- Email: [email protected]
Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth
Intelligence 32 (2004) 109 – 111
Book review Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth Gerald Matthews, Moshe Zeidner, and Richard D. Roberts (2002). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13418-7, $55.00, pp. xxi+687
Interest in intellectual constructs is often inversely related to their geocentricity and, not infrequently, to their empirical adequacy. Emotional intelligence provides an interesting example. The scholarly interest in the construct derives from an article by Salovey and Mayer (1990). The popular interest in emotional intelligence derives from Goleman’s (1995) claims about the discovery of a neglected domain of psychological functioning at least as important if not more important than the domain assessed by conventional measures of intelligence. The claims were based on proprietary research not published in peer-reviewed journals. Although researchers in this field have never endorsed Goleman’s broader claims, they have argued that they are assessing an important and hitherto overlooked area of individual differences that is central to psychological functioning. These claims are critically analyzed in Matthews, Zeidner, and Robert’s magisterial overview of the field. The book exhibits three virtues not always present in the literature dealing with emotional intelligence: it is psychometrically sophisticated; it is grounded in an understanding of emotion and its interface with personality and cognition; and it exemplifies an appropriate skepticism with respect to scientifically suspect generalizations. It is easy to be seduced by the term myth that appears in the subtitle of the book. Yes, the authors deal with many aspects of the field that they believe are based on inadequate empirical foundations. But the book is much more that this. It contains a theoretical analysis of emotions and the ways in which individual differences in emotional functioning may contribute to performance in diverse social settings. There are valuable chapters dealing with the biological and cognitive aspects of emotion. And there are chapters dealing with maladjustment and interventions designed to increase emotional intelligence that will be of interest to applied researchers and clinicians. The book presents a critique of two types of individual difference measures of emotional intelligence. One type of measure, exemplified by the Bar-On Emotional Quotient test (EQ-i), is based on selfreports. This test, like most self-report measures in the domain of personality, is closely related to conventional measures of the Big Five personality traits. Dawda and Hart (2000) reported correlations between total scores on the Bar-On measure and N, E, A, and C for males of .62, .52, .43, and .51, respectively. The correlations for female subjects were comparable. Although the Bar-On measure is substantially related to the Big Five, its distinctive theoretical conceptualization may have propaedeutic value and it may exhibit incremental validity for such emotionally relevant behaviors as response to mood inductions (see Petrides & Furnham, 2003). doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(03)00059-X
110
Book review
The second type of measure, exemplified by the latest version of emotional intelligence tests developed by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (MSCEIT), is assumed to be closer to traditional ability measures that include items that have a correct answer. MSCEIT correlates .36 with the Bar-On test. Thus, these tests are not measures of the same construct. Matthews et al. indicate that MSCEIT does not exhibit a completely satisfactory psychometric profile. The reliabilities of the scales on the test are moderate (mean Cronbach’s alpha=.71), and the factor structure of the test’s four branches (Emotional Identification/Perception, Assimilation of Emotions, Understanding Emotions, and Managing Emotions) is not well defined by the existing subscales of the test. Quite apart form the psychometric adequacy of the test—a problem that might be improved with additional test refinements—there are more fundamental issues that are germane to the attempt to measure emotional intelligence using a performance test. Although MSCEIT is assumed to be an ability measure, there are several respects in which it is unlike a conventional ability measure. Part of the test involves the selection of appropriate responses for illdefined social situations. The correct answer is defined by consensus or by the consensus judgment of experts. The determination of a correct response to most ability items is not a matter of consensus but is a function of some external criterion. A person who has extremely high cognitive intelligence provides nonconsensual answers to difficult items. An examination of some of the items on the test indicates that they do not really have correct answers. Consider the answer to an item about a person who asks to eat lunch with a colleague. He chooses a table apart from other diners and, after a time he informs his colleague that he wants to tell him about something that is on his mind. He has submitted a false resume´ that permitted him to obtain a job that he would not otherwise have obtained. The test taker is asked to evaluate the following response. Ask him how he feels about it so you can ask him what is going on. Offer to help him, but