies, as measured by the ECI 2.0, team level EI, as assessed
using the Group Emotional Intelligence measure, and team
performance which was determined using a subjective measure (i.e,
11

asking upper level officers to evaluate multiple teams within the

command over time) and objective measures (i.e., percentage of raw
material waste; number of accidents; and percentage of flight
objectives met). A total of 349 aircrew and maintenance military team
members participated representing 81 aircrew and maintenance
teams. Results revealed that team leader EI is significantly related to
the presence of emotionally competent group norms (ECGN) on the
teams they lead, and that ECGN are related to team performance.
Results provide three main implications for practice: 1) employing
leaders with developed EI competencies increases both their own
personal performance as well as that of the teams they lead, 2) one
means through which organizations can develop emotionally
competent groups is to develop or hire emotionally competent
managers who purposefully focus on developing ECGNs, and 3) in
addition to developing emotionally competent first line leaders,
organizations should develop emotionally competent executive leaders
because each individual on the executive management team
influences the development of ECGNs on the teams he or she leads.

Emotional Intelligence: What it is and Why it Matters

By: Cary Cherniss

Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP)
Rutgers University
Email: cherniss@rci.rutgers.edu
Publication date: 2000, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, New
Orleans, LA, April 15, 2000
Ever since the publication of Daniel Golemans first book on the topic in
1995, emotional intelligence has become one of the hottest buzzwords
in corporate America. For instance, when the Harvard Business Review
published an article on the topic two years ago, it attracted a higher
percentage of readers than any other article published in that
periodical in the last 40 years. When the CEO of Johnson & Johnson
read that article, he was so impressed that he had copies sent out to
the 400 top executives in the company worldwide.
12

Given that emotional intelligence is so popular in corporate America,

and given that the concept is a psychological one, it is important for
I/O psychologists to understand what it really means and to be aware
of the research and theory on which it is based. So in my presentation
today, Id like to briefly lay out the history of the concept as an area of
research and describe how it has come to be defined and measured. I
also will refer to some of the research linking emotional intelligence
with important work-related outcomes such as individual performance
and organizational productivity.

Even though the term has been misused and abused by many
popularizes, I believe it rests on a firm scientific foundation. Also, while
there are aspects of the concept that are not new, some aspects are.
Finally, emotional intelligence represents a way in which I/O
psychologists can make particularly significant contributions to their
clients in the future. So lets begin with some history.

Historical Roots of the Topic

When psychologists began to write and think about intelligence, they
focused on cognitive aspects, such as memory and problem-solving.
However, there were researchers who recognized early on that the
non-cognitive aspects were also important. For instance, David
Wechsler defined intelligence as "the aggregate or global capacity of
the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal
effectively with his environment". As early as 1940 he referred to "nonintellective" as well as "intellective" elements, by which he meant
affective, personal, and social factors. Furthermore, as early as 1943
Wechsler was proposing that the non-intellective abilities are essential
for predicting ones ability to succeed in life. He wrote:

The main question is whether non-intellective, that is affective and

conative abilities, are admissible as factors of general intelligence. (My
contention) has been that such factors are not only admissible but
necessary. I have tried to show that in addition to intellective there are
also definite non-intellective factors that determine intelligent
behavior. If the foregoing observations are correct, it follows that we
13

cannot expect to measure total intelligence until our tests also include
some measures of the non-intellective factors [Wechsler, 1943 #316,
p. 103).

Wechsler was not the only researcher who saw non-cognitive aspects
of intelligence to be important for adaptation and success. Robert
Thorndike, to take another example, was writing about "social
intelligence" in the late thirties . Unfortunately, the work of these early
pioneers was largely forgotten or overlooked until 1983 when Howard
Gardner began to write about "multiple intelligence." Gardner
proposed that "intrapersonal" and "interpersonal" intelligences are as
important as the type of intelligence typically measured by IQ and
related tests.

Now let us switch our historical lens to I/O psychology. In the 1940s,
under the direction of Hemphill, the Ohio State Leadership Studies
suggested that "consideration" is an important aspect of effective
leadership.

More specifically, this research suggested that leaders who are able to
establish "mutual trust, respect, and a certain warmth and rapport"
with members of their group will be more effective. At about the same
time, the Office of Strategic Services developed a process of
assessment based on the earlier work of Murray that included the
evaluation of non-cognitive, as well as cognitive, abilities.

This process evolved into the "assessment center," which was first
used in the private sector at AT&T in 1956. Many of the dimensions
measured in assessment centers then and now involve social and
emotional competencies such as communication, sensitivity, initiative,
and interpersonal skills.

14

I could cite other strands of research and theory, but I think it is clear
that by the early 1990s, there was a long tradition of research on the
role of non-cognitive factors in helping people to succeed in both life
and the workplace. The current work on emotional intelligence builds
on this foundation.

The Value of Emotional Intelligence at Work

Martin Seligman has developed a construct that he calls "learned

optimism" . It refers to the causal attributions people make when
confronted with failure or setbacks. Optimists tend to make specific,
temporary, external causal attributions while pessimists make global,
permanent, internal attributions.

In research at Met Life, Seligman and his colleagues found that new
salesmen who were optimists sold 37 percent more insurance in their
first two years than did pessimists. When the company hired a special
group of individuals who scored high on optimism but failed the normal
screening, they outsold the pessimists by 21 percent in their first year
and 57 percent in the second. They even outsold the average agent by
27 percent.

In another study of learned optimism, Seligman tested 500 members of

the freshman class at the University of Pennsylvania. He found that
their scores on a test of optimism were a better predictor of actual
grades during the freshman year than SAT scores or high school
grades.

The ability to manage feelings and handle stress is another aspect of

emotional intelligence that has been found to be important for success.
A study of store managers in a retail chain found that the ability to
15

handle stress predicted net profits, sales per square foot, sales per
employee, and per dollar of inventory investment.

Emotional intelligence has as much to do with knowing when and how

to express emotion as it do with controlling it. For instance, consider an
experiment that was done at Yale University by Sigdal Barsade . He
had a group of volunteers play the role of managers who come
together in a group to allocate bonuses to their subordinates. A trained
actor was planted among them.

The actor always spoke first. In some groups the actor projected
cheerful enthusiasm, in others relaxed warmth, in others depressed
sluggishness, and in still others hostile irritability. The results indicated
that the actor was able to infect the group with his emotion, and good
feelings led to improved cooperation, fairness, and overall group
performance.

In fact, objective measures indicated that the cheerful groups were

better able to distribute the money fairly and in a way that helped the
organization. Similar findings come from the field. Bachman found that
the most effective leaders in the US Navy were warmer, more
outgoing, emotionally expressive, dramatic, and sociable.

Thus far I have been describing research suggesting that "emotional

intelligence" is important for success in work and in life. However, this
notion actually is somewhat simplistic and misleading. Goleman and
Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso have argued that by itself emotional
intelligence probably is not a strong predictor of job performance.
Rather, it provides the bedrock for competencies that are.
Goleman has tried to represent this idea by making a distinction
between emotional intelligence and emotional competence. Emotional
competence refers to the personal and social skills that lead to
superior performance in the world of work. "The emotional
competencies are linked to and based on emotional intelligence.
16

A certain level of emotional intelligence is necessary to learn the

emotional competencies." For instance, the ability to recognize
accurately what another person is feeling enables one to develop a
specific competency such as Influence.
Similarly, people who are better able to regulate their emotions will
find it easier to develop a competency such as Initiative or
Achievement drive. Ultimately it is these social and emotional
competencies that we need to identify and measure if we want to be
able to predict performance.

The Assessment of Emotional Intelligence and

Competence
Assuming that emotional intelligence is important, the question of
assessment and measurement becomes particularly pressing. What
does the research suggest about the measurement of emotional
intelligence and competence? In a paper published in 1998, Davies,
Stankov, & Roberts concluded that there was nothing empirically new
in the idea of emotional intelligence.
This conclusion was based solely on a review of existing measures
purporting to measure emotional intelligence at the point in time when
they wrote that paper. However, most of those measures were new,
and there was not yet much known about their psychometric
properties.
Research now is emerging that suggests emotional intelligence, and
particularly the new measures that have been developed to assess it,
is in fact a distinct entity. However, there still is not much research on
the predictive validity of such measures, and this is a serious lack. Let
me briefly summarize what we really know about the most popular
ones.

Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory - EQ-i*

17

The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), EQ-360 and EQ-i: YV were

developed to assess the Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence.
The EQ-i is a self-report measure designed to measure a number of
constructs related to EI. The EQ-i consists of 133 items and takes
approximately 30 minutes to complete. It gives an overall EQ score as
well as scores for the following five composite scales and 15 subscales
(Bar-On, 2006).

Basic Information
Ages: 16 and older
Administration: Self - report
Administration Time: 30 Minutes
Qualification Level: B
Additional Information

BarOn EQ-I Composite Scales and Subscales

Intrapersonal (self-awareness and self-expression)

Self-Regard: To accurately perceive, understand and accept

oneself
Emotional Self-Awareness: To be aware of and understand
ones emotions
Assertiveness: To effectively and constructively express ones
emotions and oneself
Independence: To be self-reliant and free of emotional
dependency on others
Self-Actualization: To strive to achieve personal goals and
actualize ones potential

Interpersonal (social awareness and interpersonal relationship)

18

Empathy: To be aware of and understand how others feel

Social Responsibility: To identify with ones social group and
cooperate with others
Interpersonal Relationship: To establish mutually satisfying
relationships and relate well with others

Stress Management (emotional management and regulation)

Stress Tolerance: To effectively and constructively manage

emotions
Impulse Control: To effectively and constructively control
emotions

Adaptability (change management)

Reality-Testing: To objectively validate ones feelings and

thinking with external reality
Flexibility: To adapt and adjust ones feelings and thinking to
new situations
Problem-Solving: To effectively solve problems of a personal
and interpersonal nature

General Mood (self-motivation)

Optimism: To be positive and look at the brighter side of life

Happiness: To feel content with oneself, others and life in
general

19

*From The Bar-On Model of Emotional-Social Intelligence (ESI), R. BarOn, 2006, Psicothema, 18, supl., p. 21. Reprinted with permission of
the author.

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Assessment

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Assessment ( GEIA ) is a 360-degree
measure of emotionally intelligent workplace behavior. It measures
how often individuals display emotionally intelligent workplace
behavior according to a taxonomic seven-factor model of emotional
intelligence identified by Dr Benjamin Palmer and Professor Con Stough
from Swinburne University.
The GEIA is identical to, and often referred to, as the Swinburne
University Emotional Intelligence Test (or SUEIT). The GEIA can be
completed online, consists of 70 items and takes approximately 15
minutes to complete. The table below presents a definition of each
emotional intelligence skill measured, and workplace outcomes that
can be achieved from displaying each skill effectively at work.

Basic Information
Administration: Multi - Rater
Administration Time: 15 Minutes
Qualification Level: Certification Required

Key Areas Measured

20

EI Skill

Definition

Emotional
Self-Awareness

The skill of
perceiving and
understanding
ones own
emotions.

Emotional
Expression

The skill of
effectively
expressing ones
own emotions.

Emotional
Awareness of
Others

The skill of
perceiving and
understanding
others emotions.

Emotional
Reasoning

The skill of utilizing

emotional
information in
decision-making.

Emotional
SelfManagement

The skill of
effectively
managing ones
own emotions.

Emotional
Management of
Others

The skill of
influencing the
moods and
emotions of others.

Emotional
Self-Control

The skill of
effectively
controlling strong
emotions
experienced.

Workplace Outcomes
The capacity to identify and
understand the impact ones
own feelings is having on
thoughts, decisions, behavior
and performance at work
Greater self-awareness
Creating greater understanding
amongst colleagues about
yourself
Creating trust and perceptions
of genuineness amongst
colleagues
Greater understanding of
others, how to engage,
respond, motivate and connect
with them
Interpersonal effectiveness
Enhanced decision-making
where more information is
considered in the process
Greater buy-in from others into
decisions that are made
Improved job satisfaction and
engagement
Improved ability to cope with
high work demands
Greater interpersonal
effectiveness
Enhanced productivity and
performance
The capacity to generate
greater productivity and
performance from others
The capacity to generate a
positive and satisfying work
environment for others
The capacity to effectively deal
with workplace conflict
Emotional well-being
The capacity to think clearly in
stressful situations
21
The capacity to deal effectively
with situations that cause
strong emotions

The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire

(TEIQue)
The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) is an integral
part of the scientific research program on trait emotional intelligence.
All TEIQue measures are underpinned by an international scientific
research programmer aiming to integrate the various non-traditional
intelligences into mainstream models of personality and differential
psychology.

All TEIQue measures are available, free of charge, for academic and
clinical research. Translations and adaptations of the various forms
currently exist in 20 languages

The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire

(TEIQue) - Scales*

TEIQue-Long Form

The TEIQue LF is a self-report inventory that covers the sampling

domain of trait EI comprehensively. It comprises 153 items, measuring
15 distinct facets, 4 factors, and global trait EI (Petrides, & Furnham,
2003).

TEIQue-Short Form

This is a 30-item questionnaire designed to measure global trait

emotional intelligence (trait EI). It is based on the long form of the
22

TEIQue. Two items from each of the 15 subscales of the TEIQue were
selected for inclusion, based primarily on their correlations with the
corresponding total subscale scores (Petrides & Furnham, 2006).

The Adult Sampling Domain of Trait Emotional

Intelligence

Facets
perceive themselves as

Adaptability
new conditions.
Assertiveness
stand up for their rights.
Emotion perception (self and others)
peoples feelings.
Emotion expression
feelings to others.
Emotion management (others)
peoples feelings.
Emotion regulation
emotions.
Impulsiveness (low)
in to their urges.
Relationships
personal relationships.
Self-esteem
Self-motivation
in the face of adversity.
Social awareness
excellent social skills.
Stress management
pressure and regulating stress.
Trait empathy
elses perspective.
Trait happiness
lives.
Trait optimism
the bright side of life.

High scorers
flexible and willing to adapt to
forthright, frank, and willing to
clear about their own and other
capable of communicating their
capable of influencing other
capable of controlling their
reflective and less likely to give
capable of having fulfilling
successful and self-confident.
driven and unlikely to give up
accomplished networkers with
capable of withstanding
capable of taking someone
cheerful and satisfied with their
confident and likely to look on

23

*Reprinted with permission from K. V. Petrides.

Emotional Competence Inventory 2.0

Emotional & Social Competency Inventory

The ECI 2.0 is a 360-degree tool designed to assess the emotional and
social competencies of individuals in organizations. The test is based
on emotional competencies identified by Dr. Daniel Goleman in
Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998).
The use of the ECI and the ESCI is limited to accredited users who can
demonstrate their ability to give accurate, comprehensive feedback to
their clients. The instruments are designed for use only as
development tools, not for hiring or compensation decisions (Wolff,
2006).

Basic Information
Administration: Multi - Rater
Administration Time: 30 - 45Minutes
Qualification Level: Certification Required
Additional Information

Emotional Competence Inventory 360 Scales

The ECI measures 18 competencies organized into four clusters: SelfAwareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship
Management.
24

Self-Awareness concerns knowing one's internal states, preferences,

resources, and intuitions. The Self-Awareness cluster contains three
competencies:

Emotional Awareness: Recognizing one's emotions and their

effects
Accurate Self-Assessment: Knowing one's strengths and limits
Self-Confidence: A strong sense of one's self-worth and
capabilities

Self-Management refers to managing ones' internal states, impulses,

and
resources.
The
Self-Management
cluster
contains
six
competencies:

Emotional Self-Control: Keeping disruptive emotions and

impulses in check
Transparency: Maintaining integrity, acting congruently with
ones values
Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change
Achievement: Striving to improve or meeting a standard of
excellence
Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities
Optimism: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and
setbacks

Social Awareness refers to how people handle relationships and

awareness of others feelings, needs, and concerns. The Social
Awareness cluster contains three competencies:

Empathy: Sensing others' feelings and perspectives, and taking

an active interest in their concerns
25

Organizational Awareness: Reading a group's emotional

currents and power relationships
Service Orientation: Anticipating, recognizing, and meeting
customers' needs

Relationship Management concerns the skill or adeptness at

inducing desirable responses in others. The Relationship Management
cluster contains six competencies:

Developing Others: Sensing others' development needs and

bolstering their abilities
Inspirational Leadership: Inspiring and guiding individuals and
groups
Change Catalyst: Initiating or managing change
Influence: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion
Conflict
Management:
Negotiating
and
resolving
disagreements
Teamwork & Collaboration: Working with others toward
shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective
goals.

The Emotional
(ESCI)

and

Social

Competency

Inventory

The ESCI is the latest 360-feedback tool based on ECI 1.0, ECI 2.0, and
ECI-University Edition. The ESCI offers a way to assess the strengths
and weaknesses of individuals, giving them precise, focused
information on exactly which competencies they will want to improve
on in order to meet their career goals. The ESCI covers the full
spectrum of the emotional competencies that matter most for
outstanding and effective performance (Boyatzis, 2007).

Basic Information
26

Administration: Multi - Rater

Administration Time: 30 - 45Minutes
Qualification Level: Certification Required
Additional Information

The Emotional
(ESCI) - Scales*

and

Social

Competency

Inventory

The ESCI measures 12 competencies organized into four clusters: SelfAwareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship
Management.

Self Awareness

Emotional Self-Awareness: Recognizing ones emotions and

their effects

Self Management

Emotional Self-Control: Keeping disruptive emotions and

impulses in check
Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change
Achievement Orientation: Striving to improve or meeting a
standard of excellence
Positive Outlook: Persistence in pursuing goals despite
obstacles and setbacks

Social Awareness

27

Empathy: Sensing others feelings and perspectives, and taking

an active interest in their concerns
Organizational Awareness: Reading a groups emotional
currents and power relationships

Relationship Management

Coach and Mentor: Sensing others development needs and

bolstering their abilities
Inspirational Leadership: Inspiring and guiding individuals and
groups
Influence: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion
Conflict
Management:
Negotiating
and
resolving
disagreements
Teamwork: Working with others toward shared goals. Creating
group synergy in pursuing collective goals

ARTICLES:Core Competencies in Coaching Others to Overcome

Dysfunctional Behavior
By: Richard E. Boyatzis, Ph.D.
Case Western Reserve University
Original
Reference
Reprinted
With
Permission
Boyatzis, R.E. (2005). Core competencies in coaching others to
overcome dysfunctional behavior. In Vanessa Druskat, Gerald Mount, &
Fabio Sala, (eds.). Emotional Intelligence and Work Performance.
Erlbaum. 81-95.

Coaching, or more accurately executive coaching, is one of the few

rapid growth industries of the last few years. First accepted as a
practice in executive development, it has spawned tens of thousands
of practitioners. As a measure of its popularity, a Goggle web search on
28

December 12, 2002 revealed over 99,400 web sites using the phrase
"executive coaching." HRD and OD internal and external consultants,
psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and other
professionals (e.g., lawyers, accountants, and nurses), have had
business cards printed and promote themselves as executive or life
coaches.

Even in countries where management training and executive

development are awkward because they threaten the public image of a
person's competence and authority, such as in Italy (Altomare, 2002),
Spain (Serlavos, 2002), and Japan (Voigt, 2002), coaching is the fastest
growing sector of the human resource development business.

Coaching is not a new resource for people. In the past, we had

professionals to help people develop, but it was hard to get access to
them and often had a stigma attached, especially if it was a
psychotherapist. Now even Tony Soprano, the fictional head of a crime
"family" in the Home Box Office series of the same name, goes to a
psychotherapist.

In the past, we had friends as well as others to whom we could turn for
the type of personal advice and counsel now provided by executive
coaches. Maybe we are too busy to effectively sustain friendships that
once filled this void. Or, perhaps, we have become more sensitized to
the need for developing our managerial and leadership talent.
Therefore, we seek out more help and more specific help than ever
before.

Although the practice of executive coaching has expanded

dramatically, the writing about it has only expanded at a modest pace.
Most of the literature is anecdotal from practitioners or wisdom from
those who have provided such services for years (Kilburg, 1996;
Kilburg, 2000; Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001). Except for the use
of multi-source feedback (i.e., 360), there has not been a stream of
empirical research in any of the aspects of executive coaching.
29

What Competencies Might Make a Difference?

Rogers (1951, 1961) articulated a troika of characteristics that seemed

critical for effective "helping" behavior emerging from his work on
psychotherapy: empathy, unconditional positive regard, and
genuineness. Truax and Carkhuff (1967) and Carkhuff (1969) continued
to expand, clarify, and develop these concepts and methods. Although
developers or proponents of various approaches to psychotherapy
would advocate modifications to this list (e.g., Perls emphasized giving
voice to the unspoken and Ellis emphasized pragmatism), the quest for
effective helping behavior always returned to characteristics of the
helper.
Later research on psychotherapy and counseling would suggest that
the characteristics of the helper was more important in determining
differences in effectiveness than differences in approach to
psychotherapy or schools of thought in which the person was trained
(Emrick, 1974).

Methods

1. Predicting Client Work Performance

For an alcoholism counselor in the US Navy, the most objective

measure of their effectiveness is the work performance of their clients
following treatment. A work performance measure can be considered
conservative (i.e., more difficult on which to show change) and a more
difficult treatment goal than abstinence because it requires changes in
the client's behavior, ways of dealing with others, as well as changes in
his/her drinking behavior.
30

Boyatzis and Burruss (1979) collected the work performance data

independently of the counselor competency data. Their method and
results will be reviewed in depth in this chapter. First, a list of all clients
admitted to US Naval alcohol rehabilitation facilities in the continental
United States was produced. The clients were listed by facility. Second,
the list was sent to each facility.

Every counselor currently working at each facility was asked to

complete a form. If they had worked as a counselor at the facility, they
would circle the name of each client with whom they had worked. Each
client spent a substantial amount of time with a particular counselor in
individual and group therapy, meetings, and other activities.

2. Discovering Key Competencies

Boyatzis and Burruss (1979) used a two-step process to identify the

competencies of counselors in the first study. In the first step, an
extreme case design was used to inductively discover the
competencies that were likely to have an impact on client work
performance following treatment.
Nominations of those viewed as "outstanding" were collected about
counselors who had worked more than 2 years in the system and were
available for interviews and testing. A sample of "outstanding"
counselors was identified as those receiving multiple nominations. A
comparable sample of people not nominated by anyone was randomly
chosen from the remaining counselors.

The Behavioral Event Interview (Boyatzis, 1982; Spencer and Spencer,

1993), a variation on the critical incident interview (Flanagan, 1954),
was conducted with 26 counselors. Eight competencies were found to
differentiate the outstanding from the "average" counselors. They
were:
31

(1) Optimism about people's ability to change, considered part

of the Self-Management Cluster of EI competencies;
(2) Initiative (called efficacy in the original studies),
considered part of the Self-Management Cluster of EI
competencies;
(3) Pattern Recognition, considered part of a Cognitive Cluster
of competencies;
(4) Client Awareness, considered a part
Awareness Cluster of EI competencies;

of the Social

(5) Accurate Self-Assessment (called a desire for personal

growth in the original studies), considered part of the SelfAwareness Cluster of EI competencies;
(6) Ego Maturity, considered a part of the Self-Management
Cluster of EI competencies;
(7) Empathy, considered a part of the Social Awareness
Cluster of EI competencies; and
(8) Emotional Self-Awareness (called genuineness in the
original studies), considered part of the Self-Awareness Cluster
of EI competencies.

Tests were selected or developed for each of these competencies.

Since several of the competencies were thought to exist within a
person at multiple levels (i.e., trait and skill levels of the competency),
several tests were chosen to assess Initiative, Accurate SelfAssessment, and Empathy.

Optimism about people's ability to change:

32

The Scenarios Test was designed specifically for this study. It consisted
of eight scenarios of counseling situations adapted from actual events
in the interviews. The person is asked to imagine himself in each
situation and to select, in order of preference, two of ten possible
responses that they would be likely to make. A subset of responses for
each category was theoretically designed to assess Optimism,
Initiative, and Accurate Self-Assessment. These were weighted by
multipliers of 2 and 1 according to whether they were first or second
choices respectively. This test required approximately 40 minutes to
administer.

Initiative:

A trait level of the initiative competency was assessed with an operant

test by coding Cognitive Self-Definition from the Picture Story Exercise
according to the coding system developed by Stewart and Winter
(1977) to reflect whether a person habitually thinks of themselves in
terms of causes and outcomes or whether a person sees the self as an
ineffective victim of events which have an unknown cause.
The Picture Story Exercise is a modified version of the Thematic
Apperception Test (TAT) originally developed by Murray (1943). A
person is asked to spend about five minutes writing a story in response
to each of six pictures. People coding this measure had reliability with
expert scorers above the 90 percent level.

To address possible method variance issues, a second trait level

measure of Initiative was selected. The Nowicki-Strickland Locus of
Control Scale is a forced-choice; respondent measure consisting of 40
questions was also used as another trait level respondent measure of
Initiative. A high score indicates an external orientation (Nowicki and
Strickland, 1973).

