Definition and History of "Emotional Intelligence"

Overview: In 1985 a graduate student at an alternative liberal arts college in the USA wrote a doctoral dissertation which included the term "emotional intelligence" in the title. This seems to be the first academic use of the term "emotional intelligence." In comparison to say, mathematical intelligence, it is important to note that relatively few people start out with high innate mathematical abilities and then have this ability damaged through misleading or false math training or modeling. Relatively few because in comparison to the number of emotionally sensitive children who receive unhealthy and self-destructive emotional imprinting from any number of sources. Parents and television shows don't generally teach that 2+2=968. But they do often teach emotional lessons which are as equivalent in unhealthiness as this equation is in inaccuracy. Or we might say which would be as damaging to an intimate relationship as the false equation would be to the career of an accountant. At present, all other models of emotional intelligence, including even the most "pure" of the group, combine the measurement of the innate emotional variables (sensitivity, memory, processing and learning) with the environmental affects on those same variables.

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Format: HTML | Date: Jan 2003 | Pages: 1