do not push yourself on him if he really does not want any of your help. In several crucial respects, relevant information that would permit one to determine an appropriate response (if one exists) is omitted. The status of the employees and their relationship to one another is not presented. The appropriate action may be contingent on the personality of the person requesting assistance, or of the person providing assistance, or of their dyadic characteristics. Subtle judgments of the intentions of the worker requesting assistance may be required to determine the appropriate response. Is the worker seeking an exploration of his personality to understand the reasons for his actions? Is he seeking an exploration of the personnel policies of the firm in which he works? Or, perhaps, he wishes to explore the ethical implications of his actions. A determination of the appropriate response may be contingent on the ability to understand cues revealed in the body language and speech of the person. This information is not fully present in the vignette presented to the respondent. Tests such as the MSCEIT might be improved by the use of videotapes to provide a richer set of emotional cues to the respondent, although it is hard to see how this technology might be used to assess intrapersonal aspects of emotional intelligence. Even if respondents are presented with the information required to reach a decision about the correct response, the judgment of the appropriate response may depend on the ideological commitments of the individuals or experts providing consensus judgments. Psychoanalytically oriented theorists, rational emotive therapists, and ordained religious counselors might well provide different answers to the evaluation of a response. Finally, there is a distinction between knowledge and action. Conventional ability measures are performance measures. A person taking a vocabulary test is tested on his or her knowledge of the meaning of words: The test and the performance are seamlessly integrated. An expert in the definition of words, a lexicographer, would score high on a vocabulary test and would be able to define words accurately. By contrast, expert knowledge of appropriate emotional behaviors
Book review
111
might not enable a person to respond in an emotionally appropriate manner. An emotionally inept scholar of emotion is not an oxymoronic amalgam of expertise and action. Interest in emotional intelligence has been increasing over the last decade. Tentative efforts to measure individual differences in emotional intelligence have not produced evidence of a trait that relates to important life outcomes. There is little or no research indicating that existing measures of emotional intelligence have incremental predictive validity for important outcomes over and above measures of intelligence and personality. It is not clear whether subsequent research based on existing tests will provide strong evidence for the construct of emotional intelligence. It may be necessary to develop different measures. However the field develops, I believe that it will profit from the many insights contained in this book.
References Dawda, D., & Hart, S. D. (2000). Assessing emotional intelligence: Reliability and validity of the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) in university students. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 797 – 812. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence: Behavioural validation in two studies of emotion recognition and reactivity of mood induction. European Journal of Personality, 17, 39 – 57. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 185 – 211.
Nathan Brody Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 50 Walbridge Road, West Hartford, CT 06119, USA E-mail address: [email protected] 17 May 2003
Book review Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth Gerald Matthews, Moshe Zeidner, and Richard D. Roberts (2002). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13418-7, $55.00, pp. xxi+687
Interest in intellectual constructs is often inversely related to their geocentricity and, not infrequently, to their empirical adequacy. Emotional intelligence provides an interesting example. The scholarly interest in the construct derives from an article by Salovey and Mayer (1990). The popular interest in emotional intelligence derives from Goleman’s (1995) claims about the discovery of a neglected domain of psychological functioning at least as important if not more important than the domain assessed by conventional measures of intelligence. The claims were based on proprietary research not published in peer-reviewed journals. Although researchers in this field have never endorsed Goleman’s broader claims, they have argued that they are assessing an important and hitherto overlooked area of individual differences that is central to psychological functioning. These claims are critically analyzed in Matthews, Zeidner, and Robert’s magisterial overview of the field. The book exhibits three virtues not always present in the literature dealing with emotional intelligence: it is psychometrically sophisticated; it is grounded in an understanding of emotion and its interface with personality and cognition; and it exemplifies an appropriate skepticism with respect to scientifically suspect generalizations. It is easy to be seduced by the term myth that appears in the subtitle of the book. Yes, the