To assess the skill level of the Initiative, a scale in the Scenarios Test
was developed (see above description of the Scenarios Test).
33

Pattern Recognition:

The Test of Thematic Analysis is a measure of the cognitive

competency called Pattern Recognition (Boyatzis, Cowen, and Kolb,
1995). This is thought to be essential in diagnosing problems and
understanding others. Presented with two different groups of
information, the test-taker is asked to describe the differences and
similarities in any manner that he/she likes. The two groups of
information used in this study were six counseling situations derived
from the interviews. A person can receive a score from -3 to +6. The
more a person demonstrates critical diagnostic thinking, the more
positive the score will be (Winter and McClelland, 1978).

Client Awareness:

In addition to one scale in the Scenarios Test, the Programmed Case

was also used to assess Client Awareness. It is a series of 21 episodes
of a true life history. Each episode is accompanied by a set of four
alternative future episodes of which only one actually happened. The
person being tested is asked to guess which of the four alternatives
occurred.
A specially designed answer sheet indicates whether he is right or
wrong after each guess and they are instructed to keep guessing until
he/she finds the correct alternative. An important aspect of this
instrument is that the person has more information as a result of each
guess and, therefore, should have a better understanding or "feeling
for" the biographical character.

To assess Client Awareness, a counselor's responses on the

programmed case were scored according to their overall Performance
(i.e., the standardized score of 21 minus the number of guesses made
before finding the correct one).
34

Accurate Self-Assessment:

Besides a scale from the Scenarios Test, the Helping Resources

Inventory was used to assess a counselor's willingness and
resourcefulness in using help to work with clients. The Helping
Resources Inventory was adapted from the Activities Questionnaire
used by McClelland (1975). The respondent was asked to rate, on a
scale of ten, "how likely" he would be to consult each of 11 different
sources of help (e.g., minister, psychologist, AA sponsor, friend,
supervisor, etc.). The mean response per source was then taken to be
an index of the person's Willingness to Seek Help. The person was then
asked to indicate whether he has actually sought help from each of
those same 11 sources within the past month, six months, or year. The
mean response to this question, weighted in the direction of recency,
was used as an indicator of the person's actual Use of Help. This
questionnaire required approximately ten minutes to administer.

Ego Maturity:

To assess ego maturity, the Picture Story Exercise was also scored for
Stages of Ego Development, developed by Abigail Stewart and
appeared in McClelland (1975). Persons coding the stages have
reliability with expert scorers above the 90 percent level. The stories
were scored for imagery in four stages. These stage scores were then
combined into a single measure with the following formula (as
described in McClelland, 1975): [Stage I+2(Stage II)+3(stage III)
+4(stage IV)] divided by [Stage I + Stage II + Stage III + Stage IV].

Empathy:

35

The Picture Story Exercise was also used to code a trait level of the
Empathy competency. The stories were scored by trained scorers, who
have scoring reliability with expert scorers above the 90 percent level,
according to the system described in Atkinson (1958) for Need for
Affiliation, and that developed by Winter (1973) for Need for Power and
Activity Inhibition (McClelland, et. al., 1977). These three scores were
adjusted for number of words written with a correction factor
developed by Winter (1979).

The standardized power score was subtracted from the standardized

affiliation score and the difference was multiplied by the square root of
the AI score plus one to construct a single variable. The variable, called
the Caring Motive Profile, reflects a greater concern for close
relationships to people than for having impact on them, while having a
high degree of impulse control.

To assess the skill level of the Empathy competency, the Programmed

Cases was used in a different way than earlier described. An
Improvement Score was calculated as the increase or decrease in the
accuracy of their guesses on the later half of the episodes versus the
first half (see above description of the Programmed Case test). The
Improvement score was adjusted for level of accuracy of early
responses.

Emotional Self-Awareness:

A modified version of the Focusing Ability, as originally designed by

Gendlin, Beebe, Cassens, Klein, and Oberlander (1968), was used to
assess Emotional Self-Awareness. Prerecorded instructions asked the
person to first relax for a moment and then focus on some meaningful
personal problem.
The instructions continued at brief intervals to guide the person
through an exploration of his/her feelings concerning that problem over
a ten minute period. At the end of the ten minutes, the person was
36

asked to answer, into an individually held tape recorder, specific

questions about the experience. Two judges independently rated 43 of
the 47 recordings on a four-point scale from "Definitely Did Not Focus"
on feelings to "Definitely Did Focus" with an interrater reliability of r =
.79. (The first four recordings were used to establish initial agreement
on the scale definitions.)

Disagreements were discussed and the final score was agreed. This
score is referred to in this report simply as Focusing Ability. It was
intended to be a measure of Emotional Self-Awareness because the
"focusing" a person may demonstrate during this exercise is one of
identifying their feelings and delving deeper into what they are and
describing them. This instrument required approximately 20 minutes to
administer.

Variables Other than Competencies

In addition to the above measures of counselor characteristics, the
Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) was administered to assess the climate
of the treatment facility. This instrument, developed by Moos (1974), is
a 100-item questionnaire concerning important characteristics of the
social environment.
The ten subscales were combined by summing eight of them and
subtracting "Anger and Aggression" and "Staff Control", which were
scored in the opposite direction. The resultant variable, Climate, was
intended to account for impact of treatment facility on client outcome.

Results

Counselors were classified as "superior" or "average" on the basis of a

median split on the mean work performance rating of the clients with
whom they worked. The "average" counselors had mean client work
performance ratings ranging from 2.20 to 2.56; the percentage of

37

clients with a rating of "3" ranged from 64 percent to 78 percent with

an average of 70.5 percent.
The "superior" counselors had mean client work performance ratings
ranging from 2.60 to 3.00; the percentage of clients with a rating of "3"
ranged from 75 percent to 100 percent (one of the "superior"
counselors had a percentage of 75 percent; the rest had 80 percent or
better) with an average of 87.2 percent.

T-tests were computed on each of the measures comparing average

and superior counselors. The results, shown in Table 1 (Table 2 from
Boyatzis and Burruss, 1979, page 25) are that superior counselors had
significantly higher scores on the Thematic Analysis score, the
Programmed Case: Improvement score, and the Focusing score.
They also had near significantly higher scores on the Caring Motive
Profile, Cognitive Self-Definition score, and the Programmed Case:
Performance score. The Use of Resources was statistically significant,
but opposite to the predicted direction; average counselors showed
higher scores than superior counselors. All other differences were nonsignificant.

Table 1. Comparison of 15 Superior and 14 Average

Counselors
Variable

Average
Superior
Counselor Counselor t
s
s

Sig.
Level

Optimism:
Scenarios/Opt

2.29

ns

2.53

.32

Initiative:
Cognitve
Self-Def. -6.65
Nowicki-Strickland
16.86
Scenarios/Initiative
.57

-4.30
15.67
.80

1.56
.066
-1.0
ns
8
ns
.37

Pattern
Recognition:
Thematic Analysis
.43

.93

2.01 .025

38

Client
Awareness:
Programmed Case/Perf.
55.36

55.85

1.45 .079

Empathy: Caring Motive -.92

Programmed Case/Imp.
2.34

.32
15.76

1.63 .058
1.68 .054

5.00
6.53
2.42

-2.1
.02
6
ns
.72
ns
.69

2.43

2.44

.08

1.71

2.64

2.55 .005

Accurate
Assessment:
Scenarios/ASA
HRI/Seeking
HRI/Using Help

Self
7.29
6.08
Help
2.23

Ego Maturity: Ego Dev.

Emotional
Awareness:
Focusing

ns

Self-

*One-tailed significance levels are reported

On the basis of these t-tests, the six measures indicated that four of
the EI competencies and the cognitive competency could be
considered valid differentiators of superior versus average counseling
performance.
They were:
(1) Empathy at both the trait and skill levels as measured by
the Caring Motive Profile and the Programmed Case:
Improvement score, respectively;
(2) Initiative as measured by Cognitive Self-Definition;
(3) Pattern Recognition as measured by the Thematic Analysis
score;
(4) Client Awareness as measured by the Programmed Case:
Performance score; and
(5) Emotional Self-Awareness, as measured by the Focusing
Ability.

39

The findings reveal that one or more competencies from each of the
four clusters assessed were needed for effectiveness. These
competencies were from the Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and
Social Awareness Clusters of EI and the Pattern Recognition of the
Cognitive Cluster.

A discriminant function analysis (DFA) was run on the six measures and
the derived function used to assign counselors by groups. It was
chosen as the multivariate statistical routine to perform this function
due to the categorical nature of the client outcome data. The results
are shown in Table 2 (Table 4 from Boyatzis and Burruss, 1979, page
29).
The combination of the six measures yielded a high canonical
correlation (r=.677) and correctly classified 83 percent of the
counselors (correctly classified 87 percent of the superior counselors).
A DFA was also run on the sum of the standardized scores on each of
the measures, yielding an even higher canonical correlation (r=.898)
and correctly classified 83 percent of the counselors (correctly
classified 80 percent of the superior counselors).
A third DFA was run on the number of competencies possessed by a
counselor. This was computed by giving a counselor a +1 for each
measure on which his standardized score was positive, and 0 for each
measure on which his standardized score was negative. The sum was
computed as the number of competencies possessed by the counselor.
This DFA yielded a high canonical correlation (r=.633) and correctly
classified 83 percent of the counselors (correctly classified 87 percent
of the superior counselors).

Table 2. Discriminant Function Analysis of

the Model

Variables

%
Canonica Counselor
l
s
Correlat Correctly
e
Classified
(n=29)

%
Superior
Counselor
s
Correctly
Classified
(n=15)
40

Caring
Motive
Profile
Programmed
Case:Improv.
&
Perf. .667
Focusing
Thematic
Analysis
Cognitive
Self-Def.

83%

87%

Sum
of
Standard
Scores on all .898
6
Variables

83%

80%

Number
of
Competenice
.633
s
Possessed

83%

87%

The Impact of Situational Variables

Since the counselors worked in different treatment facilities, it was

possible that organizational climate of the facility may affect their
performance. The correlation between the Moos Climate score and
client outcome (mean performance rating) was not significant (r=-.106,
n=29). A t-test of the climate in which superior counselors worked
versus the average counselors worked was also not significant, means
of 50.00 and 49.93 respectively (t=.03, n=29).
Another situational characteristic which could possibly have an impact
on counselor effectiveness was the age of their clients. The correlation
of mean work performance rating with the percent of clients over 25
years old was not significant (r=-.038, n=29). Average counselors had
a mean of 51.06 percent of their clients over 25, while superior
counselors had a mean of 49.66 percent of their clients over 25. This
difference is not significant (t=-.39, n=29).
41

As a further check, correlations were computed of the Moos Climate

score and percent clients over 25 against each of the competency
measures. None of the correlations with percent clients over 25 was
significant. None of the correlations with the Moos Climate score was
significant.

Predicting Client Work Performance

A multiple-regression was conducted with the average client work
performance rating per counselor as the criterion available (Work
Performance) and the six competency test scores as the predictor
variables. Since days of a client's active service after treatment and
the work performance measure were related (r = .378; df =43; p<.01),
it was decided to control for the confounding effects of unequal time
periods between treatment-discharge and service-discharge dates.
A seventh independent variable was included, representing the
average number of days between treatment and discharge from the
service for each counselor's sample of clients.

The multiple regression showed a significant multiple correlation

(R=.562) in predicting Work Performance from the competencies, as
shown in Table 3 (Tables 1 and 3 from Burruss and Boyatzis, 1981,
page 9 and 12). A test of curvilinear (F=.474; p=ns) demonstrated no
significant deviation from linearity.

A detailed analysis of the individual contribution of each variable

revealed, however, that the primary contributors to that relationship
were Days of Service, Empathy as measured by the Programmed Case:
Improvement score, and Emotional Self-Awareness, as measured by
the Focusing measure. Since Days of Service was stepped into the
42

equation first to eliminate its contaminating effects on predicting Work

Performance, the data suggest that two competencies, Empathy and
Emotional Self-Awareness, are more important than others in predicting
the effectiveness of counselors.

Table 3. Predicting Work Performance: Summary

Table (n=45)
Analysis DF

Sum of Mean
Square Square F
s
s

Regressio
7
n

.426

.061

Residual

.924

.025

37

2.437

Multiple R=562, R2 = .316, Standard error = .158

Variable

Multipl
R2
eR

R2
Simpl B
Change e R
eta

Days
of
.378
Service

.142

.143

.378

.459 9.567

Caring
Motive

.380

.144

.001

-.025

-.01
.011
5

Prog.Case
.380
: Perf.

.144

.000

-.025

-.00
.000
2

Prog.Case
.506
: Impr.

.256

.112

.307

.331 5.117

Cog.SelfDef.

.507

.257

.000

.192

-.04
.094
9

Focusing

.554

.306

.050

.174

.254 3.113

Thematic
.562
Analysis

.316

.009

-.053

-.10
.495
1

Discussion of Results

43

The superior counselors appeared different from the average

counselors. This does not imply any difference in the dedication or
compassion of the individual counselors, but reflects a difference in
their effectiveness. Given the relatively high effectiveness of the Navy
alcoholism treatment programs as a whole (Bucky, 1977), the
differences discussed do represent the difference between superior
and average counselors and not between adequate and inadequate
counselors.

Two
competencies,
Empathy
and
Emotional
Self-Awareness,
distinguished effective counseling and predicted work performance.
Another competency, Pattern Recognition, appeared to contribute to
the overall effectiveness of a counselor, but did not add unique or
distinctive capability as reflected in the regression analysis. Two others,
Initiative and Client Awareness, also appeared to contribute to the
overall effectiveness, but not as strongly and did not add unique
variance in the regression analysis.

Application of these results to executive coaching would confirm what

most coaches, and their clients, know-- Empathy or sensitivity to the
client is the key characteristic of the effective coaches. Coaching, like
counseling, cannot proceed without listening to and understanding the
client, his/her issues, problems, and situation at work and at home.
If the client is viewed as merely a "problem bearing platform," the
coach will focus on the problems and tasks not the person. In the
process, he/she may miss underlying issues or factors contributing to
sustaining current behavior and impact. The coach must be sensitive to
changes in the client and their process of change to tailor their
comments and suggestions to that person's needs at that point in
time.

44

Summary and Implications

The results showed that two competencies appeared to have a

substantial and significant impact on a counselors' effectiveness. To be
effective as a counselor, and by extension an executive coach, a
person must be sensitive to others. To be sensitive to others, he/she
must be sensitive to themselves.
These critically important competencies were: Emotional SelfAwareness from the Self-Awareness Cluster of EI competencies; and
Empathy from the Social Awareness Cluster of EI competencies. Both of
these were significant at the skill level. This implies that training or
developing these competencies may be more feasible than if they were
at the trait or motive level of personality.

Regardless of the organizational climate of the various facilities in

which they worked, type of training received to prepare for their role,
and the age demographics of their clients, these characteristics, these
competencies explained why some counselors were more effective
than others.

To extend these findings into the arena of executive coaching, we can

infer that a similar set of competencies would help us to understand
why some coaches are more effective than others.

Specifically, we can also hypothesize that the most critical

competencies will come from a wide variety of the clusters, and that
Emotional Self-Awareness and Empathy are most likely to be two of the
competencies critical to coaching effectiveness.

We need a parallel study to those reviewed here conducted with

executive coaches and their clients to determine the precise

45

competencies and their impact. We need to expand the sample size to

generalize to all forms of executive and life coaching.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, RELIGIOSITY AND SELFEFFICACY AS PREDICTORS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS IN
OGBOMOSO, NIGERIA

Adeyemo, D. A., Ph.D.

and
Adeleye, A. T., M.Ed.
Department of Guidance and Counseling
University of Ibadan, Ibadan.

ABSTRACT

The study investigated emotional intelligence, religiosity and selfefficacy as predictors of psychological well-being among secondary
school adolescents. The study made use of stratified random sampling
in selecting 292 adolescents from ten (10) secondary schools in
Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria.
The sample age ranged between 13 -20 years. Four instruments were
used, namely: General Self-Efficacy Scale, Well-being Manifestation
Measurement Scale; The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale
(WLEIS); and Religiosity Scale. Data analysis involved the use of
multiple regression and Pearson Product Moment correlation.
The results indicated that the three independent variables as a block
were effective in predicting psychological well-being of adolescents. On
the basis of the finding, it was suggested that teachers should
endeavor to teach rudiments of emotional intelligence to the students
46

while school counselors and psychologists should develop programmes

to foster emotional intelligence and self-efficacy.

Keywords:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Emotional intelligence,
Religiosity,
Self-efficacy,
Psychological Well-being,
Adolescents.

INTRODUCTION

Adolescence as a developmental period is filled with many challenges.

Early developmental theorists, particularly Erickson (Erickson, 1959)
have defined the period of adolescence as one of identity versus role
confusion, in which adolescents must determine who they are,
combining their self-understanding and social roles into a coherent
identity.

Today, Adolescents live in a society which has become multi-complex,

thus making the roles of adolescents very diffuse and confusing. The
roles of adolescents and their developmental tasks are no longer well
defined and prescribed. Knowledge explosion, material wealth pursuit,
plurality of the society and estrangement from the extended family
system, the hypocrisy of adult standards, the fallacy of physical
maturity all present a great battle for the adolescent to fight with the
dilemma of indefinite status.

Coupled with this complexity are the multifarious needs (biogenic,

psychogenic, sociogenic and psychogenic) that the adolescent has to
47

satisfy. He has got exuberant energy with which to pursue his needs
but perhaps not the logical rationale with which to estimate the
balance between degrees of freedom and the threshold of danger.
Thus, adolescent engages in activities that pose real threat to his/ her
psychological well-being.

Adolescence is full of challenges. The change is fast, everywhere and

hard to keep up with: the body changes in response to increasing
levels of sex hormones; the thinking process changes as the child is
able to think more broadly and in abstract ways; the social life changes
as new people and peers come into scope. Yet the child needs to deal
with every single one of these changes, all at the same time! Thus,
making the issue of psychological well-being, that of adolescence.

Psychological well-being is a multi-dimensional concept. Cheerfulness,

optimism, playfulness, self-control, a sense of detachment and freedom
from frustration, anxiety and loneliness had been accepted as
dimensions of psychological well-being (Sinha & Verma, 1992).
McCulloch (1991) has shown that satisfaction, morale, positive affect
and social support constitute psychological well-being.
Psychological well-being is a point of much emphasis in society today.
Whereas insurance companies and society in general once thought of a
persons health mainly in physical terms, in modern society personal
wellness has come to refer to a more thorough definition that includes
psychological well-being. In regard to psychological well-being, within
the literature, happiness has generally been viewed as the outcome
variable (Ryff, 1989).

Traditionally, psychological research has focused on negative states,

their determinants and consequences (Shehan, 1984, Chang, 1998).
Studies on depression, separation, alienation and similar topics focus
on peoples suffering and its deleterious effects on their psychological
and physical states until relatively recently, when few studies have
been conducted on subjective moods or feelings of well-being and their
determinants (Crocker, Luthertanen, Baline, & Broadnax, 1994).
48

Perhaps, due to the fact that psychological well-being is a subjective

term which means different things to different people, earliest
literature focused on short-term affective well-being (happiness) at the
expense of enduring effects. Ryff (1989) operationally defined
psychological well-being as: self-acceptance, and personal growth. The
theory behind this view aimed at measuring all aspects of this form of
well-being and created a broader, more accurate definition.

However, there are remarkable differences in the abilities of

adolescents to cope with the challenges which confront them. Some
adolescents have great difficulty in dealing with problems which for
others would be minor. When these young people are not able to cope
with stresses in an adaptive manner they may develop problem
behaviors and are at risk of developing mental health problems.

Other adolescents with major problems seem to be able to emerge

from stressful encounter not only successfully, but also with increased
abilities and resources (Seoffge-Kreake, 1995).

It is worthy to note that contemporary studies undoubtedly show that

higher functions in no small measure develop under the influence of
social and cultural factors.

Perhaps the reason why emotional intelligence though adopted as a

relatively new concept, has always, even if largely unacknowledged,
been a part of humanity.

It is a novel area with regard to research, especially with regard to

testing emotional intelligence and establishing the role of emotional
intelligence during the adolescence.

49

Adolescence is in and of itself a difficult challenge in the realms of

emotions. The adolescent is faced with new relationships and
atmosphere where proper social integration is of utmost importance for
success.

As the adolescent travels on this journey to the time of graduation and

engages in the progression towards adulthood, being emotionally
competent is not only important, it is a necessary ingredient for
successful journey.

Goleman (1995) stated that students who have emotional competency

can better deal with the pressure of peer politics, the higher demands
required for academics, and the temptations of alcohol, drugs and sex.

According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence

involves abilities that may be categorized into five domains:

i) Self-Awareness - observing oneself and recognizing a feeling as it

happens.

ii) Managing emotions - handling feelings so that they are

appropriate; realizing what is behind a feeling; finding ways to handle
fears and anxieties, anger and sadness.

iii) Motivating oneself- Channeling emotions in the service of a goal;

emotional self-control; delaying gratification and stifling impulses.

50

iv) Empathy- Sensitivity to others feelings and concerns and taking

their perspective, appreciating the difference in how people are feeling
about things.

v) Handling relationship: managing emotions in others; social

competence and social skills.

A look at the domains summarized above, shows that they have a wide
range of useful implications for adolescents in secondary schools.
When faced with the struggle of broken families, abuse, the temptation
of drugs, alcohol and sex as well as other struggles all five factors of
emotional intelligence can contribute to an adolescent being true to
himself or herself. Furthermore, these domains can assist in fostering a
strong form of development in body, mind and spirit for each
adolescent.

According to Mayer and Cobb (2000), the current definition of

emotional intelligence as defined by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso
(2000), includes the capacity to perceive, understand and manage
emotions.
A student high in emotional intelligence based on the above definition
should have some of the elements required for also being high in
psychological well-being such as self-acceptance, positive relations
with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and
personal growth.

Emotional intelligence has been theoretically related to several

important human values including life satisfaction, the quality of
interpersonal relationships, and success in occupations that involve
considerable reasoning with emotional information such as those
involving creativity, leadership, sales and psychotherapy (Bar-On,
1997; Goleman, 1995; Palmer, Walls, Burgess, & Tough, 2001; Salovey
51

& Mayer, 1990). It was noted in the findings of Palmer, Donaldson and
Stough (2001) that emotional intelligence was moderately correlated
with psychological well-being and significantly explained some of the
variance in psychological well- being.

Religiosity includes having or showing belief in and reverence for God

or a deity, as well as participation in activities pertaining to that faith
such as attending services/worship regularly and participating in other
social activities with ones religious community. Religiosity has been
linked to a greater sense of well-being in late adulthood as well as to
the ability to better cope with stressful events in middle adulthood
[Koenig, Smiley, & Gonzalez, 1999; Santrock 2002].

Religious practices and beliefs often play a role in understanding

oneself and the world especially when given meaning and value for the
relation between oneself, others, surrounding environment and
existence (Canda, 1989). Religious beliefs become more abstract, more
principled, and more independent during the adolescence years.
Specifically, adolescents beliefs become rituals, practices and strict
observance of religions customs (Steinberg, 2002).

Generally speaking, the stated importance of religion- and especially of

participation in an organized religion - declines somewhat during the
adolescence years. Younger adolescents than older adolescents attend
church regularly, and, not surprisingly, more of younger adolescents
state that religion is important to them (Benson, Donahue & Erickson,
1989; Johnson, OMalley, & Bachman, 1986).

Some, but not all, researches suggest that religious adolescents are
less depressed than other adolescents, significantly less likely than
peers to engage in premarital sexual intercourse, and somewhat less
likely to engage in deviant behavior, (Benson et al; 1989; Donahue,
1994; Litchfield, Thomas, & Li 1997; Wright, Frost, & Wisecarver, 1993).
Not only does religious participation affect other aspects of
adolescents behavior, but certain behavior themselves also affect
religious participation.
52

The implications of religion and spirituality for individual well-being had

captured the attention of many foundational social theorists, [e.g.
Marx, 1844, Freud, 1928; James, 1912; Weber, 1958; & Maslow, 1954].
However, there has been renewed interest in systemically exploring
the interface between religi-spirituality and psychological well-being.
Drawing across studies from this body of research, several recent
review articles have concluded that there is a modest salutary
association between various aspects of religi-spirituality and
psychological well-being (Hackney & Sanders, 2003; Koenig & Larson,
2001; Sawatzky, Ratner, & Chiu 2005).

Earlier classic theorizing (Durkheim, 1951) on the importance of social

integration for individual well-being suggests how religious
participation might lead to individuals better psychological well-being
noting that engagement with institutions like religion can serve to
temper individuals desire and thereby help them to achieve better
psychological well-being. Scholars have suggested that religious
involvement promotes individuals well-being by providing them access
to social support, a source from which to cultivate soul identity, as well
as a factor that encourages individuals to avoid negative health
behaviors (George, Ellison, & Larson 2002).

Findings from previous studies that simultaneously have examined

multiple dimensions of psychological well-being suggest that different
patterns of association between religiosity, spirituality, and well-being
are likely to emerge across diverse dimensions of psychological wellbeing (e.g. Frasier, Mintz, & Mobley 2005; Maselko & Kubzansky,
2006).Corroborating earlier researchers, Greenfield and Nadine (2007),
noted that associations between more frequent formal religious
participation and psychological well-being were largely contingent
upon the dimension of psychological well-being under consideration.

Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977) provides insight into the

components of human motivation and behaviour. The theory posits the
importance of perceived self-efficacy as the primary stimulus for
53

pursuing a behavior. Self-efficacy is ones belief in his or her ability to

perform a specific behavior to achieve an outcome.

Self-efficacy is usually thought to influence behaviour in specific

domains of action and is considered to be a universal construct, which
applies to all individuals regardless of race, gender or culture. Selfefficacy beliefs determine an individuals resiliency to adversity and
her vulnerability to stress and depression (Bandura, Caprara,
Barbaranelli, Gerbino & Pastorelli, 2003).General self-efficacy aims at a
broad and stable sense of personal competence to deal effectively with
a variety of stressful situations (Scherer et al., 1982; Schwarzer, 1994).
Research reported that general self-efficacy was related to physical
and mental health (Wang & Liu, 2000).

Purpose of the Study

Due to the increasing maladjusted behaviour manifested by many

adolescents and against the proven empirical facts that adolescence is
not necessarily inherently stressful, it is necessary to have a look at
the factors that contribute to psychological well-being of adolescents.
Specifically the study examined emotional intelligence, religiosity and
self-efficacy as predictors of psychological well-being.

Research questions

Based on articulated objectives of the study, the following research

questions were addressed in the work.
1. Are there significant relationships among emotional

54

intelligence, religiosity and self-efficacy and psychological

well-being?
2. What is the joint effect of emotional intelligence, religiosity
and self-efficacy on psychological well-being?
3. What is the separate effect of emotional intelligence,
religiosity and self-efficacy on psychological well-being?

METHODOLOGY

Research Design
The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. In
this type of design, the researchers are interested in knowing the
influence of the independent variables on the dependent variables
without necessarily manipulating the independent variables.

Participants
Ten secondary schools were randomly selected from the five local
government areas in Ogbomoso. Stratified random sampling was
employed where each local government formed a stratum. In each of
the local governments, two schools were randomly selected and 30
students were selected from each school.
The age of the respondents ranges between 13 and 20 years, with a
mean age of 15.90 and SD of 3.4. There were 161 (55.1%) males and
151 (44.9%) females. There were 230 (78.8%) Christians and 62 (21.2)
Muslims.

55

Instrumentation

Five instruments were used to collect the data for the study. The
description of the instruments is given below:

1.

The General Self-Efficacy Scale:

The scale was developed by Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf Schwarger

in 1979 with German version which was later revised. It was
developed to assess a general sense of perceived self-efficacy for
adult population, including adolescents. Responses are made on a
4-point scale and summing up the responses to all ten items to yield
the final composite score ranging from 10 to 40. In samples from 23
nations, Cronbachs alpha ranged from .76 to .90, with the majority
in the high .80. The scale is one-dimensional. Criterion - related
validity is documented in numerous correlations studies. The
response format is 1 = Not at all true, 2 = Hardly true, 3 =
moderately true, 4 = exactly true.

2. Well-being Manifestation Measurement Scale:

This scale was developed by Masse, Poulin, Dassa, Lambert, Belair and
Battalion (1998b). The need for a scale which is shorter and easy to
administer informed the choice of this scale. The scale contains 25 items with six factors. The six factors are control of self and event,
happiness, social involvement, self-esteem, mental balance, and
sociability. Masse et al (1998a) found an overall Cronbach alpha of 0.93
= .85 and a range of .71 on the subscales. They also found that the
item explained 52% of the variance in psychological well-being.

56

3. Wong and
(WLEIS):

Law

Emotional

Intelligence

Scale

The scale was designed by Wong and Law (2002) based on the four
dimensions of emotional intelligence as proposed by Davis et al 1998.
It consists of 16 items in which 4 items were drawn from each
dimension.

4.
Self-Emotional Appraisal (SEA): -

Other Emotional Appraisal (OEA), Use of Emotional (UOE) and

Regulation Of Emotion (ROE). Emotional intelligence scale yield
coefficient alpha of: Self Emotion, 0.89, Regulation of Emotion 0.89,
Use of Emotion 0.80, and Others Emotion 0.89.

5. Religiosity Scale:

This scale was developed by the researchers in the course of the

research work. The scale is made up of 12 items. Responses are made
on a 5 - point Likert format i.e. Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided,
Disagree. It has a reliability coefficient of 0.88 determined by testretest method.

Procedure
The questionnaires were administered on the participants in their
various schools following the approval of the school authorities. The
administration of the instruments took one week. As a result of the fact
that the participants had to respond to four instruments, it was not
possible to retrieve them on the very day of administration. This
57

necessitated further visits by the researchers. Of the three hundred

distributed, two hundred and ninety-two were retrieved. This
represents a response rate of 97.3%.

Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation and
multiple regression analysis.

RESULTS

Table 1: Mean, Standard Deviation Correlation among the

Variables

Table 1 shows that:

58

1. Emotional intelligence, religiosity and self-efficacy have significant

relationship with psychological well-being (P<0.05)
2. Religiosity has a significant relationship with emotional intelligence
(P<0.05) but not with self-efficacy (P>0.05).
3. Self-efficacy has a significant relationship with emotional intelligence
(P<0.05) but not with religiosity (P>0.05).
4. Emotional intelligence has a significant relationship with religiosity
and self - efficacy (P<0.05).

Table 2: Regression Analysis showing the joint effect

of emotional intelligence, religiosity and self-efficacy
on the psychological well-being of the respondents.

59

From table 2, it was found that the linear combination of religiosity,

self-efficacy and emotional intelligence had significant effect on the
psychological well-being of the respondents (F (3,288) = 63.218,
P<0.05). The independent variables also yielded a coefficient of
multiple regressions (R) of 0.397, and multiple Regressions Square (R2)
adjusted of 0.391. This means that 39.1% of the total variance in
psychological well-being of the participants could be explained by the
combination of religiosity, self-efficacy and emotional intelligence.

Table 3: Relative contributions of the independent

variables on psychological well-being of the

respondents

Table 3 shows for each independent variable, the unstandardised

regression weight (), the standard error of estimate (SE), the
standardized coefficient, the t-ratio and level at which the T-ratio is
significant. Emotional intelligence made the highest contribution ( =
.544, t= 10.598, P<0.05). This is followed by self-efficacy which
contributed ( = .179, t = 3.66, P<.05) and then religiosity (=.003,
t=.065, P> .05).

60

Discussion

Results as shown in table 2 indicate that the three independent

variables (emotional intelligence, religiosity and self-efficacy) as a
block seem to be effective in predicting psychological well-being of
secondary school adolescents. The observed F-ratio is significant (F
(3,288 = 63.218, P<0.05).

The multiple regression square (R2) value of (0.397) suggested that

about 39.7% of the total variation in the adolescents psychological
well-being is accounted for by a linear combination of the three
independent variables.

Results from table 3 show the extent to which each of the independent
variables contributed to the prediction and the value of t-ratio
associated with respective variables. It indicates that emotional
intelligence and self-efficacy contributed significantly to the prediction
of psychological well-being of the adolescents while religiosity did not.

The values of the standardized regression weights associated with

these variables indicate that emotional intelligence made the greatest
contribution followed by self-efficacy and then religiosity. The results
corroborate the finding of De Lazzari (2000) that emotional intelligence
was moderately correlated with psychological well-being and that it
explained some of the variance in psychological well-being.

The significant contribution of emotional intelligence to the prediction

of the psychological well-being of the adolescent is explicable

61

considering the central role emotion - (its understanding and use)

plays in the psychological well-being of people.
Considering the definition of emotional intelligence by Mayer, Salovey
and Caruso (2000), as the capacity to perceive, assimilate,
understand and manage emotion, a student high in emotional
intelligence based on the above definition should have some of the
elements required for also being high in psychological well-being such
as self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy,
environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth.

Combining the concept of social perspective taking with emotional

intelligence from a developmental perspective, one might come to
recognize the impact of emotional intelligence on psychological wellbeing.

A variety of inferences can be drawn as to why adolescents who are

high in emotional intelligence also score high in psychological wellbeing. One explanation is that adolescents with high scores in
emotional intelligence have a good knowledge of their emotions and
this is characterized by self-awareness which is critical to selfacceptance which has been operationalised as a domain of
psychological well-being.

Awareness of ones emotion is also crucial to autonomy (selfdetermination, independence and ability to regulate ones behavior)
and personal growth, both of which are domains of psychological wellbeing.

Self-efficacy significant contribution to the prediction of psychological

well- being is consistent with the assertion of Wang and Liu, (2000)
that general self-efficacy was related to physical and mental health.
Also, self-efficacy aims at a broad and stable sense of personal
competence to deal effectively with a variety of stressful situations
.Again; self-efficacy beliefs determine an individual resiliency to
adversity and vulnerability to stress and depression.
62

The finding that religiosity did not contribute significantly to

psychological well- being of the adolescents is inconsistent with
previous studies which have suggested that increased religious
participation leads to enhanced well-being over time (Strawbridge,
Shema, & Cohen, 2001).
However, this is explicable using the assertions of Greenfield and
Nadine (2007), that associations between more frequent formal
religious participation and psychological well-being were largely
contingent upon the dimension of psychological well-being.
Furthermore, findings from previous studies that simultaneously have
examined multiple dimensions of psychological well-being suggest that
different patterns of association between religiosity and well-being are
likely to emerge across diverse dimensions of psychological well being
(e.g. Maselko & Kubzansky,2006 ).
Based on these empirical evidences it is plausible that religiosity could
only predict certain aspects of psychological well-being and not
psychological well-being per se and hence the inability of religiosity to
predict psychological well-being in this work.

Implication of the findings

The result of this study has implication for educational settings. The
fact that emotional intelligence and self-efficacy are strong predictors
of psychological well-being demands that schools should begin to
develop programmes to foster emotional intelligence and self-efficacy
among adolescents. As emotional intelligence is teachable and
learnable, teachers should endeavor to teach rudiments of emotional
intelligence to students. School counselors and psychologists could
also develop emotional intelligence and self-efficacy programmes and
use them to enhance psychological well-being of adolescents.

63

Multi-Rater or 360-degree Emotional Intelligence

Assessment
Benjamin R Palmer & Con Stough
Organizational Psychology Research Unit, Centre for
Neurophysiology
Swinburne University of Technology

Abstract
In this paper we discuss the potential utility of multi-rater or 360degree measured EI over self-reported and ability measured EI. We
then discuss the development of a workplace 360 measure of
emotional intelligence designed specifically for development purposes.

Several research studies testing workplace samples are presented

which examine the internal consistency reliability of the rater forms of
the 360 instrument; compare the means and standard deviations of
self- and other-rated EI; and the relationship between how people rate
themselves on the instrument and how they rate others. The research
findings demonstrate the utility of multi-rater 360-degree EI
assessment instruments, which is discussed specifically in terms of
leadership development.

The psychometric properties of the 360-degree

Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test

Multi-rater or 360-degree assessment instruments are very popular

development tools amongst organisational psychologists and
managerial consultants, particularly as a medium for enhancing
leaders knowledge of how others perceive their performance and/or
behaviour at work (Sala, 2003). Such assessment instruments typically
comprise behaviorally based declarative statements (as items) and
64

Likert-type response scales that are systematically scored by a set of

so-called raters.

Raters can include the subject themselves (or self-ratings), and

manager(s), peers and direct reports ratings thus the term 360-degree.
Besides typical psychometric research studies on the reliability, and
factor structure of multi-rater assessment instruments, research in this
area has also focused on the level of congruence between raters
scores. The comparative predictive validity of different rater groups
(i.e., self-scores vs. peer-rated scores; Sala & Dwight, 2002); and the
efficacy of multi-factor feedback on performance and/or behavioural
improvement (Church, 2000; Sala, 2003).

Collectively this research has demonstrated that multi-rater

assessment instruments can provide superior performance data,
promote participant self-awareness, and facilitate behavioural change.
Indeed multi-rater assessment instruments are widely utilized for these
reasons amongst the corporate sector, with market research
suggesting that all Fortune 500 companies have used multi-rater
assessments in some form.

Equally as popular of late is the construct of emotional intelligence (EI;

Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and associated assessment and development
methodologies. Indeed when the Harvard Business Review published
an article on this topic in 1998 (What makes a leader? Goleman,
1998a), it quickly became the reviews most requested reprint for the
last 40 years. EI refers to abilities to do with emotions including (but
not limited to), the ability to perceive, understand, utilize and manage
one's own and others emotions.

The rise in popularity of EI and its application as a medium for

managerial development similarly stems from a growing body of
research that has demonstrated that EI underlies or predicts effective
leadership; and associated popular literature that suggests that EI can
be developed and that doing so may lead to enhanced interpersonal
skills and leadership performance. Research in this area has also seen
65

the development of 360-degree multi-rater EI assessment scales that

have been designed specifically as developmental tools.

Multi-rater measures of EI may prove to be one of the most valuable

methods of measuring leaders EI in the workplace. Critics of the multirater method for measuring EI have argued that multi-rater measures
may never provide a true index of one's actual EI ability (Mayer et
al., 2000). Mayer et al. (2000), have argued that self-ratings (in a multirater paradigm) are filtered through the individuals self-concept and as
such provide an indication of their beliefs about their EI, (or perceived
EI), rather than their actual capacity. Similarly, Mayer et al. (2000)
have also argued that ratings from others (in a multi-rater paradigm,
e.g., peers, managers and/or direct reports) simply reflect different
rater groups' perceptions of the subjects EI as opposed to their actual
EI ability.

Indeed research with multi-rater assessment instruments has shown

that different rater groups often report different (and sometimes
incongruent) perceptions of subjects' performance and/or behaviour at
work (Becton & Schraeder, 2004). However, as noted by London and
Smither (1995), in the socially constructed world in which
employees work, others' judgements about them (no matter how
biased they may be) constitute an important reality, which in the case
of multi-rater EI assessment results, may not reflect one's actual EI
ability, but rather the extent to which the subject demonstrates
emotionally intelligent behaviour in the workplace. The question that
remains unanswered here is what is more important in terms of
leadership effectiveness and/or success and the prediction thereof, the
leaders actual EI ability, or the extent to which they demonstrate
emotionally intelligent behaviour at work?

In the context of using an EI assessment for leadership development

purposes, it is conceivable that a leader may have high levels of EI and
achieve high scores on an ability-based assessment of EI yet either;

(a) Not be effectively using their EI at work for whatever reason;

66

(b) Choose not to act in an emotionally intelligent way with the people
they work with; or

(c) Indeed choose to use their EI in a manipulative and interpersonally

maladaptive fashion.

In this context the ability assessment results may show high EI and
little insight is provided to both the practitioner and subject into their
leadership effectiveness from an EI standpoint. In contrast, if a multirater assessment instrument was utilised and the same leader was
provided ratings of their EI from the people they work with (e.g., direct
reports, peers, managers) it is hard to imagine the person achieving
high scores from others.

In this latter case it is logical to anticipate that the leader who has
high EI but does not demonstrate emotionally intelligent behaviours at
work, will be rated as low in EI by others and much more valuable
insight may be provided to both the practitioner and leader in the
context of 360-degree feedback and development. In this sense it
could be argued that multi-rater measures of EI may be as valuable if
not more valuable than ability based measure as a means of providing
the basis of development.

Despite this potential utility and the advent of multi-rater EI

assessment scales very little has been published on the psychometric
properties and developmental utility of them. This paper describes a
multi-rater EI assessment scale developed at Swinburne University,
namely, the Genos 360 EI Assessment Scale or Genos-360; Palmer &
Stough, 2001). Some preliminary psychometric analyses of the Genos
360 are presented and the findings are discussed in terms of the
potential utility of the instrument and other 360-EI assessment
instruments in leadership development programs.

67

The Genos-360 assesses five definitive facets of the EI construct

determined via a large factor analytic study that involved six of the
predominant scales of EI available at the time including:
(1) the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence test
(MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 1999);
(2) the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-On, 1997);
(3) the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (Salovey et al., 1995);
(4) the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale-II (TAS-20;
Bagby, Taylor & Parker, 1994);
(5) the scale by Schutte et al (1998); and finally,
(6) the scale by Tett et al., (1997).
From this study (Palmer et al., 2001) five common or definitive facets
of the EI construct were determined including;

(1) Emotional Recognition and Expression, the ability to perceive and

express one's own emotions;

(2) Understanding Emotions External, the ability to perceive and

understand the emotions of others and those inherent in workplace
environments (e.g., staff meetings, board rooms etc) ;

(3) Emotions Direct Cognitio, the extent to which emotions and

emotional information are incorporated into reasoning and decision
making ;

(4) Emotional Management, the ability to manage both positive and

negative moods and emotions within oneself and others ; and

68

(5) Emotional Control, the ability to effectively control strong emotional

states experienced at work such as anger, stress, anxiety and
frustration . These five common dimensions represent our empiricallybased model of emotional intelligence which we designed the Genos360 to assess.

The Genos-360 comprises both self-report and 360-degree rating forms

that ask people to rate the extent to which the subject demonstrates
emotionally intelligent behaviour at work according to the five facets of
EI previous mentioned. The test itself comprises 64 declarative
statements and a five-point rating scale and takes around 12-15
minutes to complete.

There are a balanced number of positively and negatively phrased

items that help determine inconsistent response patterns and illogical
responding. In summary, the test provides insight into cross-situational
consistencies in emotionally intelligent behaviour in the workplace and
hence one's underlying level of EI.

In this paper we report the internal consistency of the rater forms of

the Genos-360 instrument using a relatively large self-other rater
sample comprising managers direct reports and peers and the
relationship between how people rate themselves (on the self-rating
form) and how they rate others (on the rater forms). We do not report
on the congruency between self-ratings and ratings from others, that
is, the relationship between how people perceive themselves and how
others rate them on the Genos-360.

Research has consistently demonstrated a general lack of congruence

between self-ratings and ratings made by others, although direct
reports, peers and manager ratings have been shown to moderately
correlate at times (e.g., r = .35; Sala & Dwight, 2002). A general
consensus amongst the multi-rater literature is that different rater
groups typically observe different facets of the ratees' behaviour and
that this is reflected in the typical differences found between rater
groups (Borman, 1974). Indeed according to contingency theories of
69

leadership, effective leaders typically adjust their behaviour and

leadership style according to the situation and/or individual they are
leading (Becton & Schraeder, 2004).

In contrast a question we argue is more relevant to EI multi-rater

measures is: to what extent does one's own EI (or perceived EI)
influence the way you rate other peoples EI? If there were moderate to
high relationships between how people rate their own EI and other
peoples' EI, this may have broader practical ramifications for the use of
the instrument. Such a find may suggest that you need high perceived
and/or actual EI to rate other peoples' EI and therefore raters would
need to be carefully chosen. Alternatively if little relationship existed
between how people rate themselves and others this may indicate that
you do not need EI to rate someone else's EI on the instrument.

Method

Participants:

The sample comprised 54 subjects (42 males and 12 females ranging

in age from 30 to 55 years; SD = 6.2 years), and 406 raters comprising
54 managers, 194 peers and 157 direct reports. On average each
subject had approximately seven raters, one manager, three direct
reports and 3 peers. The subjects were senior level Australian
managers from a broad range of industries across both private and
public sector organisations within the state of Victoria . The annual
salaries of the subjects ranged from a low of $69,000.00 to a high of
$300,000.00 (M = $160,000; SD = $57,779).

Means and Standard Deviations

70

The means, standard deviations, and internal consistency reliability

(coefficient alpha ) for each of the dimensions of the test pertaining
to the sample are presented in Table 1. For comparative purposes,
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, and internal
consistency reliability (coefficient alpha ) for each of the dimensions
of the self-test (self-Genos) pertaining to a second normative
population sample.

Table 1

Means, Standard Deviations, and Reliability Coefficients for the Genos360

Scale

# items Mean

Total EI
64
Emotional
Recognition
&11
Expression
Understanding
of
Emotions20
External
Emotions Direct Cognition
12
Emotional Management
12
Emotional Control
9

Standard
Deviation
224.53 22.91
39.91 5.53

74.86

9.41

.93

31.57
43.61
34.56

6.63
6.12
4.47

.79
.85
.80

.94
.79

As shown in Table 1, full-scale reliability is high as is the reliability for

each of the sub-scales with the rater sample.

Table 2

Means, Standard Deviations, and Reliability Coefficients for the

normative population sample on the self-Genos

71

Scale

# items Mean

Total EI
64
Emotional
Recognition
&11
Expression
Understanding
of
Emotions20
External
Emotions Direct Cognition
12
Emotional Management
12
Emotional Control
9

Standard
Deviation
225.37 20.14
38.70 5.34

76.54

7.78

.86

35.19
42.24
32.71

6.14
5.69
4.66

.81
.81
.80

.91
.78

As shown in Table 1, full-scale reliability is high as is the reliability for

each of the sub-scales for the normative population sample on the selfGenos. The general sample consists of 1522 individuals (984 Females,
487 Males, 51 did not nominate their sex), the ages of individuals who
completed the self-Genos ranged from 18 72 (Mean: 40.43, SD:
10.39). Of the people who supplied their level of education (n~450):
10% had completed their high school certificate, 31% had completed a
tertiary certificate, 30% had completed an undergraduate degree, and
29% had completed a postgraduate degree. As can be seen by
comparing and contrasting Table 1 and 2 the means, standard
deviations and internal consistency reliability of the rater sample and
normative population sample are relatively comparative indicating
some consistency between how people rate themselves and how
raters rate subjects EI.

2. 360-Degree Rating Congruence

Table 3 details the rating congruence between 360 degree and selfratings of 171 people having undertaken the Genos-360. This analysis
was undertaken to assess for instance if somebody has low selfreported understanding of emotions (UE) of others, is that person more
likely to rate others low on this dimension and visa versa. This analysis
was undertaken for every one of the five dimensions of the Genos-360,
ie if I was low in Emotional Control, would I then be likely to rate others
low on Emotional Control?
72

Table 3

Intercorrelations between Emotional Intelligence self

and 360 degree ratings

Raters
Intelligence
ERE
UE
EDC
EM
EC

Self Rated Emotional Intelligence

EmotionalERE
UE
EDC
EM
EC
0.404**
0.298**
0.184*
0.135
-0.058

0.332
0.356**
-0.028
0.145
0.018

0.194*
0.227**
0.045
0.064
-0.123

0.057
0.136
-0.151*
0.177*
0.238**

-.009
0.118
-0.153*
0.198**
0.280**

Note: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 ERE = Emotional Recognition and

Expression; EU = Understanding Emotions External; EDC = Emotions
Direct Cognition; EM = Emotional Management; EC = Emotional
Control.

Based on the random sample of 171 people taken from the Genos
database a small effect is evident, accounting for not more than about
0-16% of the variance (relationship).
To summarize:
Self report ERE correlates at 0.40 with ratings of others ERE
(16%)
Self report UE correlates at 0.36 with ratings of UE (13%)
Self report EDC correlates at 0.05 with ratings of UE (.25%)
73

Self report EM correlates at 0.18 with ratings of EM (2.0%)

Self report EC correlates at 0.28 with ratings of EC (7.8%)

The highest correlation between how someone rates them and how
they rate other people was found between the variables that you
would expect, Emotional Recognition and Expression (ERE) and
Understanding Emotions (UE). Despite this, there seems to be no
systematic pattern related to ones own EI self-ratings and their ratings
of others.

Conclusion:

The findings presented in this study show that EI can be reliably rated
by others and that the means and standard deviations of a rater
sample are similar to those of a self-rating sample. The findings also
show that little relationship exists between how people rate
themselves and how they rate others. Thus people with self-rated low
EI can typically rate others as high or visa versa.

This finding suggests that one does not need insight into EI or indeed
perhaps actual EI in order to provide a valid perception of how they
perceive someone else's emotionally intelligent behaviour in the
workplace. While this data provides some initial insight into the how
people rate other peoples emotionally intelligent behaviors in the
workplace many questions remain unanswered and need to be further
addressed.

These questions include; what is the relationship between self and

other ratings; are higher levels of congruence between self and other
ratings associated with various management and leadership outcomes
(such as performance and leadership effectiveness as has been shown
in other multi-rater research); what are better predictors of leadership
effectiveness and performance, that is, self-rated, direct-report rated,
74

peer-rated or management rated EI; and when compared with selfratings only, can ratings from others enhance self-awareness and
behavioural change and/or emotional development as has been
previously shown in research (e.g., Church, 2000).

Research with multi-rater assessment instruments has shown that (a)

self-ratings are typically poor predictors of performance (Church, 2000;
Harris & Schaubroech, 1988; Sala & Dwight, 2002); (b) self-ratings are
typically positively biased (Church, 1997; Podsakoff & Organ, 1986;
Sala, 2003); and (c) that ratings from others can serve an important
role in providing insights into the extent to which others perceive
certain behaviors and/or levels of performance associated with a
leader (Sala, 2002).

At the outset we argued that multi-rater or 360 degree measures of EI

may play an important role in providing development practitioners and
the leaders they work with, with additional insight into the extent to
which others perceive them to be displaying emotionally intelligent
behaviors in the workplace. An important next step in this area will be
to demonstrate the efficacy of this approach over and above simply
self-rated insight in EI leadership development programs.

CASE HISTORY.

The Emotional Imperative

Psychotherapists Cannot Afford To Ignore The
Primacy Of The Limbic Brain
(Cover story for the July/August 1999 issue of the
Family Therapy Net worker)
75

Brent J. Atkinson, Ph.D.

On a humid evening last September, Susan and James burst into our
office looking like two high schoolers in the grip of a classroom
giggle fit. Usually serious and reserved, James, 36, explained
between chuckles that he had been telling Susan a story about his
boss's gaffe at a meeting earlier that day. Still chortling as she
landed on our office sofa, 27-year-old Susan ran her fingers through
her cropped, blond hair and tried to compose herself, then eyed her
gleeful husband and began hooting all over again.

I glanced at my wife and cotherapist, Lisa, for a microsecond and

gave her a raised-eyebrow version of a high five: This had all the
earmarks of an easy session. After a bit more banter, we steered the
conversation to the main order of business-- the state of their sixyear marriage. Susan began to recount an incident that had occurred
a few days before, when James had volunteered Susan to drive his
daughter to a birthday party so that his ex-wife wouldn't be
inconvenienced. "I felt used," Susan said bluntly. So far, so good, I
thought -- she is simply stating her feelings. Then looking directly at
her husband, she continued: "But what upset me even more was
your reaction when you saw that I was unhappy. You started
defending her!"

With these words, Susan's voice began to shake and she ducked
her head, starting at the flowered pattern of the Kleenex in her fist.
When she looked up her eyes were narrowed and her face flushed a
deep, mottled crimson. "You are so full of crap!" she spit out. "You're
too weak to stand up to her then you look at me as if I'm the one
with the problem. God, what a sucker I am to stay with you!"
James rolled his eyes and sighed elaborately, then turned toward
us. "You see what I have to deal with here?" he asked beseechingly.
It was as though he had lit a match to his wife's innards. "Oh, that's
76

good James!" sneered Susan. "Blame me again! This is classic. You're

such a fucking wimp!"
James didn't respond. In fact, I wasn't even sure he had heard her.
His whole body seemed to contract as he turned toward the office
picture window and stared unseeing through it, his mouth a taut line.
Though he sat very still, I could hear the ragged sounds of his
breathing. The relaxed, affable man who had entered our office 10
minutes earlier had simply vanished.
Looking back, I realize it was pure wishful thinking to equate this
couple's initial good cheer with an easy session. In fact, over the
years I have often been struck by how swiftly and dramatically the
moods of intimate partners can change in the midst of an
interaction, as though some internal switch gets flipped that compels
each partner to react in a particular, almost predetermined way. In a
previous session, James had jokingly called Susan "Sibyl," noting that
whenever she became deeply upset, she entered "the zone," a place
from which she could only react with white-hot wrath.

At times, that rage turned physical: during one particularly savage

fight, she knocked James unconscious by pushing him into a wall.
Yet, in my observation, Susan was not the only partner prone to
meteoric mood shifts. James's predictable response to Susan's rage
a lightning-fast retreat into his own zone of tuned-out, protective
distancewas every bit as sudden and intense as his wife's.
In the past, the goal of our therapy with a couple like Susan and
James would have been to teach them new habits of thinking and
behaving that they could call into play whenever conflict arose. We
would have coached them to listen to each other more attentively,
fight more fairly, and give each other more benefit of the doubt.

But over the years, we have noticed that the progress couples made
in these areas tended to be disturbingly short lived. Several years
77

ago, we informally followed up with a number of our couples and

found that within months of finishing therapy, many had reverted
back to their old, well-honed tango of attach and withdraw, storm
and stonewall. For some, it was as though they had never been in
therapy at all.
Were we doing something wrong? My honest response is yesand
we have loads of company. Controlled studies of marital therapy
outcome show that following a stint of treatment, only 50 percent of
couples significantly improve. But even among those couples who do
make progress, a big chunk30 to 40 percentrelapse within two
years.
A close reading of this outcome research reveals a still more
dispiriting reality: many of the so-called "successful" couples
reported still feeling unhappy with their marriages at a two-year
follow-up. In the course of therapy, they had merely progressed from
"highly distressed:" to just plain "distressed."
Why are we doing such a lousy job of helping couples?
Numerous factors have been identified: couples come in too late
to be helped; reimbursed sessions are too few; many clinicians are
undertrained in marital therapy. But one possibility that we haven't
yet confronted is that many of our most respected and widely used
models for helping couples may be based on bador at least badly
outdatedinformation.
Most couples therapy today is geared toward teaching partners to
think and act differently toward each other, on the assumption that
cognitive and behavioral strategies such as reframing, active
listening, doing more of the works and so on can short-circuit
explosive emotions and promote renewed intimacy and trust. But all
of the foregoing assumes that our rational brains are in charge of our
emotions, that what distinguished Homo sapiens from so-called
"lower" animals is our capacity to reason before we react.

78

But what if the human brain isn't actually wired that way?
What if our neural circuitry programs us instead to rage and cower
and collapse in grief in a nanosecond, before we ever get a chance
to fashion an "I" statement or otherwise think things through?
With the help of ever more refined imaging techniques that
generate highly precise portraits of the brain in action, a new
generation of neurobiologists is in the process of documenting that
our cerebral topography actually favors flaming emotionality, not
sweet reason. Thinking still counts, but not nearly as much as we've
always assumed. So doctrine shattering is this mounting evidence
for the hegemony of the "emotion brain," or more formally, the
limbic brain, that Jaak Panksepp, a pioneering neurobiologist at
Ohio's Bowling Green State University, has called it a genuine
"neuroscience revolution."
But while the lay public appears fascinated by this new look at
our emotional brains, catapulting books such as Daniel Goleman's
Emotional Intelligence and Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works onto
the bestseller lists, thus far, clinicians have seemed curiously
unmoved. In our professional journals and conferences, we have
done little grappling with the implications for psychotherapy of this
major new strand of emotion research even though it strikes at the
very marrow of the work we do.
Perhaps our field has hesitated to seriously confront the core
tenets of the new, affective neuroscience because if we did, we
might find out that we are heading down a hazardous road. For if our
very brain circuits are primed to favor our most volatile emotions
over reason, we may need to call into question our field's
predominant tilt toward therapeutic models that rely on the
sovereignty of rational thought to engender change. As economic
pressures spur us to move increasingly toward ever briefer, more
cognitive-oriented models, we may unwittingly be investing
enormous energy in approaches that are, to a large extent, at odds
with our brain's most fundamental functions.

79

Let me say clearly that at this juncture, almost nothing about the
brain's role in emotion can be stated with absolute authority.
Behavioral neuroscience is still an infant field, which means that
many conclusions are still in the realm of correlation and possibility.
And high-tech tools notwithstanding, the task of mapping the
emotional brain is simply a staggeringly complex undertaking. Each
human brain houses up to 100 billion neurons, each of which is
capable of making, literally, thousands of connections with other
neurons.

Attempting to relate this intricate, electrochemical mesh to emotion,

a concept that itself encompasses an enormously complex set of
phenomena, is a truly daunting task.

Nonetheless, as the "black box" beneath our craniums is slowly

and painstakingly being pried open, its contents deserve our close
inspection. For while the latest findings about the primacy of
emotion may be disquieting, they also hold the promise of more
potent and effective ways of doing therapy. This new knowledge is
already transforming my own work, spurring me to develop a clinical
approach that empowers emotion and thought to work in common
cause, rather than at cross-purposes, to help people manage their
most volatile feelings.

And whatever a therapist's current orientationbe it cognitive,

behavioral, affective or some blend thereofI believe that the newly
charted links between our neural circuitry and our most primitive
passions merit an open-minded and thoughtful response. For if we
discover that we are, in fact, traveling down the wrong road, we will
need to plot a powerful mid-course correction.
The conventional view of how the brain processes emotion is
highly appealing to us humans, who love to fantasize that we're
80

firmly in control. This comforting theory holds that information about

the world is transmitted via our eyes, ears and other sensory organs
to the thalamus, the brain's central relay station, which, in turn,
ships it directly to the neocortex or "thinking brain."
There, the incoming signals are efficiently recognized, sorted and
assigned meaning, then ferried downstream to the limbic system or
"emotional brain," which triggers the appropriate visceral response.
In this tidy, reassuring scenario, emotion is the dutiful servant of the
rational brain. Thought proposes, emotion disposes.
And much of the time, this is indeed how things work. But here's
the catch: not always. Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at the Center
for Neural Science at New York University, recently discovered a
second, parallel pathway that acts as a supersonic express route to
the brain's emotional centers. This neural back alley, which appears
to be reserved for emotional emergencies, bypasses the neocortex
entirely, routing information from the thalamus directly to the
amygdala, a tiny, almond-shaped structure in the limbic system that
has recently been identified as the brain's emotional alarm center.
The amygdala scans the information for potential danger: Is this
bad? Could it hurt me?
If the information registers as dangerous, the amygdala
broadcasts a distress signal to the entire brain, which in turn,
triggers a cascade of physiological responsesfrom a speeded-up
heart rate to jacked-up blood pressure to mobilized muscles to the
release of the "fight or flight" hormones, adrenaline and
noradrenaline. Within milliseconds, we explode with rage or freeze in
fear, well before our conscious mind can even grasp what is
happening, much less persuade us to take a few deep breaths and
maintain our cool.
This cranial takeover can occur because neuroanatomically
speaking, our thinking brain is simply out-matched by the
competition. At the same time that emotion-laden signals are
zooming down our neurological express routewhat LeDoux calls the
"low road"the same data is being transported via the customary,
well-trodden "high road" from thalamus to neocortex to amygdala.
81

But because the shorter, subterranean pathway transmits signals

twice as fast as the more circuitous route involving the neocortex,
the thinking brain simply can't intervene in time.
By the time the neocortex gets into the act, the damage has been
doneyou have already called your late-to-dinner partner an
inconsiderate jerk, shrieked at your smart-mouthed child, snapped at
your critical colleague or simply shut down, shaking inside, in the
face of someone else's rage.
To make matters worse, by this time, amygdala-triggered
emotional information has invaded the neocortex itself,
overwhelming its centers for logic and judgement. As a result, your
emotion-flooded thoughts about the situation are apt to feel entirely
accurate and justifiable. Whaddya mean, I'm overreacting?
So much for the doctrine that rationality rules.
This telling new glimpse at the topography of the brain helps to
explain those moments in the consulting room when you can see
that couples are honestly struggling to think and behave differently,
but simply can't make the shift. You watch your client trying to listen
empathetically to his wife, but when she lets him know that she is
sick and tired of his shirking the housework, bam! Before you can
say "reframe that thought," the amygdala is sounding its sirens and
suddenly he's yelling that she's the slob, not him, in fact, she's let
herself go big-time and is goddam fat! And as he's shouting all this,
his face is turning the color of boiled lobster, his heart is practically
leaping out of his chest and he is sweating gallons.

Depending on your theoretical orientation, you might say this man

had just contacted his "wounded child," or that he had been
sabotaged by his "problem story" or that he was reenacting a
hurtful, family-of-origin script. But at the level of brain wiring, his
neocortex just got hijacked by his amygdala. And as we shall see,
understanding this neural takeover isn't just some kind of intellectual
exercise that explains our clients' reactivity: we can use it to help
clients arm themselves against future cranial abductions.

82

But first, we need to understand a bit more about the tiny sliver
of cerebral tissue that can so readily commandeer the brainthe
amygdala. While neuroscientists are only just beginning to
understand this complex little emotional sentry, they are reasonable
certain that it is a major player in producing fear and anger, the
particular kinds of emotions that frequently push people into
therapists' offices.
In one set of studies, when researches implanted electrodes in
individuals' brains and stimulated a particular circuit originating in
the amygdala, subjects responded with heart-racing terror. When a
different, amygdala-driven neural circuit was stimulated, individuals
erupted in rage. In one study by Robert Heath of Tulane University
School of Medicine, a man whose amygdala-based rage circuit had
been stimulated furiously tore his hospital robe and lashed out at the
physician who was standing nearby, threatening to kill him.
So much for lab-induced passions. But in our real lives, what
makes our emotional brain kick into gear? Neuroscientists believe
that in most instances, the amygdala makes its snap judgments
based on the similarity of a current situation to past events that once
enraged or terrified us. In short, the amygdala seems to be the
repository of the very raw material of psychotherapyemotional
memory.
Until very recently, it was widely believed that the hippocampus,
a sea-horse-shaped structure in the limbic brain, was our emotional
memory bank. But research by LeDoux and other neuroscientists
now suggests that the hippocampus is actually more concerned with
registering factual and contextual data, while the amygdala is the
repository of primitive feelings linked with those facts and situations.
So while the hippocampus will remember what your ex-partner looks
likethe jerk who dumped you for a new loverthe amygdala is
responsible for the surge of fury that floods your body when you see
someone who looks even vaguely like your former mate.
And "vaguely" is the operative word here. For when the amygdala
tries to judge whether a current situation is hazardous, it compares
83

that situation with its motley collection of past emotionally charged

events. If any key elements are even crudely similarthe sound of a
voice, the expression on a faceit instantaneously unleashes its
warning sirens and accompanying emotional explosion. No doubt,
this quick-and-dirty assessment method had tremendous
evolutionary utility.

For our early ancestors, it was far better to react to a false alarm
than to miss an underfed saber-toothed tiger lurking in the tall
grasses.
But for modern-day relationships, the amygdala's penchant for
sloppy generalizations can exact a steep price. To the amygdala, it
may make no difference that it is your spouse who is angry with you
and not your father, who regularly took out his wrath on your
helpless body some 30 or 40 years age. The emotional state
triggered by the hyper vigilant amygdalashuddering fear or unholy
rageis apt to be exactly the same.
Back in our office, when Susan so suddenly turned on James, the
volcanic eruption of her fury suggested to us that her amygdala had
made some link between the triggering eventher perception that
James had been disloyal to herand a painful situation in her past.
Years ago, we might have invested considerable energy trying to
help her become aware of these early events, so that she could learn
to disentangle them from her current interactions with her husband.
But recent brain investigations suggest that in some cases, this kid
of trolling for early trauma may simply be a well-meaning waste of
time.
For while the amygdala is fully mature at birth, the hippocampus
our memory bank for factual datadoesn't fully develop until a child
is at least 2 years old. This means that during early childhood, when
relationships with care givers have such profoundly life-shaping
impact, the amygdala is busy making emotion-charged associations
about events that the embryonic hippocampus never even records.
An adult, then, can be plagued by chronic, debilitating emotional
84

out-bursts linked to a past event that he or she neither remembers

nor has any way of recovering, since one cannot recover a memory
that has never been recorded.
Perhaps this is one reason why many clients seem so unwilling to
relinquish their convictions that their explosive reactions to current
spousal behaviora wife's propensity to flirt at parties, a husband
who forgets to call when he's going to be lateis entirely appropriate.
There is no early memory, even a repressed, deeply buried one, to
trace it back to.
But this bewildering amputation of emotion from its triggering
event may take place at any point in our lives. Studies by Bruce
McEwen, a researcher on the biology of stress at New York's
Rockefeller University, indicate that even in a mature hippocampus,
severe stress can cause a shriveling of dendrites, the stringy,
branching ends of neurons that are largely responsible for the initial
phases of long-term memory formation. Recent studies have shown
that in trauma survivors, such as victims of chronic childhood abuse
and Vietnam veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the
hippocampus is measurably shrunken.
In stark contrast, stress seems to enhance the functioning of the
amygdala. As blood levels of stress hormones shoot up, the
amygdala seems to kick into overdrive, thereby facilitating
extremely potent learned fear. So if a person endures a severely
stressful situation, he or she may forget the distressing incident
itself, yet become emotionally hyperactive to future events that are
unconsciously reminiscent of the original, triggering situation a client
may have forgotten that she was raped repeatedly by her uncle, yet
become panicky and tearful whenever her husband approaches her
for sex.
Or a man may verbally attack his wife whenever he perceives that
she is being "distant" from him, having altogether forgotten that as a
small child, his depressed mother regularly retreated to her locked
bedroom, leaving him utterly alone for hours at the time.
The idea that a person's current emotional reactions can be
85

embedded in past events is nothing newFreud figured that out long

before the neurobiology techno-wizards on the scene. But the
gradually emerging portrait of our "emotional brain" gives us an
illuminating window on why many clients find it so horrendously
difficult to contain their reactivity in committed love relationships. If
the amygdala's original purpose was to act as our emergency alert
system, leaping into action in response to life-or-death threats facing
our ancestors, it is apt to activate with particular vigor in our
intimate partnerships, which are so thoroughly tangled in primal
need.
Once, in our helpless infancy, our need to stave off abandonment
truly was a matter of survival. So when our partner says or does
something that telegraphs This person doesn't love me! This person
is leaving me! our amygdala scrambles blindly, frantically to the
rescue.
The central role of this hair-trigger brain mechanism in creating
marital misery is persuasively suggested by the now famous "love
lab" research of University of Washington psychologist John Gottman.
By hooking up couples to a battery of physiological sensors while
they discussed sensitive subjects, Gottman has documented that
during highly toxic arguments, partners' bodies become flooded by a
virtual tidal wave of brain-mediated bodily changes, including a
quickened heart rate stepped-up sweat production, tensed-up
muscles and the release of a torrent of stress hormones. The splitsecond nature of these changesan angry spouse's heart rate can
accelerate 10 to 30 beats per minute in the space of a single
heartbeatstrongly indicates a cranial coup d-etat originating in the
amygdala.
And like most coups, this one can wreak ugly consequences. For
Gottman further found that these classic bodily signs of an emotional
hijacking were highly correlated with specific kinds of conflict
behaviorscriticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stone-walling
that, in turn, strongly predicted later divorce. In his observation, the
trajectory of divorce originates with frequent, nasty arguments that
eventually cause both partners to develop a kind of bioemotional
hypersensitivity to each other. In this state, observes Gottman, "you
react to your spouse like an animal conditioned to fear a shock

86

whenever it sees the color red."

In an ideal world, of course, couples would show up at a
therapist's door long before this kind of knee-jerk hostility seeped
into their marriage. Yet, research indicates that couples typically
battle each other for a good six years before they finally find their
way to a clinician's office. By this time, many couples have become
so sensitized to each other that each partner may be only a spouse's
caustic comment or a dismissive glance away from an emotional
mugging.
In view of what we are learning about the hard-wired basis of these
eruptions, it may be time to forthrightly confront our profession's
gradual but unmistakable retreat from the whole arena of emotion.
Might there by a link between our field's growing inattention to
clients' internal emotional processes and our undeniably mediocre
track record in helping couples?
There is little doubt that in psychotherapy today, the neocortex is
where the action is. While a few emotion-centered approaches are
still holding their own, they hardly represent the field's dominant
direction. Instead, pressured by increasingly meager third-party
reimbursements, clinicians have been scurrying to get trained in
therapy models that promise the speediest possible results.
And by and large, the briefest models tend to be those that zero in
on retooling beliefs and behavior, based on the premise that
changing thoughts and actions will, domino-style, cause feelings to
change. In short, these models take for granted that the neocortex is
firmly in charge of the limbic system.
And in some cases, they're right on target. Brain-mapping studies
suggest that in emotion-tinged situations that aren't perceived as allout emergencies, our thoughts do indeed play a central role in
influencing feelings. If you are confronting a situation that is
emotionally salient but not perceived by you as a life-or-death
matterlet's say, you've noticed a worrisome drop-off in client hours
that information would travel first to the discerning neocortex, which
would mull over the situation and decide on the appropriate
87

emotional response.
If you were to apply a solution-focused approach to this matter,
your neocortex might be enlisted to make a mental list of ways
you've successfully beefed up your practice in the past and secure a
commitment to try those strategies. A narrative model, meanwhile,
might urge your thinking brain coolly consider how Fear is trying to
sabotage it.
Within a traditional cognitive model, your neocortex might be
encouraged to battle any rumination about imminent professional
disaster with a tough-minded counter argument. Given the right
conditions, each of these interventions would likely spur your
rational brain to signal the amygdala to respond with, perhaps, mild
anxiety leavened with a strong, motivating shot of hope. In short,
when the neocortex has a chance to use its muscle, "think therapies"
can be powerful agents of change.
The trouble is, of course, that the neocortex can be so swiftly
hijacked. As we have seen, when we do deem a situation an
emotional emergency, the amygdala lights up the entire brain and
body with bioemotional fireworks before the neocortex ever gets into
the act. It is in precisely these kinds of volatile, felt-crisis situations
which intimate partnerships, in particular, seem so readily to create
that thinking-brain therapies are at a serious disadvantage.
Many clinicians, including myself, have spent untold sessions trying
to get fuming couples to engage in some kind of well-established
communications technique, such as "active listening," only to watch
the whole thing fly apart when one partner says something
seemingly reasonable"I feel that the kids don't get enough of your
attention"which feels, to the other, like a poison arrow to the heart.
"Screw that!" the "listener" shrieks, whereupon the partner flings
back that this is just so typical, isn't it, you're too narcissistic to even
listen to me, always have been, what's the damn use? And in those
moments, when your office vibrating with fury and you feel more like
a rookie referee at a mud-wrestling match than an authoritative,
multidegreed professional, your bulging bag of reframings,
88

restoryings and other sweet-reason techniques is worse than

useless. Sweet reason just got clobbered. The amygdala is king.
So where does the bad-news tale of limbic mayhem leave
therapists? If an element of our humanity as unalterable as brain
architecture favors blind emotion over rationality, why even bother
to try to help clients master their most volatile and disabling
reactions? In my experience, this work remains not only critical, but
eminently possible. For while the amygdala may run the neural show
at times it is by no means an entrenched, power-mad despot.
Instead, I have found it to behave more like an over-protective
parent who, if approached in the right way, can be persuaded to
relax its nervous grip on its child.
This neural "relaxation response" is possible because it turns out
that our brains are wired not only for defense, but also for
connection. In a related and far more heartening realm of
neuroscience researchers have begun to chart paths for a number of
discrete brain circuits that reliable activate specific emotions, along
with associated thought and behaviors. While circuits for fear and
rage have been most thoroughly mapped thus far, the neurological
terrain of intimacy-arousing emotionsmost notable sorrow and
nurturehave very recently been identified.
Electrically stimulate an individuals' sorrow circuit, researchers
have found, and that person will report feeling sad or lonely and
express the need for comfort. Activate the nurture pathway, and an
individual will experience a surge of tender, generous feelings and
voice the urge to care for someone. When I first encountered this
realm of research, I felt a ripple of hope: Perhaps there was some
way to help clients move from a connection-breaking circuit, such as
fear of anger, to one that promoted emotional vulnerability and
intimacy. But how?
As I was trying to penetrate this puzzle, I recalled perusing recent
research by University of Wisconsin psychologist Richard Davidson
that suggested that the left prefrontal lobes, the wedge of neocortex
89

located just behind the forehead, played a critical role in moderating

emotional reactivity. While it appeared that this sector of the brain
could not keep the amygdala from spazzing out in the first place, in
some cases it seemed able to reduce the longevity and intensity of
neural hijackings and thereby to limit the fallout.
This made sense to me: It seemed all but inevitable that we
would need to use a slice of our orderly neocortex to guide us out of
the motional swamps. Yet, both my clinical experience and my
growing familiarity with the workings of the brain told me that in the
grip of a "survival" emotion, clients could rarely simply think
themselves into a more tranquil state. Then, suddenly, I was struck
by one of those unbidden, "aha" experiences.
It occurred to me that if the amygdala is, indeed, a vestige of our
primeval survival arsenal, perhaps it will notsimply cannotquiet its
wailing sirens until it gets a clear signal that its urgent, lifepreserving clamor has been heard.
This would explain why new cognitions or behaviors are rarely
sufficient to influence "emergency" emotional situations, for those
interventions seek to override, rather than attend to, the amygdala's
frantic distress calls. But what might happen instead, I wondered, if
we helped our clients use their rational brains to fully acknowledge
and soothe their primordial limbic systems?
From this core idea, I have developed a clinical model that puts
the thinking brain unreservedly at the service of the emotional brain.
The goal of this approach, which I call Pragmatic-Experiential
Therapy, is to help clients shift from the defensive, isolating brain
circuits that control rage and fear to the connecting, healing circuits
that mediate nurture and sorrow.

Giving immediate and thorough attention to clients' up-and-running,

defensive neural systems, we coach clients to sympathetically and
respectfully interact with those brain states until they feel safe

90

enough to switch to more vulnerable states.

In our experience, this internal sense of safety is the linchpin of
change for couples. For only when an individual feels no longer
threatened by his or her partnerthreatened, at bottom, by the
terrifying, annihilating prospect of abandonmentwill the amygdala
shut off it internal alarm system, freeing the individual to
authentically shift to an intimacy-promoting neural state.
So, unlike therapeutic models that zero in immediately on changing
thinking or behavior we don't ask clients to change how they think
about, or behave with, their partners until they feel safe enough to
interact in a more vulnerable way.
This is not suggest that cognitive and behavioral strategies are
unimportant to effective therapy. In our clinical work, the rational
brainparticularly the prefrontal cortexis an absolutely central
player. The key difference between our approach and explicitly
cognitive models is that rather than using the thinking brain to try to
dominate the emotional brain, we put it to work helping the ancient
amygdala to gradually relax its defense.
To do anything less, we believe, is to paddle against our neural
currents.
As Lisa and I sat with James and Susan in our consulting room, we
well knew that "helping the amygdala to relax" was the last thing
they had in mind. What was clear, however, was that each partner
was far too stuck in his or her respective emotional circuitSusan in
rage, James in fearto make any immediate shift to a more intimacypromoting state.
Before that could happen, each partner would need to get on much
better terms with the feelings that had so violently seized him or her.
We responded, therefore, as we customarily do when couples
encounter extremely "hot" emotional statesby calling a temporary
time-out on conjoint work to conduct some one-on-one emotional
exploration.

91

Leaving Lisa and Susan to work together in our office, I asked

James to join me in a consulting room down the hall. There, I
suggested that if he was willing to explore his inner experience a bit,
he might be able to learn to respond to Susan in a way that helped
her to treat him well in return. He agreed to try, warning me,
however, that self-awareness wasn't his "thing."

Like many men I work with, James had done a good job of numbing
his body to the telltale, physiological signs of an emotional hijacking
the knotted muscles, the racing heart, the queasy stomachand
consequently, during his fights with Susan, he often had trouble
knowing what he felt at all. His lifelong stance, he admitted, was to
keep a "stiff upper lip" in the face of troublehe saw no other
options.
"None?" I inquired. "Who taught you that?" After a few moments
of silence, he began to talk of his junior high football coach, whom
he remembered as single-mindedly intent on forcing him and his
teammates to perform endless calisthenics until their bodies
screamed for relief. The coach would then stride up to the player
with the most tortured expression, get right in his face and shout:
"What do you feel?" On cue, the player would yell back: "Nothing,
sir!" to the loud cheers of his teammates. On one broiling afternoon
on the football field, James heard those rousing cheers for himself,
and he recalled no how curiously proud he felt of his stoic denial of
his own body. Shaking his head, he admitted: "I guess I learned the
lesson well."
I assured him that it would be possiblenecessary, in factto
relearn to recognize his feelings. In an important way, I explained,
the body was the voice of the emotions, eloquently communicating
critical information about our current emotional state.

Tightened muscles and a sick sensation in the gut, for example,

92

typically accompany fear, while rage is characterized by an upsurge

in aggressive energy and increased body temperature. Learning to
readily identify an "emergency" brain state via its characteristic
physiological signals is the first, crucial step of our approach,
because brain studies suggest that the moment you become aware
of your internal state, you activate the prefrontal lobes, which in
turn, can begin to moderate your response. I suggested to James
that the next time he and Susan begin arguing, he simply try to
notice any changes happening in his body.
At the next session, Susan and James cameor rather stalkedinto
our office, their signature brain states already activated. Susan was
furious at James for forgetting to buy her flowers for their
anniversary; James, already withdrawn, slumped sullenly into his
corner of the sofa. As soon as Lisa ad I got the gist of their current
conflict, James and I took off again for a private tete-a-tete.
Before I had even closed the door behind us, James reported that
he was feeling an uncomfortable tightness both in his stomach and
his lower jaw, sensations he had noticed several times over the past
week whenever Susan had become angry with him. At my
suggestion, he checked his current pulse rate and was stunned to
find it had soared to 85 beats per minute, in contrast to his usual,
resting rate of 68 bpm.
In fact, the dramatic jump in heart rate closely mirrors that of
experimental animals in the "freeze" state after their fear systems
have been electrically stimulated. James, whose clenched-jaw, stonewalling response to Susan's fury had a distinctly frozen quality, was
clearly in the midst of a full-fledged, brain-mediated fear response.
I encouraged him to notice how his state of mind seemed to kick
in all at once, as if a part of him just stepped forward and took over.
He replied that he had already noticed this happening a few days
earlier, when Susan was ragging at him about the state of their
finances.
"I actually tried to respond to her, you know, say something
sympathetic about the bad day I knew she'd had," he reported. "But
somewhere inside, I'd just gone cold." I suggested that he might
93

think of that frozen, steely part of himself as a little guy within him
whose job it was to defend him against Susan's attacks.
In our experience, personalizing emotional states is a powerful
way of helping people to accept their survival-driven emotions,
which prepares them to interact respectfully with them. For this
personalizing strategy, we are indebted to Dick Schwartz's Internal
Family systems model, which conceptualizes conflicting behaviors as
inner family members, each with its own distinctive personality and
function. In our work, we personalize particular bodily responses,
such as a constricted throat or a nauseated stomach, that
correspond to a client's emotional state.
While I was encouraging James to view his knotted stomach as a
difficult but fanatically loyal friend, Lisa, two doors down the hall,
was similarly helping Susan to understand her rage response
particularly a characteristic throbbing sensation behind her temples
as a desperate, love-hungry little kid inside her who was frantically
trying to get her husband's attention. The next step would be to help
each of them consult with these inner defenders about the possibility
of letting down their respective guards.
At this point, proponents of systems therapy may well be raising
their collective eyebrows, thinking: This is couples work? My
response is that while we do a lot of individual work with intimate
partners, we are very definitely doing couples therapy. In our
experience, the hair-trigger defense system of the emotional brain is
such that for many couples, learning to regulate brain states is all
but impossible in each other's presence; nobody can calm down long
enough to do the kind of quiet, deeply focused work that is
necessary to allow an emotional system to shift.
Particularly early in therapy, each partner is far more likely to
chronically trigger the other's already hyper aroused limbic system
than help to soothe it, a pattern that may lead many couples to
prematurely quit therapy, convinced that theirs is a "hopeless case."
Consequently, our customary modus operandi is to do a lot of
individual work during the first several sessions, until each partner
94

develops enough skill in shifting brain states to rejoin his or her

partner in the consulting room. At that point, couples begin to
practice making these shifts in "real time," in the midst of authentic
interactions. In this way, work on the internal system of brain states
powerfully supports work on the external system of a relationship in
action.
Over the next several sessions, Lisa and I stepped up our roles as
personal coaches, helping Susan and James learn to shift their selfprotective brain states to those mediating nurture and sorrow. We
knew that when the sorrow neural system is electrically stimulated in
animals, they emit distress vocalizations signaling a kind of
mammalian separation anxiety, which in turn, triggers a "moving
toward" response from nearby animals.
This is, of course, the same primal dance we endlessly try to
choreograph in our therapy offices: if he would only drop his Lone
Ranger mask, we would bet the rent that she would reach out to him.
The catch, of course, is that nobody wants to go first. By being more
aware of the conditions that allow the brain to relax sufficiently its
defenses, we hope to more effectively support our clients in making
this leap out of fear and into connection.
To that end, I spent several sessions coaching James through
conversations with his stonewalling "defender," in an effort to help it
to feel safe enough to let down its guard. Progress was gradual and
halting. Then, toward the end of one particularly slow-moving
session, I brought up how James's typical response to Susansullen
stonewallinghad not managed to blunt her fury so far. He nodded,
admitting that, in fact, his icy withdrawal seemed to aggravate his
wife even more.
I suggested that James notice how his inner sentry reacted when I
asked: "what have you got to lose by trying something newlike
reaching out to Susan?" This was a delicate moment: I was asking
James to engage his prefrontal cortex to entertain a new thought,
without asking him to willfully redirect his current thinking. His hand
on his stomach, James closed his eyes and focused his attention
within. Perhaps 15 seconds passed before he opened his eyes and

95

looked at me. "It's okay," he softly said.

"You're sure it's okay with him?" I asked, pointing in the direction
of his stomach. "Yeah, he's okay," nodded James. He looked relaxed
and younger, somehowless defended. His inner watchdog, he told
me, had acknowledged that shutting down had only gotten him a
redoubled dose of Susan's rage, the terrifying experience of all out
attack that had activated his defense system in the first place. If
there were a better way to stave off these assaults, his defender told
him, it would do its best to stand aside. "I'm ready," James said
quietly.
Susan was on her way to being ready, too. While James and I had
been doing our work, Lisa and Susan had been making steady
progress in helping Susan's inner defender feel safe enough to
expose the intense yearning for love that hid behind her fury. As
each partner's neural defense system gradually relaxed its hold, we
began spending less time on one-on-one coaching and more time in
conjoint sessions, helping them to practice real-world interactions
without flipping into their respective fury and fear states.
Then one evening, Susan and James walked into our office in
utter silence. They had had a violent argument two days before and
had barely spoken to each other since. The issue at hand was James'
relationship with his younger brother, Sam, and his sister-in-law,
Claire, who lived only a few streets away from them.
Susan had long felt resentful toward Sam, whom she felt took
advantage of James's helpful nature, but even more hostile toward
Claire, a stunningly beautiful local fashion model. James denied
feeling attracted to Claire, but Susan had not believed him since the
night she had seen James flipping through the pages of her modeling
portfolio, which included some nude pictures.
Susan was furious now because, on the first day of a recent,
heavy snow-storm, James had called to say he was stopping on his
way home from work to help Sam and Claire dig out their driveway
before coming home to help Susan shovel out so she could attend an

96

evening yoga class.

An hour later, when Susan walked the half-mile to her in-laws' house
to drag her husband home, she was incensed to find James and
Claire working in the driveway and laughing companionably
together, with Sam nowhere in sight. That evening Susan never
made it to her yoga class; instead, she raged hard and long at
James, accusing him of caring more about his brother's long legged,
exotic-looking wife than about her.
As our session began, Susan warned that this was a horribly
painful issue for her. As she began to recount the incident, within
seconds she was breathing so hard and fast that I thought she might
start hyperventilating. "James," she managed between jagged
breaths, "do you have any clue what you're like when you get within
sniffing distance of Claire?"
I quickly looked at James, who had turned his gaze downward and
was sitting stock-still. I feared he was shifting into a full-scale
shutdown. But after a long moment he looked up again at his wife.
"Susan," he began softly, "I don't give a damn about Claire." When
Susan hooted bitterly at this, James shook his head in frustration. But
he didn't fold. "When Sam called me to help out, I just didn't think,"
he went on. "I should have."
When Susan turned away in disgust, James looked suddenly
desperate. "Look, Susan," he said pleadingly, "when you get mad at
me like this, it's awful." She looked back at him, clearly surprised. "It
makes me feel sick inside," he admitted to her. "I feel kind of lost."
As Susan continued gazing at him, he touched her arm. "But
whatever I did, I'm sorry I hurt you."
At this, Susan's face began to crumple. "You did hurt me, James,"
she cried out. Tears spilling down her cheeks, she jumped up and
fled the room. For a moment, James looked stunned and disoriented:
A tearful Susan was not what he had expected. Then he, too,
abruptly rushed out into the hallway, where his wife was weeping.
"God, Susan, I really didn't know what a big deal this was to you," we
97

could hear him say. "Will you help me understand?" As she continued
to sob, we stepped out into the hall in time to witness James
enveloping his wife in a bear hug and whispering into her hair: "It's
you I want."
It was a moment of great tenderness, on of those exchanges of
naked need and open-hearted nurture that remind a couples
therapist why he or she has chosen this work. Yet ultimately, the
melting moment of bonding that we had just witnessed was not what
made us feel optimistic about James and Susan's futures. For we
knew that such jolting shots of connectedness, however real and
deep, would inevitable fade; stinging disappointments and
misunderstandings would arise again.
What encouraged us most was that in the midst of this highly
charged interaction, James had demonstrated the ability to shift from
a reaction of fearful withdrawal to a warmly empathetic state that, in
turn, allowed Susan to shift from her own state of fury to one of
sorrowful hurt. We knew that if they were to construct an intimate
bond that could truly sustain themand not remain on a neural roller
coaster of endless highs and lowsthey would need to continue the
difficult and delicate work they had begun. Little by little, they were
teaching their brains to trust.
To imagine ourselves this wayas beings whose deepest passions
are rooted in the pushing and pulling of neurons along the
electrochemical tracks of our brainsis, at best, a disturbing
experience. To therapists, especially, all this talk of neural circuitry
and amygdalian imperatives may seem distastefully cold and
mechanistic for a phenomenon as warm-blooded and mysterious,
even sacred, as emotion.
Yet, what may be finally most disquieting about this exploration of
the emotional brain is not that it separates us from the pulsing core
of our feeling selves, but rather that it brings us so uncomfortably
close. Any serious examination of the ancient, neural bases of
emotion forces us to confront our essential kinship with other
mammalsthose instinctual beasts who seem all bared tooth and
bloody claw, so fundamentally different from our proudly cerebral

98

human selves.
We get ourselves into far more trouble than it's worth, suggests
neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp in his ground-breaking book Affective
Neuroscience, through "our strangely human need to aspire to be
more than we areto feel closer to the angels than to other animals."
So deeply uneasy are we with the quivering, feral forces that can, in
an eye-blink, burst through our surfaces that we risk encasing
ourselves in a kid of protective cognitive supremacy, identifying
much too thoroughly with our city-building, book-writing, resolutely
right-minded selves.

Of course, our rational brains are potent, indispensable human

equipment. But the paradox is that these impressive cerebral
capacities can only guide us to safety if we acknowledge and honor,
too, the primeval responses that still lurk in the lattices of our neural
wiring. Far from dehumanizing us, they are the elements of our
humanity that we most urgently need to welcome.

Bringing Emotional Intelligence to the

Workplace: A Technical Report Issued
by the Consortium for Research on
Emotional
Intelligence
in
Organizations

By: Cary Cherniss, Daniel Goleman, Robert Emmerling, Kim

Cowan, & Michel Adler
99

Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology

(GSAPP)
Rutgers University
Email: cherniss@rci.rutgers.edu
Publication date: 1998 (October)

Preface
Current interest in "emotional intelligence" has raised the question of
whether it is possible to improve the social and emotional competence
of adult workers. Research in training and development, sports
psychology, and behavior change suggests that it is possible, but the
typical approach used in corporate training programs usually is flawed.
Social and emotional learning is different from cognitive and technical
learning, and it requires a different approach to training and
development.

This report presents 22 guidelines for developing emotional

intelligence in organizations, based on the best knowledge available on
how to promote social and emotional learning. We have estimated that
American business each year loses between 5.6 and 16.8 billion dollars
by not consistently following these guidelines. The basis for this
estimate can be found in the last section of the report.

Research for this report was conducted under the auspices of the
Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations.
The Consortium is made up of nine individuals from academia,
government, and the corporate sector. All of the individuals are
recognized experts with considerable experience in both research and
consulting. The Consortium has been funded by the Fetzer Institute, a
private foundation located in Kalamazoo, Michigan

100

Bringing Emotional Intelligence to the

Workplace
When the book, Emotional Intelligence, appeared in 1995, many
business leaders agreed with the basic message that success is
strongly influenced by personal qualities such as perseverance, selfcontrol, and skill in getting along with others.

(1). They could point to "super sales persons" who had an uncanny
ability to sense what was most important to the customers and to
develop a trusting relationship with them. They could point to
customer service employees who excelled when it came to helping
angry customers to calm down and be more reasonable about their
problems with the product or service. And they also could point to
brilliant executives who did everything well except get along with
people, or to managers who were technically brilliant but could not
handle stress, and whose careers stalled because of these deficiencies.
Business leaders well understood how valuable these "emotionally
intelligent" employees are to an enterprise.

(2). But what about the many workers who lack these important
emotional competencies? Is it possible for adults to become more
socially and emotionally competent? Many business leaders are less
certain about this question. For instance, the dean of a major business
school, when asked about the importance of emotional intelligence at
work, enthusiastically agreed that it was crucial. But when we asked
him how his school attempted to improve the emotional intelligence of
MBA students, he said, "We dont do anything. I dont think that
our students emotional intelligence can be improved by the
time they come here. Theyre already adults, and these
qualities are developed early in life."

On the other hand, there are those who seem to claim that they can
raise the emotional intelligence of a whole group of employees in a day
or less. Scores of consultants now are selling workshops and seminars
101

designed to help people become more emotionally competent and

socially skilled. Some of these programs are quite good, but others
make unrealistic claims. The worst ones are those that involve a heavy
reliance on inspirational lectures or intense, short-lived experiences
and little else.

So who is right the skeptics who believe that nothing can be done to
improve emotional competence after the age of 15, or the hucksters
who claim that they can turn emotional dunces into emotional
Einsteins in an afternoon? As usual, the answer lies somewhere in
between.

A growing body of research on emotional learning and behavior change

suggests that it is possible to help people of any age to become more
emotionally intelligent at work. However, many programs designed to
do so fail to recognize the difference between two types of learning.

Two Types of Learning

Training and development efforts in industry have not always
distinguished between cognitive learning and emotional learning, but
such a distinction is important for effective practice
(3). For instance, consider the example of the engineer whose career
was stymied because he was shy, introverted, and totally absorbed in
the technical aspects of his job. Through cognitive learning, he might
come to understand that it would be better for him to consult other
people more, make connections, and build relationships. But just
knowing he should do these things would not enable him to do them.
The ability to do these things depends on emotional competence,
which requires emotional learning as well as cognitive learning.
Emotional incompetence often results from habits deeply learned early
in life. These automatic habits are set in place as a normal part of
living, as experience shapes the brain. As people acquire their habitual
repertoire of thought, feeling, and action, the neural connections that
102

support these are strengthened, becoming dominant pathways for

nerve impulses. Connections that are unused become weakened, while
those that people use over and over grow increasingly strong
(4). When these habits have been so heavily learned, the underlying
neural circuitry becomes the brains default option at any moment
what a person does automatically and spontaneously, often with little
awareness of choosing to do so. Thus, for the shy engineer, diffidence
is a habit that must be overcome and replaced with a new habit, selfconfidence.

Emotional capacities like empathy or flexibility differ from cognitive

abilities because they draw on different brain areas. Purely cognitive
abilities are based in the neocortex. But with social and emotional
competencies, additional brain areas are involved, mainly the circuitry
that runs from the emotional centers particularly the amygdala
deep in the center of the brain up to the prefrontal lobes, the brains
executive center. Effective learning for emotional competence has to
re-tune these circuits.

Cognitive learning involves fitting new data and insights into existing
frameworks of association and understanding, extending and enriching
the corresponding neural circuitry. But emotional learning involves that
and more it requires that we also engage the neural circuitry where
our social and emotional habit repertoire is stored. Changing habits
such as learning to approach people positively instead of avoiding
them, to listen better, or to give feedback skillfully, is a more
challenging task than simply adding new information to old.

Motivational factors also make social and emotional learning more

difficult and complex than purely cognitive learning. Emotional learning
often involves ways of thinking and acting that are more central to a
persons identity. A person who is told, for instance, that he should
learn a new word processing program usually will become less upset
and defensive than if he is told that he should learn how to better
control his temper or become a better listener. The prospect of needing
to develop greater emotional competence is a bitter pill for many of us
to swallow. It thus is much more likely to generate resistance to
103

change. What this means for social and emotional learning is that one
must first unlearn old habits and then develop new ones. For the
learner, this usually means a long and sometimes difficult process
involving much practice. One-day seminars just wont do it
(5). Those who study training "have tended to consider all training the
same, without regard to the purpose of the training or the type of
learning involved.
(6)." Some of the previous thinking about training, based largely on
cognitive learning, is valid for social and emotional learning as well.
However, the principles for social and emotional learning differ greatly
from those that apply to purely cognitive abilities. A better source of
guidance comes from research that examines social and emotional
change processes more directly. Such research comes from many
different fields, including sports psychology, psychotherapy and
behavior change, and personal development. This research suggests a
set of guidelines for the design of effective social and emotional
learning.
(7). These guidelines point to components that are additive and
synergistic; to be effective, social and emotional learning experiences
need not adhere to all of these guidelines, but the chances for success
increase with each one that is followed.

Guidelines for Effective Social and

Emotional Learning: An Overview
The guidelines for social and emotional training are presented
schematically in Figure 1. They are arranged in the form of a flow chart
that describes the optimal process for helping individuals to increase
their emotional competence in personal and interpersonal contexts.

FIGURE 1 the Optimal Process for

Developing Emotional Intelligence in
Organizations
104

The flow chart suggests that there are four basic phases to the training
process. The first occurs even before the individual begins formal
training. This initial phase, which is crucial for effective social and
emotional learning, involves preparation for change. This preparation
occurs at both the organizational and individual levels. The second
phase, training, covers the change process itself. It includes the
processes that help people change the way in which they view the
world and deal with its social and emotional demands. The third phase,
transfer and maintenance, addresses what happens following the
formal training experience. The final phase involves evaluation. Given
the current state of knowledge about social and emotional learning,
the complexity of programs designed to promote such learning and the
great unevenness in the effectiveness of existing programs, evaluation
always should be part of the process.

Phase One: Preparation for Change

Motivation is especially important in social and emotional learning(8).
Such learning can be challenging for adults who already have
established a way of relating to themselves and others, and people
need to be strongly committed to the change process for an extended
105

period of time. So what can managers and trainers do to increase

learners motivation prior to the start of the change process? The first
set of guidelines addresses this question.

1. Assess
Needs.

the

Organizations

Good training begins with a needs assessment (9). For social

and emotional training, there are two particular challenges
that must be addressed at this point in the process. First,
many people in the organization will be skeptical about the
link between emotional intelligence and the bottom line. A
systematic and rigorous study can help show that such a link
exists. For instance, in one large financial services company,
there was considerable skepticism about the value of training
in "emotional competence" until top executives saw the
results of a study showing that financial advisors who coped
better with the emotional aspects of work with clients sold
more life insurance policies. Once they saw the connection
between this particular type of emotional competence and the
bottom line, the executives encouraged advisors to
participate in an emotional competence training program.

The second challenge in applying this guideline to social and emotional

training efforts is to identify all of the particular competencies that are
important for success. Sometimes it is easy to miss crucial ones. For
instance, an initial needs assessment in one airline began with a
consideration of the airlines business strategy. Because airlines are
similar in price structure, a competitive advantage depends
particularly on how well passengers are treated by airline personnel. As
a result, the way in which flight attendants handled passengers
became the focus for training efforts. Research then indicated that
superior performers had two types of competencies: self-management
(resilience, efficiency, adaptability) and interpersonal (caring for and
managing customers well, and teamwork). However, two other
competencies, self-awareness and empathy, help support the self106

management and interpersonal competencies. So the training program

also needed to include these. Only a careful assessment of the work
situation, informed by an understanding of the nature of emotional
competence, enabled the consultant to identify both the surface-level
and deeper competencies that affected performance.

2. Assess Personal Strengths and

Limits.
Two challenges confront those who wish to assess the social
and emotional competence of individuals. First, people usually
are less aware of skill weaknesses in the social and emotional
domains(10). They may realize, for example, that the
interpersonal aspects of leading a work group are difficult and
frustrating. But they may not be able to pinpoint the
emotional skills they need in order to improve their
functioning in this area. They are probably even less aware of
the underlying attitudes and ways of thinking that get them
into trouble, or how those ways of thinking trigger complex
emotional response patterns that impede their effectiveness
in dealing with difficult employees, customers, or coworkers.

Second, these competencies are manifested primarily in social

interaction. Therefore, the best approach usually involves ratings by
those who interact with the person. However, the beliefs, motives, and
feelings of the rater influence ratings of social and emotional
competence. The bosss view of a managers self-awareness or ability
to empathize may be very different from the perspective of the
managers peers and subordinates. The best assessment approach for
initiating social and emotional learning thus is usually based on
multiple ratings conducted from multiple perspectives, such as 360degree assessments that include boss, peer, and subordinate
ratings(11).

"Three-sixty feedback" now is used regularly in industry for a variety of

purposes, and organizations vary in how well they use this tool. When
not managed well, it can create resistance rather than readiness. In the
most effective development programs, the participants are helped to
107

review these ratings and then use them to identify the competencies
that should be the focus of training efforts. Ultimately, however, the
motivating power of an assessment is affected by how credible it is to
the learners. The trainees need to have faith in the assessment
method(12).

3. Provide Feedback with Care.

Motivation for change can be enhanced when people are
given feedback on the assessment results(13). However, there
are many pitfalls in giving people feedback on their social
competence. These competencies are closely linked to a
persons identity and self-esteem. It is one thing, for example,
to be told that you need to work on the back-swing of your
chip shot in golf, but it is quite another to be told that you
need to handle stress better. If the feedback is not provided
with sensitivity and skill, people often become defensive.

People are more likely to respond positively to feedback when they

trust and respect the person who gives it. People also are more likely to
be motivated to change when they believe that the feedback is
constructive and accurate(14). and they are helped to identify the
specific steps they can take to improve(15). People also need sufficient
time to think about the information and its implications. And in social
and emotional development efforts, it is especially important that the
feedback occur in an atmosphere of safety.

The understood purpose of the feedback also affects its motivational

and emotional impact. When, for instance, it is used for appraisal
purposes, and ones supervisor gives the feedback, the impact often is
negative. On the other hand, when it is used for development purposes
and the person giving the feedback is viewed as a disinterested
individual whose motivation is to help, then the consequences tend to
be much more positive(16). For instance, in a large computer software
company, an executive development specialist provides the individual
108

with the results of a 360-degree assessment strictly in confidence, oneto-one. No copies of the results are kept. The feedback is used only as
a development tool.

4. Maximize Learner Choice.

People generally are more motivated to change when they freely
choose to do so(17). In social and emotional training, however, choice
is particularly important. Because these competencies are so close to
the essence of what makes us the people we are, it is better if we are
free to choose whether or not to engage in such training. It also is
better if the choice is real. If trainees are given a choice but not
assigned to the training they initially chose, they will be less motivated
to learn than those who were given no choice(18).

5.Encourage Participation.
Because social and emotional learning is viewed as "soft" and
thus somewhat suspect, employees will tend not to choose to
participate in it unless they believe that the organizations
management strongly endorses it. The words and actions of
supervisors are especially important. Trainees are more willing
to participate in development activity if their supervisors
indicate that they support it. In a large financial services
company, a training program in emotional competence was
popular in part because several regional vice presidents
encouraged their management groups to participate and then
attended the program with them.

The same has been true for "crew resource management training," a
program that teaches airline crews the social and emotional skills that
help them to work better as a team. When senior management has
demonstrated a real commitment to this program by providing
intensive and recurrent training, there has been greater acceptance of
it among the crews. Acceptance also has increased when check airmen
and instructors emphasize concepts from the training during other
training and checking(19).

109

6.Link
Learning
Personal Values.

Goals

to

People will be most motivated to learn and change if they

believe that doing so will help them achieve goals that they
value(20) For instance, in teaching airline crews how to work
better in the cockpit as a team, it usually is more effective to
teach them "how to get a team off to a good start," and "how
to address conflicts among members constructively," rather
than to teach them about "behavioral styles"(21).

Often the most salient personal values will be work-related, but they
need not be. Trying to motivate learners by showing them that training
will contribute to career success will be difficult if success is
unimportant to them(22). Fortunately, other incentives for social and
emotional learning are not difficult to find. In one popular emotional
competence program, many participants reported that the skills they
learned were as valuable in managing relationships at home as they
were at work.

7.Adjust Expectations.
Expectations about performance can become self-fulfilling
prophecies. People who are confident that they can succeed in
a training program will tend to be more motivated and, not
surprisingly, more successful(23). Unfortunately, in the case
of social and emotional learning, many people are skeptical
that emotional intelligence can be improved. And people who
find social and emotional problems challenging will be
particularly dubious about their ability to improve. To
maximize motivation, learners need to believe not only that
greater emotional competence will lead to valued outcomes,
but also that it can be improved. Furthermore, they need to
have a realistic expectation of what the training process will
involve(24).
110

Trainers can help enhance learners self-efficacy in various ways. For

instance, in the JOBS program, an award-winning program designed to
help unemployed workers to overcome discouragement and find new
jobs, the participants observe the trainers engage in a role-play of a
job interview. The trainers intentionally make several mistakes during
the role-play. The participants then provide suggestions for improving
performance, and the trainers do the role-play again, incorporating the
participants suggestions. The participants see how useful the
suggestions are, and the trainers point out that the participants have
demonstrated that they already know most of what the experts know
about how to do a job interview well(25).

8. Gauge Readiness.
Research on a wide variety of behavior change programs suggests
that people go through several stages of readiness for change before
they are ready to make a true commitment(26). In the first stage, they
deny that they have any need for change. In the next stage, people
begin to see that they need to improve, but they are not sure that
anything can be done about their problems and they put off making a
decision. In the third stage, the individual recognizes that there is a
problem and also that there are ways of dealing with it, but the person
has not made a concrete plan to act. It is not until the fourth stage that
the person is ready to act. People at this stage have a concrete plan,
and they put it into action. Before training begins (or toward the
beginning), the training staff should, ideally, assess the readiness
stage of each potential participant. They then would design an
appropriate intervention based on that assessment, which will differ for
people at each stage of readiness.

Phase Two: Training

In social and emotional learning, motivation continues to be an
important issue during the training phase. The amount of time, effort,
and potential threats to ones self-esteem that occur during social and
111

emotional learning suggest that trainers continue to monitor the

individuals motivation and intervene to bolster it. One of the most
important factors influencing motivation during the training phase is
the relationship between the trainer and the learner.

9. Foster a Positive Relationship

Between the Trainer and Learner.
In social and emotional learning, the relationship between the trainer
and learner is critically important(27). For instance, in a program
designed to teach people to be more assertive, the participants were
less likely to drop out and showed more positive change at the end of
the program if they had a positive relationship with the trainer(28).
Several studies have suggested that trainers who are empathic, warm,
and genuine which are, of course, attributes of emotional intelligence
develop more positive relationships with participants in behavior
change programs, and they are more likely to be successful(29).
Trainers who use a directive-confrontational style only succeed in
making participants more resistant(30).

In the JOBS program, the trainers work to develop a trusting

relationship with the participants by engaging in a moderate degree of
self-disclosure. For instance, the trainers talk about their own
experiences in coping with job loss, emphasizing the normal
experiences of self-doubt, encounters with barriers and setbacks,
persistence in the face of these barriers, and ultimate success. This
self-disclosure encourages the participants to identify with and admire
the trainers, which facilitates social and emotional learning(31).

10. Maximize Self-Directed Change.

People are more likely to develop emotional competence when they
decide which competencies to work on and set their own goals.
Training for emotional competence also benefits when the trainer
adapts the training to match the persons needs, goals, and learning
style preferences(32). For instance, in one stress management
program, the participants were taught a variety of approaches to
112

relaxation. Then they were encouraged to try each one and select the
best one for them. And if none worked well, they were encouraged to
try other approaches to managing stress, such as improving their time
management skills. The basic message of the program was that people
differ, and no one approach to managing stress will work well for
everyone.

11. Set Clear Goals.

Social and emotional learning benefits from specific, clear goals. A
goal such as "learn how to listen better to subordinates" is less
effective than "use active listening with at least three times each day
for three weeks." Specific and challenging goals help support social
and emotional learning because they maximize self-efficacy, mastery,
and motivation. The most effective trainers are able to help the
learners set clear and challenging goals without infringing on the
learners sense of ownership for the goals.33

12. Break
Steps.

Goals

into

Manageable

For many people, trying to bring about even modest improvements in

emotional competence can be frustrating. Although challenging goals
are more motivating than simple ones, it also helps if the goals are
attainable. When people reach a goal, their self-efficacy increases,
which leads to the setting of new, more challenging goals(34). For
instance, one MBA student lacked the self-confidence necessary to
approach people about part-time jobs. The larger goal of developing
self-confidence was overwhelming (and also vague), but he was helped
to break it into smaller, more realistic action steps.
The first was to update his resume, which was easy; there was no
need to approach anyone. The next steps, which were increasingly
difficult, were to call the chairman of the Finance Department by the
next month to request a meeting, then meet with the chairman to
discuss opportunities, then do the same with his mentor, a local
113

executive. Finally, he would search the local want ads and call to apply
for promising jobs. In this way, the goal of increasing self-confidence
became attainable, and steady progress and success rather than
frustration and failure characterized the process.

13.
Maximize
Practice.

Opportunities

to

The relationship between practice and learning is one of the oldest and
best-established principles in psychology. In social and emotional
learning, there often must be more practice than in other types of
learning because old, ineffective neural connections need to be
weakened and new, more effective ones established. Such a process
requires repetition over a prolonged period of time. And learners need
to practice on the job, not just in the training situation, for transfer to
occur.

Relying on a single seminar or workshop is one of the most common

errors made in social and emotional learning programs. Even an
intense workshop lasting several days usually is not sufficient to help
people unlearn old, entrenched habits and develop new ones that will
persist. The most effective training programs include repeated sessions
of practice and feedback(35).

14. Provide Frequent Feedback on

Practice.
Feedback is important during the change process as a way of
indicating whether the learner is on track. It also can help sustain
motivation, for feedback can be highly reinforcing(36). Feedback is
especially useful in social and emotional learning because the learners
often have trouble recognizing how their social and emotional behavior
manifests itself. In fact, because self-awareness is a core competence,
those who need the most help in emotional competence programs may

114

be particularly weak in this area. Thus, they need even more focused
and sustained feedback as they practice new behaviors(37).

15. Rely on Experiential Methods.

More active, concrete, experiential methods, such as role plays, group
discussions, and simulations, usually work better than lecturing or
assigned reading for social and emotional learning. In order to
reprogram neural circuits connecting the amygdala and neocortex,
people need to actually engage in the desired pattern of thought,
feeling, and action. A lecture is fine for increasing understanding of
emotional intelligence, but experiential methods usually are necessary
for real behavior change.

A study of managerial and sales training programs offered in a large

corporation demonstrated the superiority of experiential methods for
social and emotional learning. The programs that used experiential
methods produced twice as much improvement in performance, as
rated by supervisors and peers, as did the other programs.
Furthermore, the return on investment for the experiential programs
was seven times greater(38).

A particularly good example of experiential learning is the teaching

approach used in Cockpit Resource Management. Much of the training
involves "flying missions" in a highly realistic flight simulator. To learn
more about how they interact with one another and the effects it has
on their performance, the crew is videotaped while they perform the
mission, and then they view the tape with an instructor and focus on
their interactions(39).

16. Build in Support.

115

Change is enhanced through ongoing support from individuals and

small groups. Such support is especially valuable for people who are
trying to improve their social and emotional competence. Coaches and
mentors, as well as individuals who are going through the same
change process, can help sustain a persons hope and motivation(40).
Social and emotional training programs usually are more effective
when they encourage the formation of groups where people give each
other support throughout the change effort(41).

In a stress management program designed for a group of middle

managers in a high tech firm, the trainers assigned the participants to
a "support group" early in the first session. All small group work during
the course of the program took place in these support groups, and
facilitators included activities that helped the group members get to
know one another better. The participants were encouraged to meet
with others in their support groups in between sessions and after the
program formally ended. The participants reported that the
conversations they had in their support groups about life style and
priorities were the most important factors in helping them to make
positive changes in their work and personal lives.

17. Use Models.

Seeing the desired behavior modeled is particularly valuable in social
and emotional learning. One cannot learn to solve quadratic equations
by watching someone else do so, but one can learn a great deal about
how to discuss a conflict with a coworker by observing a model do it.
Learning is further enriched when trainers encourage and help learners
to study, analyze, and emulate the models(42).

18. Enhance Insight.

Even though experiential interventions seem to be especially
productive for social and emotional learning, insight also can play a
116

useful role(43). Insight serves as a natural link between situations,

thoughts and feelings. It enhances self-awareness, the cornerstone of
emotional intelligence. And insight often paves the way for meaningful
behavior change(44).
The most effective training combines experiential methods and the
development of insight. For instance, one program taught managers to
be more aware of how their employees irritated them and to become
more effective in setting limits with employees. The trainer began the
lesson by showing an excerpt from a popular comedy film in which one
character continually annoyed another one by infringing on his
personal space in various ways. After showing the film, the trainer
helped the participants to shift the focus from the film to themselves,
and they began to see how they often allowed some of their
employees to bother them in similarly annoying ways. After acquiring
more insight into their own emotional reactions, the participants were
ready to learn some emotional and social skills that could help them to
deal with these annoying behaviors.

19. Prevent Relapse.

The essence of relapse prevention is to prepare people mentally to
encounter slips, to recognize at the outset that setbacks are a normal
part of the change process. Relapse prevention is especially important
in social and emotional learning because participants attempting to
develop these competencies are likely to encounter many setbacks as
they attempt to apply new behaviors on the job. Without preparation
for these setbacks, they can easily become discouraged and give up
before the task of neural relearning has reached the point where the
new, learned response is the automatic one.

In relapse prevention training, people are helped to reframe slips as

opportunities to learn in order to reduce the likelihood of slipping again
in the future. For dealing with situations in which a mistake is likely,
they also are helped to develop practical strategies such as taking a
"time out" to consult with a mentor(45). Through relapse prevention,
trainees learn how to identify and overcome potential obstacles to
117

applying new skills on the job. They also learn to monitor their progress
and use methods of self-reinforcement to maintain motivation(46).

For example, in one program a trainer leads the participants through a

discussion about a hypothetical situation in which a participant who
has followed all the rules for effective, supportive feedback receives an
angry response when talking with a staff member. The trainer then
asks the group to describe how they would feel in this situation and to
consider what they could do to overcome this particular obstacle. The
trainer then praises the participants for their ideas on how to bounce
back from this setback. Later, the trainer asks the participants to write
down on one side of a sheet of paper descriptions of setbacks they
might encounter when they try to apply a skill they have learned, and
to generate possible solutions for overcoming these setbacks on the
other side of the paper. The participants then share these strategies
with the rest of the group(47).

Phase Three: Transfer and

Maintenance
Transfer and maintenance of learned skills is a particular challenge in
social and emotional learning. When learners return to their natural
environments, there are likely to be many cues and reinforcers that
support the old neural pathways that training was designed to weaken.
Further, there may be significant barriers to the use of some of the new
social and emotional competencies that still have a fragile neural
foundation(48). Well-designed training programs cannot be effective if
the larger organizational system in which they are rooted is not
supportive of the training goals. Recent research has pointed to several
aspects of the organizational environment that seem to be helpful in
facilitating transfer of social and emotional learning.

118

20. Encourage Use of Skills on the

Job.
There are many different ways that supervisors, peers, subordinates,
and others in the work environment can encourage learners to apply
what they have learned. The best methods involve either reminding
people to use the skills or reinforcing them when they do so(49).

Reinforcement is a particularly good way to encourage trainees to

apply their new skills on the job and to continue doing so. In the
workplace, reinforcement by ones supervisor can be especially
powerful(50). Consider the difference in outcomes for two supervisory
training programs(51). In both, the participants liked the programs and
successfully learned the new skills(52). But follow up showed that the
participants from the first program applied their skills on the job, while
those in the second did not. The biggest difference between the two
programs was that the trainees in the first one were "directed and
encouraged by their supervisors to use the new skills." In fact, two of
the participants were removed from their jobs for not using the new
skills.

Supervisors can reinforce the use of new skills on the job in less drastic
ways. For instance, they can encourage trainees to use learned skills
on the job simply by cueing them to do so(53). Also, a follow-up
assessment of skills learned during training can make the trainees feel
more accountable and increase transfer of learning(54). For example,
the airlines have "check pilots" observe flight crews during flights and
then give them feedback in order to encourage the crews to use the
teamwork, communication, and leadership skills that they previously
learned(55).

The behavior of a supervisor, or any high status person, is crucial for

the transfer and maintenance of new emotional and social
competencies. The models to which learners are exposed when they
119

return to the work environment are even more powerful than those
they encountered during training. Social and emotional behavior
seems to be especially sensitive to modeling effects, and high status
persons are influential models for this kind of behavior in the
workplace(56). For instance, in one supervisory training program, the
participants were taught to adopt a more supportive leadership style.
After they returned to their jobs, only those trainees whose own
supervisors had such a style transferred what they had learned to their
jobs(57).

In addition to modeling and reinforcement, reflection can help learners

transfer and maintain what they have learned. It can be particularly
helpful for supervisors to set aside some time periodically to help
learners reflect on what they have done to apply the skills, and to
consider what have been the barriers and facilitating factors. Because
self-awareness is a cornerstone of social and emotional competence,
reflection can be especially valuable during the transfer and
maintenance phase(58).

Although supervisors are especially salient sources of reinforcement

and encouragement, other individuals and groups in the work
environment can be important as well. For instance, in a supervisory
skills program, the supervisors employees were trained at the same
time as the supervisors(59). This additional component of the program
helped create an environment that encouraged the supervisors to
practice and use the new behaviors(60).

21. Provide an Organizational Culture

that Supports Learning.
Transfer and maintenance of specific skills seems to be affected by the
extent to which the organization values learning and development in
general(61). Challenging jobs, social support, reward and development

120

systems, and an emphasis on innovation and competition influence

these perceptions and expectations.

The climate of the work environment is particularly important for

transfer of social and emotional learning to the job. One study found
that participants in a human relations training program who returned
to a supportive climate performed better on objective performance
measures and were promoted more often than those in an
unsupportive climate. Furthermore, these effects were not observed
until 18 months after training, highlighting the importance of a
supportive environment for the development of social and emotional
competencies over time(62).

Phase Four: Evaluating Change

22. Conduct
research.

on-going

evaluation

Evaluation is essential for promoting effective training. Research

suggests that many training programs do not fulfill their promise(63).
Only through evaluation can poor programs be improved and effective
ones retained. By evaluation, we mean a process that focuses on
continuous improvement rather than just a "pass-fail" test in which
individuals associated with a program win or lose credibility. When an
evaluation suggests that a program falls short in achieving its goals, it
should not be used to punish an individual or group. Rather, it should
be used as a guide for improving the training that is offered. Evaluation
should be linked to learning and the continual pursuit of quality.

Evaluation has received increased attention of late because of the

recognition that training departments in modern organizations need to
be held more accountable(64). Instead of cost centers, training
departments now are viewed as profit centers. Unfortunately, the field
has been slow to meet this challenge. An October, 1997 survey of 35
highly regarded "benchmark" companies conducted by the American
Society for Training and Development found that of the 27 companies
121

that said they tried to promote emotional competence through training

and development, more than two-thirds made no attempt to evaluate
the effect of these efforts. Those that did attempt to evaluate their
efforts relied primarily on measures such as reactions to training and
employee opinion surveys(65).

Good evaluation of social and emotional learning efforts has been

especially rare. One reason seems to be a widespread belief that
programs designed to promote "soft skills" cannot be evaluated.
Although this may have been true at one time, we now have the tools
necessary to conduct rigorous evaluations of most training programs
for social and emotional competence(66).

It can be difficult to include every aspect of the ideal evaluation design

in many organizations, but there are examples of evaluation studies
that come close. One is a study of eleven management training
programs offered in a large pharmaceutical company(67). The
evaluators utilized pre- and post-assessments of those who went
through the programs, and these assessments included ratings of the
participants performance on the job by bosses, peers, and
subordinates.

They also calculated the costs and benefits of the programs. They
found that three of the eleven programs were worthless. On the other
hand, five programs had a return-on-investment ranging from 16 to
492 percent, and one time management program had a return-oninvestment of 1,989 percent. The four year study cost $500,000, which
was only .02 percent of the $240 million that the company spent on
training during that period. As a result of this evaluation, the company
has eliminated the ineffective programs and retained the ones that
more than pay for themselves.

Another example was an evaluation of a supervisory training program

conducted in a forest products company(68). This study used a control
group and pre- and post-measures. The programs impact on the
supervisors competence was measured through subordinate ratings,
122

and the study also assessed the programs impact on absenteeism,

turnover, and productivity. The results showed first that the trained
supervisors were using all of the interpersonal skills covered in the
program significantly more than did the controls during the six months
following training. Second, the average daily production of the trained
supervisors employees, relative to controls, increased over 20 percent.
Third, turnover and absenteeism significantly declined among the
employees of the trained supervisors, relative to the controls. The
evaluation study thus provided strong evidence that the training
program had the desired effects on both supervisor competencies and
the bottom line.

These two examples show that while it is not

and emotional competence training programs,
so with much greater rigor and precision than
evaluation an integral part of the process,
gradually become more effective.

easy to evaluate social

it now is possible to do
ever before. By making
training programs will

What Are the Guidelines Worth?

Not all training programs in social and emotional competence follow
these guidelines. How much money currently is lost by training that
does not follow these guidelines? We estimate that the figure is
between 5.6 and 16.8 billion dollars(69). We arrived at this estimate by
starting with the commonly quoted figure of $50 billion spent on
training each year. We then assumed that the average cost per worker
for 1 week of training is $1500. Dividing this figure into the $50 billion
total gave us an estimate of the total number of workers trained, which
is 33 million workers.

We next assumed that only a quarter of these workers receives training

related to emotional competence. (The number probably is higher, but
we wanted to be conservative in this estimate.) The rest receive
technical and cognitive training. Thus, we estimated that adopting the
guidelines should improve training for about 8 million workers.
123

Next we computed the economic impact of training. Several studies

have suggested that on average, training improves worker
performance by .4 to .6 of a standard deviation (S.D.). 70. To be on the
conservative side, we used the lowest figure, 4 S.D. Other research has
suggested that for the average worker, an S.D. equals about 40
percent of salary. 71. The average salary of American workers is about
$35,000. Thus the average economic impact of training currently is .4
S.D. X .40 X $35,000 = $5,600 per worker.

We next factored in the difference in effect size between training

programs that follow the guidelines and those that dont. We used the
data from a recent study of training programs in one large corporation,
which found that programs adhering to most of the guidelines
improved the impact of training by about .3 S.D. over those that didnt
follow the guidelines(72). To be conservative, we then assumed that
only about half the workers who now are trained (the lower half of the
distribution) would do better by that amount if the guidelines were
adopted. We also considered the estimated impact for weaker effect
size differences of .1 and .2 S.D. Thus, we estimated that if the
guidelines were adopted uniformly, about 4 million workers would show
an improvement of .1 to .3 S.D. in training impact.We then computed
the total economic impact of training currently and compared it to the
impact if the guidelines were adopted:

Current economic impact of training = 4 million workers X

$5,600/worker = $22.4 billion.
Impact if guidelines were followed = 4 million X $7,000 = $28
billion (assuming an improvement of .1 S.D.)
Difference = $28 billion - $22.4 billion = $5.6 billion.
The difference for an effect size improvement of .2 S.D. would be $11.2
billion, and the difference for the full .3 S.D. improvement would be
124

$16.8 billion. Thus, using these figures, we estimate that American

business currently is losing between $5.6 and $16.8 billion.

Conclusion
It is possible for people of all ages to become more socially and
emotionally competent. However, the principles for developing this
type of competence differ greatly from those that have guided much
training and development practice in the past. Developing emotional
competence requires that we unlearn old habits of thought, feeling,
and action that are deeply ingrained, and grow new ones. Such a
process takes motivation, effort, time, support, and sustained practice,
as the guidelines presented in this article make clear. The guidelines
also suggest that the preparation and transfer-and-maintenance
phases of the training process are especially important. Yet too often
these phases are neglected in practice.

Organizations increasingly are providing training and development that

is explicitly labeled as "emotional intelligence" or "emotional
competence" training. However, the guidelines presented here apply to
any development effort in which personal and social learning is a goal.
This would include most management and executive development
efforts as well as training in supervisory skills, diversity, teamwork,
leadership, conflict management, stress management, sales, customer
relations, etc.
Ideally, efforts to develop emotional competence would include all the
elements we have identified here, but we realize that it often will not
be practical to do so. Fortunately, the effect of adhering to the
guidelines is multiplicative and synergistic: the more guidelines that
trainers can follow the greater and more lasting will be their impact.

If the current interest in promoting emotional intelligence at work is to

be a serious, sustained effort, rather than just another management
fad, it is important that practitioners try to follow guidelines based on

125

the best available research. Only when the training is based on sound,
empirically based methods will its promise be realized.

The BarOn Model of Social

Emotional Intelligence (ESI)

and

By: Reuven Bar-On

University of Texas Medical Branch
Original
Reference
Reprinted
With
Permission
Bar-On, R. (2006). The Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence
(ESI). Psicothema, 18 , supl., 13-25.
Emotional intelligence has become a major topic of interest in
scientific circles as well as in the lay public since the publication of a
bestseller by the same name in 1995 (Goleman). Despite this
heightened level of interest in this new idea over the past decade,
scholars have been studying this construct for the greater part of the
twentieth century; and the historical roots of this wider area can
actually be traced back to the nineteenth century.
Publications began appearing in the twentieth century with the work of
Edward Thorndike on social intelligence in 1920. Many of these early
studies focused on describing, defining and assessing socially
competent behavior (Chapin, 1942; Doll, 1935; Moss & Hunt, 1927;
Moss et al., 1927; Thorndike, 1920). Edgar Doll published the first
instrument designed to measure socially intelligent behavior in young
children (1935). Possibly influenced by Thorndike and Doll, David
Wechsler included two subscales (Comprehension and Picture
Arrangement) in his well-known test of cognitive intelligence that
appear to have been designed to measure aspects of social
intelligence. A year after the first publication of this test in 1939,
Wechsler described the influence of non-intellective factors on
intelligent behavior which was yet another reference to this construct
(1940). In the first of a number of publications following this early

126

description moreover, he argued that our models of intelligence would

not be complete until we can adequately describe these factors (1943).
Scholars began to shift their attention from describing and assessing
social intelligence to understanding the purpose of interpersonal
behavior and the role it plays in effective adaptability (Zirkel, 2000).
This line of research helped define human effectiveness from the social
perspective as well as strengthened one very important aspect of
Wechslers definition of general intelligence: The capacity of the
individual to act purposefully (1958, p. 7). Additionally, this helped
position social intelligence as part of general intelligence.
The early definitions of social intelligence influenced the way
emotional intelligence was later conceptualized. Contemporary
theorists like Peter Salovey and John Mayer originally viewed emotional
intelligence as part of social intelligence (1990, p. 189), which suggests
that both concepts are related and may, in all likelyhood, represent
interrelated components of the same construct.
At about the same time that researchers began exploring various ways
to describe, define and assess social intelligence, scientific inquiry in
this area began to center around alexithymia (MacLean, 1949; Ruesch,
1948), which is the essence of emotional-social intelligence in that it
focuses on the ability (or rather inability) to recognize, understand and
describe emotions.
Two new directions that paralleled and possibly evolved from
alexithymia were psychological mindedness (Appelbaum, 1973) and
emotional awareness (Lane & Schwartz, 1987).
Research exploring the neural circuitry that governs emotional
awareness (Lane, 2000), as well as additional emotional and social
aspects of this concept (Bar-On et al., 2003; Bechara & Bar-On, in
press; Bechara et al., 2000; Damasio, 1994; Lane & McRae, 2004;
LeDoux, 1996), has begun to provide tangible evidence of the
anatomical foundations of this wider construct which some have
questioned as an intangiable myth (Davies et al., 1998; Matthews et
al., 2003; Zeidner et al., 2001).
The literature reveals various attempts to combine the emotional and
social components of this construct. For example, Howard Gardner
(1983) explains that his conceptualization of personal intelligences is
based on intrapersonal (emotional) intelligence and interpersonal
(social) intelligence. Additionally, Carolyn Saarni (1990) describes
127

emotional competence as including eight interrelated emotional and

social skills. Furthermore, I have shown that emotional-social
intelligence is composed of a number of intrapersonal and
interpersonal competencies, skills and facilitators that combine to
determine effective human behavior (1988, 1997b, 2000). Based on
the above, it is more accurate to refer to this construct as emotionalsocial intelligence rather than emotional intelligence or social
intelligence as I have suggested for some time (2000). Throughout
this article, I will refer to this wider construct as emotional-social
intelligence (ESI).
Since the time of Thorndike (1920), a number of different
conceptualizations of ESI have appeared which have creating an
interesting mixture of confusion, controversy and opportunity
regarding the best approach to defining and measuring this construct.
In an effort to help clarify this situation, the Encyclopedia of Applied
Psychology (Spielberger, 2004) recently suggested that there are
currently three major conceptual models: (a) the Salovey-Mayer model
(Mayer & Salovey, 1997) which defines this construct as the ability to
perceive, understand, manage and use emotions to facilitate thinking,
measured by an ability-based measure (Mayer et al., 2002); (b) the
Goleman model (1998) which views this construct as a wide array of
competencies and skills that drive managerial performance, measured
by multi-rater assessment (Boyatzis et al., 2001); and (c) the Bar-On
model (1997b, 2000) which describes a cross-section of interrelated
emotional and social competencies, skills and facilitators that impact
intelligent behavior, measured by self-report (1997a, 1997b) within a
potentially expandable multi-modal approach including interview and
multi-rater assessment (Bar-On & Handley, 2003a, 2003b).
The purpose of this article is to present, describe and examine the BarOn model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI). This is an empirically
based theoretical paper. As such, various findings are presented to
describe this theory of ESI and demonstrate that it is a comprehensive,
robust and valid conceptualization of the construct.
The first part of the article describes the Bar-On model and measure of
emotional-social intelligence and how it was developed. The second
part provides the reader with a description of the models construct
validity, and the third part describes its predictive validity. I then show
that the Bar-On model is both a teachable and learnable concept. In
the last part of the article, I summarize the key points, discuss the
limitations of the model that need to be addressed, and raise the idea
for developing a more comprehensive and robust model of ESI based
128

on the most powerful aspects of existing conceptualizations of this

construct.

The theoretical foundation of the BarOn model

Darwin s early work on the importance of emotional expression for
survival and adaptation (1872/1965) has influenced the ongoing
development of the Bar-On model, which both stresses the importance
of emotional expression and views the outcome of emotionally and
socially intelligent behavior in Darwinian terms of effective adaptation.
Additional influence on my thinking can be traced to Thorndikes
description of social intelligence and its importance for human
performance (1920) as well as Wechslers observations related to the
impact of non-cognitive and conative factors on what he referred to as
intelligent behavior (1940, 1943). Sifneos description of alexithymia
(1967) on the pathological end of the ESI continuum and Appelbaums
conceptualization of psychological mindedness (1973) on the
eupsychic end of this continuum have also had an impact on the
ongoing development of the Bar-On model.
From Darwin to the present, most descriptions, definitions and
conceptualizations of emotional-social intelligence have included one
or more of the following key components: (a) the ability to recognize,
understand and express emotions and feelings; (b) the ability to
understand how others feel and relate with them ; (c) the ability to
manage and control emotions; (d) the ability to manage change, adapt
and solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature; and (e) the
ability to generate positive affect and be self-motivated.
The Bar-On model provides the theoretical basis for the EQ-i, which
was originally developed to assess various aspects of this construct as
well as to examine its conceptualization. According to this model,
emotional-social intelligence is a cross-section of interrelated
emotional and social competencies, skills and facilitators that
determine how effectively we understand and express ourselves,
understand others and relate with them, and cope with daily demands.
The emotional and social competencies, skills and facilitators referred
in this conceptualization include the five key components described
above; and each of these components comprises a number of closely
related competencies, skills and facilitators which are described in the
Appendix. Consistent with this model, to be emotionally and socially
129

intelligent is to effectively understand and express oneself, to

understand and relate well with others, and to successfully cope with
daily demands, challenges and pressures. This is based, first and
foremost, on ones intrapersonal ability to be aware of oneself, to
understand ones strengths and weaknesses, and to express ones
feelings and thoughts non-destructively. On the interpersonal level,
being emotionally and socially intelligent encompasses the ability to be
aware of others emotions, feelings and needs, and to establish and
maintain
cooperative,
constructive
and
mutually
satisfying
relationships. Ultimately, being emotionally and socially intelligent
means to effectively manage personal, social and environmental
change by realistically and flexibly coping with the immediate
situation, solving problems and making decisions. To do this, we need
to manage emotions so that they work for us and not against us, and
we need to be sufficiently optimistic, positive and self-motivated.

Description of the instrument used to

develop the Bar-On model (the EQ-i)
To better understand the Bar-On model of ESI and how it developed, it
is important to first describe the Emotional Quotient Inventory (the EQi) which has played an instrumental role in developing this model. For
the purpose of the present discussion, it is also helpful to stress that
the Bar-On model is operationalized by the EQ-i.
The EQ-i is a self-report measure of emotionally and socially intelligent
behavior that provides an estimate of emotional-social intelligence.
The EQ-i was the first measure of its kind to be published by a
psychological test publisher (Bar-On, 1997a), the first such measure to
be peer-reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurement Yearbook (Plake &
Impara, 1999), and the most widely used measure of emotional-social
intelligence to date (Bar-On, 2004). A detailed description of the
psychometric properties of this measure and how it was developed is
found in the Bar-On EQ-i Technical Manual (Bar-On, 1997b) and in
Glenn Gehers recent book titled Measuring Emotional Intelligence :
Common Ground and Controversy (2004).
In brief, the EQ-i contains 133 items in the form of short sentences and
employs a 5-point response scale with a textual response format
ranging from "very seldom or not true of me" (1) to "very often true of
me or true of me" (5). A list of the inventory's items is found in the
instruments technical manual (Bar-On, 1997b). The EQ-i is suitable for
130

individuals 17 years of age and older and takes approximately 40

minutes to complete.
The individuals responses render a total EQ score and scores on the
following 5 composite scales that comprise 15 subscale scores:
Intrapersonal (comprising Self-Regard, Emotional Self-Awareness,
Assertiveness, Independence, and Self-Actualization); Interpersonal
(comprising Empathy, Social Responsibility, and Interpersonal
Relationship); Stress Management (comprising Stress Tolerance and
Impulse Control); Adaptability (comprising Reality-Testing, Flexibility,
and Problem-Solving); and General Mood (comprising Optimism and
Happiness). A brief description of these emotional-social intelligence
competencies, skills and facilitators measured by the 15 subscales is
found in the Appendix as was previously mentioned.
Scores are computer-generated. Raw scores are automatically
tabulated and converted into standard scores based on a mean of 100
and standard deviation of 15. This resembles IQ (Intelligence Quotient)
scores, which was my intention when I coined the term EQ
(Emotional Quotient) during my doctoral studies (1988). Average to
above average EQ scores on the EQ-i suggest that the respondent is
effective in emotional and social functioning. The higher the scores,
the more positive the prediction for effective functioning in meeting
daily demands and challenges. On the other hand, low EQ scores
suggest an inability to be effective and the possible existence of
emotional, social and/or behavioral problems.
The EQ-i has a built-in correction factor that automatically adjusts the
scale scores based on scores obtained from two of the instruments
validity indices (Positive Impression and Negative Impression). This is
an important feature for self-report measures in that it reduces the
potentially distorting effects of response bias thereby increasing the
accuracy of the results.

The rigorous development of the EQ-i

helped create a robust model of ESI
The EQ-i was originally constructed as an experimental instrument
designed to examine the conceptual model of emotional and social
functioning that I began developing in the early 1980s (1988). At that
time, I hypothesized that effective emotional and social functioning
should eventually lead to a sense of psychological well-being. It was
131

also reasoned that the results gained from applying such an instrument
on large and diverse population samples would reveal more about
emotionally and socially intelligent behavior and about the underlying
construct of emotional-social intelligence. Based on findings obtained
from applying the EQ-i in a wide range of studies over the past two
decades, I have continuously molded my conceptualization of this
construct; these changes have been mild and are ongoing in an effort
to maintain a theory that is empirically based.
The development of the Bar-On model and measure of ESI proceeded
in six major stages over a period of 17 years:
(1) Identifying and logically clustering various emotional and social
competencies thought to impact effectiveness and psychological wellbeing based on my experience as a clinical psychologist and review of
the literature;
(2) Clearly defining the individual key clusters of competencies, skills
and facilitators that surfaced;
(3) initially generating approximately 1,000 items based on my
professional experience, review of the literature and input from
experienced healthcare practitioners who were asked to generate
questions they would ask in an interview situation guided by my
definitions;
(4) determining the inclusion of 15 primary scales and 133 items in the
published version of the instrument based on a combination of
theoretical considerations and statistical findings generated by item
analysis and factor analysis;
(5) Initially norming the final version of the instrument on 3,831 adults
in North America in 1996; and
(6) Continuing to norm and validate the instrument across cultures.
The first normative sample of the EQ-i included individuals from every
Canadian province and from nearly all the states in the US. The genderage composition of the sample included 49% males and 51% females
from 16 to 100 years of age, with an average age of 34.3 years. The
sample was 79% White, 8% Asian American, 7% African American, 3%
Hispanic, and 1% Native American.(5) For more detailed demographic
information, including the educational and occupational background of
132

the original normative sample, the reader

instruments technical manual (Bar-On, 1997b).

is

referred

to

the

The EQ-i has been translated into more than 30 languages, and data
have been collected in numerous settings around the world. Earlier
versions of the inventory were completed by a total of 3,000
individuals in six countries ( Argentina, Germany, India, Israel, Nigeria
and South Africa). The first translation of the EQ-i was from English to
Spanish to allow for extensive data collection in Argentina, which was
followed by data collection in a number of other countries. In addition
to providing cross-cultural data, this preliminary piloting of the EQ-i
was important for item selection and alteration, continued scale
development and validation, and establishing the final nature of the
response format.
Numerous reliability and validity studies have been conducted around
the world over the past two decades, a number of which will be
referred to in the following sections to describe the reliability and
validity of the EQ-i and the construct it measures.
The outcome of this rigorous development process has rendered
psychometric properties that shed light on the validity and robustness
of the model. After discussing the age-gender effect, factorial structure
and reliability, I will focus primarily on the construct validity and
predictive validity of the model. This approach of examining the
validity of a concept by examining the psychometric properties of
scales designed to measure that concept is not uncommon in
psychology in general as well as in the specific area of ESI [e.g.,
Newsome et al., 2000; Petrides & Furnham, 2000; Salovey et al., 1995;
Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004].

The impact of age, gender

ethnicity on the Bar-On model.

and

An analysis of variance of the North American normative sample

(n=3,831) was conducted to examine the effect of age, gender and
ethnicity on EQ-i scores (Bar-On, 1997b). It was thought that the
results would also shed light on the underlying construct of ESI.
Although the results indicated a few significant differences between
the age groups that were compared, these differences are relatively
small in magnitude. In brief, the older groups scored significantly
133

higher than the younger groups on most of the EQ-i scales; and
respondents in their late 40s obtained the highest mean scores. An
increase in emotional-social intelligence with age is also observed in
children (Bar-On & Parker, 2000). The findings presented here, which
are based on a cross-sectional comparison of different age groups, will
eventually be compared with findings from an ongoing longitudinal
study of the same cohort (n=23,000) over a 25-year period from birth
to young adulthood. This will provide a more accurate indication of how
ESI develops and changes over time. Similar increases in ESI with age
have been reported by others based on employing the EQ-i, MEIS and
other measures of this construct (Goleman, 1998). These findings are
interesting when one considers that cognitive intelligence increases up
until late adolescents and then begins to mildly decline in the second
and third decades of life as was originally reported by Wechsler (1958).
The results suggest that as one gets older, one becomes more
emotionally and socially intelligent.
With respect to gender, no differences have been revealed between
males and females regarding overall ESI. However, statistically
significant gender differences do exist for a few of the factors
measured by the EQ-i, but the effects are small for the most part.
Based on the North American normative sample (Bar-On, 1997b),
females appear to have stronger interpersonal skills than males, but
the latter have a higher intrapersonal capacity, are better at managing
emotions and are more adaptable than the former. More specifically,
the Bar-On model reveals that women are more aware of emotions,
demonstrate more empathy, relate better interpersonally and are more
socially responsible than men. On the other hand, men appear to have
better self-regard, are more self-reliant, cope better with stress, are
more flexible, solve problems better, and are more optimistic than
women. Similar gender patterns have been observed in almost every
other population sample that has been examined with the EQ-i. Men's
deficiencies in interpersonal skills, when compared with women, could
explain why psychopathy is diagnosed much more frequently in men
than in women; and significantly lower stress tolerance amongst
women may explain why women suffer more from anxiety-related
disturbances than men (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

An examination of the North American normative sample, upon which

the EQ-i was normed, did not reveal significant differences in ESI
between the various ethnic groups that were compared (Bar-On,
1997b, 2000, 2004; Bar-On & Parker, 2000). This is an interesting
134

finding when compared with some of the controversial conclusions that

have been presented over the years suggesting significant differences
in cognitive intelligence between various ethnic groups (e.g., Suzuki &
Valencia, 1997).

To summarize the above findings, the Bar-On model reveals that older
people are more emotionally and socially intelligent than younger
people, females are more aware of emotions than males while the
latter are more adept at managing emotions than the former, and that
there are no significant differences in emotional-social intelligence
between the various ethnic groups that have been examined in North
America.

The factorial structure of the Bar-On

model.
Factor analysis was applied to study the 15-factor structure of the EQ-i
to empirically evaluate the extent to which it is theoretically valid.
Moreover, this statistical procedure was used to examine the factorial
structure of the Bar-On model (i.e., to examine the extent to which the
factorial components of this model structurally exist). This analysis was
first performed on the normative sample, progressing from exploratory
to confirmatory factor analysis (Bar-On, 1997b).

Based on a varimax rotation, a 13-factor solution afforded the most

theoretically meaningful interpretation. These results provided a
reasonable match with the subscale structure of the EQ-i. Nonetheless,
the 13-factor empirical structure that emerged raised an important
question that had to be addressed: Can the 15-factor model used in
the Bar-On model and measure of ESI still be justified in light of the
findings which suggested a 13-factor structure? The essential
differences that were identified between the theoretical structure and
the one that surfaced as a result of exploratory factor analysis were as
follows:
(a) Two factors emerged from the Impulse Control items;
135

(b) Although Self-Regard, Self-Actualization, Optimism and Happiness

represent four separate scales, most of their items loaded on two
factors;
(c) although Assertiveness and Independence are considered to be
two separate subscales, items from both subscales loaded on one
factor; and
(d) Although two separate experimental factors emerged from the
Empathy and Social Responsibility items, they are the two highest
correlating factors (.80).
A confirmatory factor analysis was initially applied to resolve the
above-mentioned differences between the 15-factor structure of the
Bar-On model and the 13 factors that emerged from the exploratory
factor analysis. Although the results supported a 15-factor structure in
the end, which fits the theoretical basis of the Bar-On model and
measure (Bar-On, 1997b), an additional confirmatory factor analysis
was subsequently applied to the same dataset (n=3,831) in an attempt
to explore an alternative factorial structure (Bar-On, 2000). The items
from the above-mentioned problematic factors (Independence, SelfActualization, Optimism, Happiness, and Social Responsibility) were
excluded from the second analysis. Self-Actualization, Optimism and
Happiness were excluded from this analysis in that a number of their
items loaded on the Self-Regard factor while others loaded on an
additional yet weaker factor; moreover, these three factors appear in
the literature primarily as facilitators of ESI rather than actual
components of the construct itself; Wechsler referred to them as
"conative factors" (1940, 1943). Independence was excluded from the
analysis because its items loaded heavily on the Assertiveness factor,
and because it rarely appears in the literature as an integral
component of ESI; however, assertiveness (the ability to express one's
emotions and feelings) most definitely appears in the literature, from
Darwin to the present, as an important part of this construct. For
similar empirical and theoretical reasons, it was decided to exclude
Social Responsibility items; moreover, this subscale was shown to
correlate extremely high with Empathy as was previously mentioned,
meaning that they are most likely measuring the same domain.
The results of this second analysis clearly suggested a 10-factor
structure, which is both empirically feasible and theoretically
acceptable as an alternative to the above-mentioned 15-factor
structure. In the order of their extraction, the ten factors that emerged
are:
136

(1) Self-Regard,
(2) Interpersonal Relationship,
(3) Impulse Control,
(4) Problem-Solving,
(5) Emotional Self-Awareness,
(6) Flexibility,
(7) Reality-Testing,
(8) Stress Tolerance,
(9) Assertiveness,
(10) Empathy.
These ten factors appear to be the key components of ESI, while the
five factors that were excluded from the second confirmatory factor
analysis (Optimism, Self-Actualization, Happiness, Independence, and
Social Responsibility) appear to be important correlates and facilitators
of this construct. The ten key components and the five facilitators
together describe and predict emotionally and socially intelligent
behavior, as will be shown below.
The factorial validation of the EQ-i presented here compares favorably
with that of the MSCEIT and ECI.

The reliability of the Bar-On model.

The reliability of the EQ-i has been examined by a number of
researchers over the past 20 years. A consensus of findings reveals
that the Bar-On conceptual and assessment model is consistent, stable
and reliable (Bar-On, 2004). More specifically, the overall internal
consistency coefficient of the EQ-i is .97 based on the North American
normative sample (Bar-On, 1997b). This well exceeds the .90 minimum
for total scores suggested by Nunnally (1978). Internal consistency was
recently reexamined on 51,623 adults in North America, revealing
nearly identical results with a slight mean increase of .025 in
consistency coefficients (Bar-On, 2004). An overall retest reliability
137

examination of the EQ-i is .72 for males (n=73) and .80 for females
(n=279) at six months (Bar-On, 2004). Other researchers around the
world have reported similar findings regarding the reliability of the EQ-i
(e.g., Matthews et al., 2002; Newsome et al., 2000; Petrides &
Furnham, 2000). These findings compare favorably with those of other
measures of this construct.

To summarize, the findings presented here demonstrate that there is

good consistency within the factorial components of this model as well
as stability over time.

The construct validity of the EQ-i

confirms that the Bar-On model is
describing ESI

In order to demonstrate that a concept is robust, one must first show

that it is actually describing what it was designed to describe. This is
usually done by examining its construct validity. There are a number of
basic approaches to examining the construct validity of psychometric
and conceptual models (Anastasi, 1988). The approach that I have
adopted was to simply demonstrate that the EQ-i correlates higher
with other measures of ESI than with measures of other constructs
such as cognitive intelligence and personality. As will be shown, the
findings confirm that the EQ-i has the least amount of overlap with
tests of cognitive tests. This is followed by findings indicating a greater
degree of overlap with personality tests. And the greatest degree of
domain overlap exists between the EQ-i and other ESI measures.

In an effort to examine the divergent construct validity of the Bar-On

model, the EQ-i has been concomitantly administered with various
measures of cognitive intelligence (including the Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale, Progressive Raven Matrix, and the General Adult
Mental Ability Scale) to a total of 4,218 individuals in six studies (Bar138

On, 2004). The results indicate that there is only minimal overlap
between the EQ-i and tests of cognitive (academic) intelligence, which
was expected in that this instrument was not designed or intended to
assess this type of performance.
This finding is also confirmed by David Van Rooy and his colleagues
(Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004; Van Rooy et al., 2004; D. L. Van Rooy,
personal communication from April 2003), who suggests that no more
than 4% of the variance of the EQ-i can be explained by cognitive
intelligence according to a recent meta-analysis including 10 studies
(n>5,000). In addition to shedding light on the construct validity of the
Bar-On model and measure of ESI (i.e., what it is and is not describing),
these findings indicate that emotional-social intelligence and cognitive
intelligence are not strongly related and are most likely separate
constructs.
Not only is this assumption statistically supported by findings
presented by me and others (Bar-On, 2004; Van Rooy & Viswesvaran,
2004; Van Rooy et al., 2004), but there is also neurological evidence
suggesting that the neural centers governing emotional-social
intelligence and those governing cognitive intelligence are located in
different areas of the brain. More succinctly, the ventromedial
prefrontal cortex(12) appears to be governing basic aspects of ESI
(Bar-On et al., 2003; Bechara & Bar-On, in press; Lane & McRae, 2004),
while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thought to govern key
aspects of cognitive functioning (Duncan, 2001).

Subsequent to submitting their pioneering meta-analysis of emotional

intelligence for publication in December 2002, Van Rooy and
Viswesvaran expanded the number of studies in their original analysis
of the construct validity of emotional intelligence. Their most recent
meta-analysis suggests that the degree of overlap between the EQ-i
and personality tests is probably no more than 15% based on 8 studies
in which more than 1,700 individuals participated (D. L. Van Rooy,
personal communication from April 2003). This overlap is smaller than
was previously thought and strongly suggests that the EQ-i must be
measuring something else other than personality traits. It also makes
sense that the EQ-i is not measuring personality traits, because the 15
emotional and social competencies, skills and facilitators that it
measures

139

(a) Increase almost continuously from childhood to the end of the

fourth decade of life as was previously mentioned,
(b) They can also be significantly increased within a matter of a few
weeks as a result of training (Bar-On, 2003, 2004); personality traits
are simply not as malleable as these competencies, skills and
facilitators appear to be.
When this small degree of overlap with personality is coupled with the
even smaller degree of overlap with cognitive intelligence, the large
unexplained variance that remains logically suggests that the EQ-i is
measuring something else other than these constructs; and based on
what is presented below, I argue that a substantial amount of this
unexplained variance in the Bar-On model and measure can be
explained by a larger domain overlap which is observed when the EQ-i
is correlated with other measures of ESI. More precisely, the degree of
significant overlap between the EQ-i and these other measures of ESI is
nearly twice as high as that explained by personality and cognitive
intelligence combined.

In order to examine the convergent construct validity of the Bar-On

model and measure, the correlation between the EQ-i and other ESI
instruments was evaluated. In another publication (2004), I have
summarized the major findings related to the convergent construct
validity of the EQ-i based on 13 studies in which a total of 2,417
individuals participated. These findings indicate that the degree of
domain overlap between the EQ-i and other measures of ESI is about
36%, which is substantial when evaluating construct validity (Anastasi,
1988). When compared with a 4% overlap with IQ tests and a 15%
overlap with personality tests, it is obvious that the EQ-i is measuring
what these other ESI measures are measuring (i.e., emotional-social
intelligence) rather than cognitive intelligence or personality traits.

The above findings suggest that EQ-i possesses good construct validity
i.e., for the most part, this instrument is measuring what it was
designed to measure. This suggests that the Bar-On model is a valid
concept of ESI in that it is describing key aspects of emotional-social
intelligence rather than other psychological constructs such as
cognitive intelligence or personality. Empirically demonstrating this
point (Bar-On, 2004) is thought to dispel what some psychologists have
140

assumed regarding the Bar-On conceptual and psychometric model

and have prematurely concluded based on less extensive and
conclusive findings (e.g., Brackett & Mayer, 2003; Matthews et al.,
2002; Newsome et al., 2000). Other measures of ESI, such as the ECI
and MSCEIT, have not yet examined construct validity as robustly as
has been done with the EQ-i on larger and more diverse samples.

When the findings related to the EQ-i are compared with the actual
degree of domain overlap between ability-based measures of ESI and
tests of cognitive intelligence as well as personality (Van Rooy &
Viswesvaran, 2004; Van Rooy et al., 2004), the accuracy,
meaningfulness and usefulness of dichotomously describing these
measures as either mixed or (non-mixed) ability models come into
question. On the one hand, the EQ-i overlaps with cognitive
intelligence and personality tests no more than 20% while the degree
of overlap between the MSCEIT and these types of tests does not
exceed 15% (Bar-On, 2004; Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004; Van Rooy
et al., 2004; D. L. Van Rooy, personal communication from April 2003).

In other words, the vast majority of the variance of both conceptual

and psychometric models (80% and 85% respectively) is not explained
by personality and/or by cognitive intelligence. Therefore, the mixed
characteristic used by some (Mayer et al., 2000) to describe some of
these models, exists in all such models and measures in that they all
overlap with personality traits and cognitive intelligence to some
extent, but the actual difference between them within this small
degree of overlap does not justify using descriptors such as mixed
versus abilities as a meaningful way of categorizing these models
and measures. All models of human behavior are influenced at least to
some extent by a mixed cross-section of bio-psycho-social predictors
and facilitators including biomedical predispositions and conditions,
cognitive intelligence, personality, motivation and environmental
influences.

141

The Bar-On model of ESI predicts

various
aspects
of
human
performance
In addition to demonstrating that the Bar-On model is able to describe
what it is meant to describe (ESI), it must also be shown that it is
capable of predicting various aspects of human behavior, performance
and effectiveness in order to argue that it represents a robust and
viable concept. The best way of doing this is to examine its predictive
validity (i.e., the predictive validity of the psychometric instrument that
measures the Bar-On conceptual model).

In various publications, I have described 20 predictive validity studies

to date that have been conducted on a total of 22,971 individuals who
completed the EQ-i in seven countries around the world. These
publications shed a great deal of light on the predictive validity of the
EQ-i by examining its ability to predict performance in social
interactions, at school and in the workplace as well as its impact on
physical health, psychological health, self-actualization and subjective
well-being (Bar-On, 1997b, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005; Bar-On, et al.,
2005; Krivoy et al., 2000). Based on these findings, the average
predictive validity coefficient is .59, which suggests that the Bar-On
model is indeed able to predict various aspects of human performance.
Summarized below are the major findings related to the predictive
ability of this conceptual and psychometric model.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and physical health.

142

Three studies (Bar-On, 2004; Krivoy et al., 2000) suggest that there is
a moderate yet significant relationship between ESI and physical
health.
In the first study (Krivoy at al., 2000), the EQ-i results of 35 adolescent
cancer survivors were compared with those of a control group
comprising 35 randomly selected adolescents from the local normative
population sample. In addition to revealing significant differences
between the two groups with respect to overall ESI, the most powerful
EQ-i subscale that was able to distinguish between the experimental
and control groups was Optimism, which is an important facilitator of
emotionally and socially intelligent behavior as was previously
mentioned.

In another study conducted by me (2004), 3,571 adults completed the

EQ-i and responded to the following question: I feel good about my
health in general. This question was meant to provide a self-perceived
assessment of physical health so that I could examine the degree to
which it may be influenced by emotional-social intelligence. The results
of a multiple regression analysis rendered an overall correlation of .49.

In a recent study (Bar-On & Fund, 2004), a population sample of 2,514

male recruits in the Israeli Defense Forces completed the EQ-i in the
beginning of their tour of duty. From this sample, 91 recruits were
identified as having medical profiles indicating mild or minor health
problems that allowed them to continue to serve in the military with
very few limitations. An additional 42 recruits were found, who were
shown to have more severe medical problems, yet not severe enough
to justify a medical discharge.
I then randomly selected an additional group of 42 recruits from the
sample (n=2,514) who did not receive a medical profile and were thus
considered to be physically healthy. This procedure created three
groups representing three different levels of physical health. A multiple
regression analysis was applied to the data, using the three different
levels of physical health as the dependent variable and the recruits
scores on the 15 EQ-i subscales as the independent variables. The
analysis rendered an overall correlation of .37 suggesting a lowmoderate yet significant relationship between ESI and physical health
for the sample studied.
143

Based on the most powerful EQ-i scales that surfaced in these studies,
it appears that
(a) The ability to be aware of oneself,
(b) The ability to manage emotions and handle stress,
(c) The ability to solve problems of a personal and interpersonal
nature, and
(d) The ability to maintain an optimistic disposition are significantly
related to physical health.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and psychological health.
In one of the first studies that examined the relationship between ESI
and psychological health, the EQ-i scores of 418 psychiatric patients
were compared with matched control groups in Argentina, Israel, South
Africa and the United States (Bar-On, 1997b). In addition to significant
differences in overall ESI, the EQ-i scores revealed significant
differences on most of the scales between the clinical samples and
control groups.

In a more recent study, which included a sample of 2,514 males who

completed the EQ-i at the time of their induction into the Israeli
Defense Forces, I identified 152 recruits who were eventually
discharged for psychiatric reasons (2003). I then randomly selected an
additional group of 152 among 241 who were diagnosed with less
severe psychiatric disturbances that allowed them to continue their
tour of duty with relatively few limitations.
The EQ-i scores of these two groups were compared with a randomly
selected group of 152 recruits within the same population sample
(n=2,514) who did not receive a psychiatric profile during the entire
period of their military service. This created three groups representing
three different levels of psychological health:

144

(a) Individuals who were so severely disturbed that they were

incapable of serving a full tour of duty,
(b) Individuals who received less severe psychiatric profiles which
allowed them to continue active military service until completion, and
(c) Individuals who completed their military service without having
received a psychiatric profile. A multiple regression analysis was
applied to examine the degree of impact of ESI on psychological
health; the results revealed a moderate yet significant relationship
between the two.
The findings from these studies suggest that the most powerful ESI
competencies, skills and facilitators that impact psychological health
are
(a) The ability to manage emotions and cope with stress,
(b) The drive to accomplish personal goals in order to actualize ones
inner potential and lead a more meaningful life,
(c) The ability to verify feelings and thinking.

This particular constellation of findings makes sense, because

deficiencies in these specific competencies may lead to anxiety (an
inability to adequately manage emotions), depression (an inability to
accomplish personal goals and lead a more meaningful life) and
problems related to reality testing (an inability to adequately verify
feelings and thinking) respectively. It is also compelling that such
deficiencies, in one form or another, are pathognomic for most
psychiatric disturbances (American Psychiatric Association, 1994); and
if not directly pathogenic, they are most likely significant contributors
to these disturbances. Moreover, tranquilizers, anti-depressants and
neuroleptics (anti-psychotics) represent three of the four major
classifications of psychotropic drugs that have been traditionally
administered for treating these specific disturbances (Kaplan & Sadock,
1991).
The findings presented here compare quite favorably with other ESI
measures.

145

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and social interaction.
In addition to a number of older studies that have indicated a
significant relationship between ESI and social interaction (Bar-On,
1988, 1997b, 2000], a recent examination of an older dataset sheds
new light on the nature of this relationship. When the EQ-i was normed
in North America (Bar-On, 1997b), 533 participants in the normative
sample completed the 16PF in addition to the EQ-i. Factor H on the
16PF assesses the extent to which one seeks out friendly, genial and
positive relationships with others (Cattell et al., 1970). This factor was
selected as the dependent variable, and the 15 EQ-i subscales were
selected as the independent variables; and the results of applying a
multiple regression analysis of the data suggested that ESI, as
conceptualized by the Bar-On model, relates very significantly with
social interaction (.69). This strongly indicates that ESI has a
substantial impact on and can predict the nature of interpersonal
interaction. These findings compare quite favorable with those
generated by other measures of ESI.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and performance at school.
In contrast to a study conducted by Newsome et al. in 2000 that did
not reveal a statistically significant relationship between EQ-i scores
and performance at school, four major studies conducted on much
larger samples in South Africa, Canada and the United States (Bar-On,
1997b, 2003; Parker et al., 2004; Swart, 1996) clearly indicate that
such a relationship exists. Moreover, these results confirm that the BarOn model is capable of identifying and predicting who will perform well
at school and who will not.

In a path analysis conducted by James Parker and his colleagues on

667 Canadian high school students (2004), the overall degree of
correlation between ESI and scholastic performance was found to be
.41 indicating a moderate yet statistically significant relationship
between them. This means that at least 17% of scholastic performance
is a function of emotional-social intelligence in addition to cognitive
intelligence. These findings suggest that the Bar-On model is capable
146

of identifying those students who will perform well and those who will
experience problems.

Findings from a study conducted on 448 university students in South

Africa indicated that there is a significant difference in ESI between
successful and unsuccessful students (Swart, 1996). These results
were confirmed by an additional study conducted on 1,125 university
students in the United States, which was described by me in 1997. In
both studies, the more successful students were found to be the more
emotionally and socially intelligent. More specifically, the ability to
manage ones emotions, to be able to validate ones feelings and to
solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature are important
for being academically successful; additionally, academic performance
appears to be facilitated by being able to set personal goals as well as
to be sufficiently optimistic and self-motivated to accomplish them.

More recently, Claude Marchessault examined the impact of EQ-i

scores on the grade point average (GPA) of 106 first-year university
students in an American university (C. Marchessault, personal
communication from the 7 th of January 2005). The students
completed the EQ-i in the beginning of the academic year, and their
GPA was calculated during the middle of the year. Multiple regression
analysis revealed a correlation of .45, which once again confirms a
significant relationship between ESI and performance in school. The
students EQ-i scores will be compared with their GPA at the end of the
academic year as well, and the findings will later be published.

The importance of developing and applying ESI performance models in

the school setting is that they will be helpful in identifying students
who are in need of guided intervention. Comparing the students EQ-i
results with such performance models will provide a scientific way of
pinpointing their ESI strengths and weaknesses. Based on the results
to date, the enhancement of the weaker ESI competencies and skills is
expected to increase performance at school.

147

The findings presented here compare quite favorably with those

generated by other ESI measures.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and performance in the
workplace.
In six studies that I and my colleagues have conducted, summarized
and cited over the past few years (Bar-On, 1997b, 2004; Bar-On et al.,
2005; Handley, 1997; Ruderman & Bar-On, 2003), the EQ-i has
demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between ESI and
occupational performance.
In the first known study that directly examined the relationship
between ESI and occupational performance, the EQ-i scores of 1,171
US Air Force recruiters were compared with their ability to meet annual
recruitment quotas (Handley, 1997; Bar-On et al., 2005). Based on
USAF criteria, they were divided into those who were able to meet at
least 100% of their annual quota (high performers) and those who
met less than 80% (low performers), representing a very robust
method of assessing occupational performance.
A discriminant function analysis indicated that EQ-i scores were able to
fairly accurately identify high and low performers, demonstrating that
the relationship between ESI and occupational performance is high
(.53) based on the sample studied. Prior to 1996, it was costing the
USAF approximately $ 3 million for an average 100 mismatches a year.
After one year of combining pre-employment ESI screening with
interviewing and comparing EQ-i scores with the model for successful
recruiters, they increased their ability to predict successful recruiters
by nearly threefold, dramatically reduced first-year attrition due to
mismatches and cut their financial loses by approximately 92%. Based
on these results, the US General Accounting Office submitted a
Congressional Report to the Senate Committee on Armed Services
praising the USAFs use of ESI screening (United States General
Accounting Office, 1998).

148

In two other studies, performance in highly stressful and potentially

dangerous occupations was studied by comparing EQ-i scores with
externally rated performance for a sample of 335 regular combat
soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and for an additional sample
of 240 soldiers in an elite IDF unit (Bar-On et al., 2005). Both studies
clearly revealed a significant relationship between ESI and this specific
type of occupational performance; the predictive validity coefficient in
the former study was .55 and .51 in the latter.

In three additional studies described by me (Bar-On, 2004; Bar-On et

al., 2005), leadership was studied by examining the relationship
between EQ-i scores and peer-nomination in one study (i.e., those
considered to possess leadership capacity among new recruits in the
IDF), criterion group membership in another study (i.e., IDF recruits
who were accepted to officer training versus those who were not) and
multi rater evaluations in the third study which was conducted at the
Center for Creative Leadership in the US (i.e., ratings on 21 different
leadership criteria made by an average of seven to eight coworkers).
The results indicated, respectively, that there is a moderate to high
relationship between ESI and leadership based on the predictive
validity coefficients of .39 (n=536), .49 (n=940) and .82 (n=236) that
were revealed. The third study shows that successful leadership is
based to large extent on emotional-social intelligence -- approximately
two-thirds (67%) to be exact.

The average predictive validity coefficient for the six studies described
above is .54, meaning that nearly 30% of the variance of occupational
performance is based on ESI as described by the Bar-On model. When
compared with Wagners extensive meta-analysis that revealed that
cognitive intelligence accounts for approximately 6% of occupational
performance (1997), the findings presented here suggest that EQ
accounts for about five times more variance than IQ when explaining
this type of performance. The findings indicate that high performers in
the workplace have significantly higher ESI than low performers. It is
interesting to note that in one of the studies described above (Bar-On
et al., 2005), the results suggest that the EQ-i was able to predict
performance quite well (.55) even over a period of 18 months.

149

The findings described here suggest that the most powerful ESI
contributors to occupational performance are:
(a) The ability to be aware of and accept oneself;
(b) The ability to be aware of others feelings, concerns and needs;
(c) The ability to manage emotions;
(d) The ability to be realistic and put things in correct perspective; and
(e) The ability to have a positive disposition.
Based on the findings presented here, the EQ-i compares quite
favorable with other ESI measures in predicting occupational
performance.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the process of striving to actualize ones potential
capacity, abilities and talents. It requires the ability and drive to set
and achieve goals, and it is characterized by being involved in and
feeling committed to various interests and pursuits. Self-actualization
is thought to be a life-long effort leading to an enriched and
meaningful life. It is not merely performance but an attempt to do
ones best.
In a reexamination of an older dataset used in my doctoral research
(1988), I recently ran a multiple regression analysis to study the impact
of ESI competencies, skills and facilitators on self-actualization. A
subset of 67 South African university students were identified within
the dataset who concomitantly completed an earlier version of the EQ-i
and the Personal Orientation Inventory (Shostrom, 1974) which is a
popularly used measure of self-actualization. The I Scale, which
captures 85% of the POIs items, was designated the dependent
variable while the EQ-i subscale scores were identified as the
independent variables. The results indicated that ESI significantly
impacts self-actualization (.64).
Three additional studies have also examined this relationship (Bar-On,
2001). Large samples were studied in the Netherlands (n=1,639),
150

Israel (n=2,702) and North America (n=3,831). The results from these
studies confirm the South African study indicating that ESI strongly
impacts self-actualization with multiple regression correlations
reaching .78, .75 and .80 for the Dutch, Israeli and American samples
respectively. It is equally interesting to note that the relationship
between cognitive intelligence and self-actualization for the Israeli
sample (.02) and the Dutch sample (.08) was not statistically
significant (Bar-On, 2001). This means that it is emotional-social
intelligence much more than cognitive intelligence that influences
ones ability to do ones best, to accomplish goals and to actualize
ones potential to its fullest. Evidently a high IQ does not guarantee
that one will actualize ones potential, but a high EQ is definitely more
important in this respect.

A very similar model surfaced in each of the above-mentioned studies

regarding the ability of ESI to predict self-actualization. In addition to
being sufficiently motivated to set and accomplish personal goals, selfactualization depends, first and foremost, on a deep sense of selfawareness and understanding of who one is, what one wants to do, can
do and enjoys doing. Self-actualization also depends upon good
problem solving for making sound independent decisions regarding
what one wants to do, and then being assertive enough to follow
through with these personal decisions. Additionally, one must be
optimistic and positive to more fully actualize ones potential and lead
a more meaningful life based on the findings of these studies.

The relationship between the Bar-On

model and subjective well-being.
In a recent study (Bar-On, 2005), it has been demonstrated that ESI,
as conceptualized by the Bar-On model, also impacts subjective wellbeing. Well-being was defined in this study as a subjective state that
emerges from a feeling of satisfaction
(a) With ones physical health and oneself as a person,
(b) With ones close interpersonal relationships, and

151

(c) With ones occupation and financial situation.

A measure of subjective well-being was constructed from nine
questions that directly tap these three areas. On a large North
American sample (n=3,571), the relationship between ESI and wellbeing was examined with multiple regression analysis. The results
indicate that the two constructs are highly correlated (.76). Based on
the four highest ESI predictors of well-being, it appears that the
following competencies, skills and facilitators contribute the most to
this subjective state:
(a) The ability to understand and accept ones emotions and oneself,
(b) The ability to strive to set and achieve personal goals to enhance
ones potential, and
(c) The ability to verify ones feelings and put things in their correct
perspective.
These findings are substantially higher than those generated by other
ESI measures.
The findings presented here suggest that the Bar-On model is a better
predictor of human performance than the other existing models,
especially when compared with the ability model as some have
assumed was the case (Matthews et al., 2002). It also appears to
predict a wider range of performance than the other ESI models based
on the current literature (e.g., Geher, 2004).

The Bar-On model is teachable and

learnable
After demonstrating that the Bar-On model of ESI significantly impacts
various aspects of human performance, it is logical to ask if
emotionally and socially intelligent behavior can be enhanced in order
to improve performance as well as self-actualization and subjective
well-being. To address this question empirically, the findings from four
studies are briefly summarized below to show that emotionally and
socially intelligent behavior can be enhanced in school, the workplace
and in the clinical setting.

152

Over the past few years, children in a growing number of schools

throughout the United States have been introduced to the SelfScience curriculum that was developed by Karen Stone-McCown and
her colleagues 40 years ago (1998). In light of the fact that this project
is ongoing and the results are still being analyzed, I would like to focus
on one of the most successful examples that have surfaced to date
which reveals the potential of this endeavor. The specific example is a
7 th grade class of 26 children whose average age was 12 years at the
time of the study (Freedman, 2003). They were tested with the youth
version of the EQ-i (the EQ-i:YV) in the beginning of the school year
2002-2003 and again at the end of the school year. A comparison of
the pre- and post-intervention assessments suggests that the
childrens emotional-social intelligence increased significantly after
receiving one year of this ESI-enriching curriculum. At the end of the
year, the children were better able to understand and express
themselves, understand and relate with others, manage and control
their emotions, and adapt to their immediate environment at school.

These significant changes suggest that this and similar educational

programs can make a difference and that the Bar-On model can
accurately monitor and measure these changes. What needs to be
done in such studies in the future is to examine pre- and postintervention behavioral parameters to see if positive changes have
occurred such as better school attendance, higher scholastic
performance, less violence, fewer incidents of drug abuse and teen
pregnancy, and so forth.
One of the most interesting studies which demonstrates that
emotionally and socially intelligent behavior can be enhanced in adults
was conducted by Sjlund and Gustafsson in Sweden (2001). They
compared the EQ-i scores of 29 individuals before and after they
participated in a workshop designed to increase managerial skills. At
the time the workshop was conducted in 2000, most of the participants
were in their early 40s and had approximately 15 years of managerial
experience. Among other skills, they were taught techniques designed
to strengthen ESI competencies thought to be important for their work
as managers; and these specific competencies and skills were those
described in the Bar-On model. Not only did their total EQ score
increase from a mean of 97 to 106 (p-level<.000), but 9 out of the 15
EQ-i subscales increased significantly as well. The two ESI
competencies which increased the most as a result their participation
in the workshop were emotional self-awareness and empathy, which
153

many consider to be the two most important components of emotionalsocial intelligence. Another interesting outcome was that those
participants who began the workshop with the lowest EQ-i scores were
the ones who made the most progress. Kate Cannon, who developed
this program, confirmed similar findings based on her experience in
conducting these workshops in the United States (Bar-On, 2003). This
is particularly important and encouraging, because the people with the
lowest EQ scores are the ones who need to improve their ESI
competencies the most.
At a c onference on emotional intelligence held in Nova Scotia in 2003,
Geetu Orme presented findings from the individual coaching she has
been providing to corporate executives in the UK since 1999. She
assessed 47 executives with the EQ-i before she began coaching them
and then a number of months following the completion of the weekly
sessions that were provided. Her coaching was based on strengthening
the weaker ESI factors that were identified by their EQ-i scores. The
five EQ-i subscale scores that revealed the most significant changes
were the following: Self-Regard (87 to 95), Self-Actualization (92 to
102), Stress Tolerance (97 to 102), Reality-Testing (97 to 109) and
Happiness (93 to 100).
In addition to the classroom and workplace, there is also evidence that
ESI competencies and skills can be enhanced in the clinical setting.
Using an earlier version of the EQ-i, a graduate student at the
University of Pretoria tested a group of 58 patients who were
hospitalized for myocardial infarct (Dunkley, 1996). Subsequent to
being tested, 22 of these patients were randomly selected to
participate in a stress management program. The program included
instructions on how to better identify sources of stress in their lives and
to apply more effective ways to cope with these situations. The EQ-i
was administered a second time five weeks after completing this
program. In addition to significant changes in the total EQ score (92
versus 102, t-value=-5.47, p-level=.000), nine of the subscale scores
revealed statistically significant changes. Taking into consideration the
primary purpose of this stress management program, it is not
surprising that the ESI competency that changed the most as a result
of this training was Stress Tolerance (the ability to manage emotions);
this is even more important when one considers that stress is
considered to be one of the major psychosocial factors that impact
cardiovascular disturbances such as myocardial infarct. Most of the EQi scores for the patients who participated in the stress management
program were significantly higher than the scores obtained by those
who did not participate in the program.
154

The results from these studies suggest that the ESI factors described
by the Bar-On model are both teachable and learnable, and that these
factors can be enhanced by relatively simple didactic methods over a
relatively short period of time.

Discussion
The findings presented in this article have shown that emotional-social
intelligence, as conceptualized by the Bar-On model, is a multi-factorial
array of interrelated emotional and social competencies, skills and
facilitators that influence ones ability to recognize, understand and
manage emotions, to relate with others, to adapt to change and solve
problems of a personal and interpersonal nature, and to efficiently
cope with daily demands, challenges and pressures. It has also been
shown that the development of this model has been rigorous, and that
the outcome of this process has produced a valid concept and measure
of ESI. Not only is this model consistent and stable over time and
across cultures, but it is also capable of describing the construct it was
designed to describe (emotional-social intelligence). The importance
and usefulness of Bar-On model has also been demonstrated by
examining its ability to predict various aspects of human behavior and
performance. Furthermore, showing that the concept is both teachable
and learnable and that the ESI factors involved can be enhanced
underscores the importance and usefulness of this model.
The studies presented need to be replicated in more diverse settings. It
is important to continue to study this model in order to learn how best
to apply it at home, school and work. Future studies should use a wide
variety of methods to examine the relationship between the Bar-On
model and an even wider variety of human performance. In light of the
fact that all of the studies presented were cross-sectional moreover,
future research should also attempt to longitudinally examine this
model and its ability to describe ESI and predict human performance
over time; and it was explained that such a study is presently
underway. It is particularly important to continue to examine ESI and
its predictive validity across cultures in an effort to better evaluate its
applicability in parenting, education, work and healthcare worldwide.
Hopefully, this model and the findings it has generated will more
routinely make their way into the home, school and workplace. Parents
and educators can benefit from this by raising and educating children
to be more emotionally and socially intelligent, effective and
productive from an early age onward. Human resources personnel in
155

organizations could also make more widespread use of this model and
measure in hiring, training and succession planning in order to increase
individual effectiveness and organizational productivity. Furthermore,
healthcare practitioners could benefit from focusing on the abovementioned ESI components of the Bar-On model in diagnostic, remedial
and preventive work. Such an approach could be used in mapping out
those ESI areas that need to be enhanced in order to increase
individual effectiveness, self-actualization and general well-being.
One particular ESI model, no matter how valid, robust and viable it
might be, describes only a limited view of the individuals capacity for
emotionally and socially intelligent behavior. In order to provide a more
complete and comprehensive description of the capacity for this type
of behavior, we should consider creating an expanded model that
incorporates the best conceptual and psychometric aspects of existing
ESI models. As such, a future challenge in this field is to explore how
best to create a multi-dimensional model that captures both the
potential (or ability) for emotionally and socially intelligent behavior as
well as a self-report and multi-rater assessment of this type of
behavior. Our ability to more fully describe ESI will be incomplete until
we succeed in creating such a multi-dimensional and multi-modal
approach. By applying an expanded model of ESI, we will eventually be
more effective in mapping out this construct, evaluating its importance
and understanding how best to apply it. Encouraging such an approach
is also the best way to discourage the proliferation of ungrounded
theorizing that abets misconceptions and false claims of what
emotional-social intelligence is and is not and what it can and cannot
predict.

APPENDIX
The EQ-i Scales and What They Assess
EQ-i SCALES

The EI Competencies and Skills Assessed by

Each Scale

Intrapersonal

Self-awareness and self-expression:

Self-Regard

To accurately perceive, understand and accept

oneself.

Emotional
Awareness

Self- To be aware of and understand ones emotions.

156

Assertiveness

To effectively and constructively express ones

emotions and oneself.

Independence

To be self-reliant and
dependency on others.

Self-Actualization

To strive to achieve personal goals and actualize

ones potential.

Interpersonal

Social awareness and interpersonal relationship:

Empathy

To be aware of and understand how others feel.

free

of

emotional

Social Responsibility To identify with ones social group and cooperate

with others.
Interpersonal
Relationship

To establish mutually satisfying relationships and

relate well with others.

Stress Management Emotional management and regulation:

Stress Tolerance

To
effectively
emotions.

and

constructively

manage

Impulse Control

To effectively and constructively control emotions.

Adaptability

Change management:

Reality-Testing

To objectively validate ones feelings and thinking

with external reality.

Flexibility

To adapt and adjust ones feelings and thinking to

new situations.

Problem-Solving

To effectively solve problems of a personal and

interpersonal nature.

General Mood

Self-motivation:

Optimism

To be positive and look at the brighter side of life.

Happiness

To feel content with oneself, others and life in

general.

157

158