authors deal with many aspects of the field that they believe are based on inadequate empirical foundations. But the book is much more that this. It contains a theoretical analysis of emotions and the ways in which individual differences in emotional functioning may contribute to performance in diverse social settings. There are valuable chapters dealing with the biological and cognitive aspects of emotion. And there are chapters dealing with maladjustment and interventions designed to increase emotional intelligence that will be of interest to applied researchers and clinicians. The book presents a critique of two types of individual difference measures of emotional intelligence. One type of measure, exemplified by the Bar-On Emotional Quotient test (EQ-i), is based on selfreports. This test, like most self-report measures in the domain of personality, is closely related to conventional measures of the Big Five personality traits. Dawda and Hart (2000) reported correlations between total scores on the Bar-On measure and N, E, A, and C for males of .62, .52, .43, and .51, respectively. The correlations for female subjects were comparable. Although the Bar-On measure is substantially related to the Big Five, its distinctive theoretical conceptualization may have propaedeutic value and it may exhibit incremental validity for such emotionally relevant behaviors as response to mood inductions (see Petrides & Furnham, 2003). doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(03)00059-X
110
Book review
The second type of measure, exemplified by the latest version of emotional intelligence tests developed by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (MSCEIT), is assumed to be closer to traditional ability measures that include items that have a correct answer. MSCEIT correlates .36 with the Bar-On test. Thus, these tests are not measures of the same construct. Matthews et al. indicate that MSCEIT does not exhibit a completely satisfactory psychometric profile. The reliabilities of the scales on the test are moderate (mean Cronbach’s alpha=.71), and the factor structure of the test’s four branches (Emotional Identification/Perception, Assimilation of Emotions, Understanding Emotions, and Managing Emotions) is not well defined by the existing subscales of the test. Quite apart form the psychometric adequacy of the test—a problem that might be improved with additional test refinements—there are more fundamental issues that are germane to the attempt to measure emotional intelligence using a performance test. Although MSCEIT is assumed to be an ability measure, there are several respects in which it is unlike a conventional ability measure. Part of the test involves the selection of appropriate responses for illdefined social situations. The correct answer is defined by consensus or by the consensus judgment of experts. The determination of a correct response to most ability items is not a matter of consensus but is a function of some external criterion. A person who has extremely high cognitive intelligence provides nonconsensual answers to difficult items. An examination of some of the items on the test indicates that they do not really have correct answers. Consider the answer to an item about a person who asks to eat lunch with a colleague. He chooses a table apart from other diners and, after a time he informs his colleague that he wants to tell him about something that is on his mind. He has submitted a false resume´ that permitted him to obtain a job that he would not otherwise have obtained. The test taker is asked to evaluate the following response. Ask him how he feels about it so you can ask him what is going on. Offer to help him, but do not push yourself on him if he really does not want any of your help. In several crucial respects, relevant information that would permit one to determine an appropriate response (if one exists) is omitted. The status of the employees and their relationship to one another is not presented. The appropriate action may be contingent on the personality of the person requesting assistance, or of the person providing assistance, or of their dyadic characteristics. Subtle judgments of the intentions of the worker requesting assistance may be required to determine the appropriate response. Is the worker seeking an exploration of his personality to understand the reasons for his actions? Is he seeking an exploration of the personnel policies of the firm in which he works? Or, perhaps, he wishes to explore the ethical implications of his actions. A determination of the appropriate response may be contingent on the ability to understand cues revealed in the body language and speech of the person. This information is not fully present in the vignette presented to the respondent. Tests such as the MSCEIT might be improved by the use of videotapes to provide a richer set of emotional cues to the respondent, although it is hard to see how this technology might be used to assess intrapersonal aspects of emotional intelligence. Even if respondents are presented with the information required to reach a decision about the correct response, the judgment of the appropriate response may depend on the ideological commitments of the individuals or experts providing consensus judgments. Psychoanalytically oriented theorists, rational emotive therapists, and ordained religious counselors might well provide different answers to the evaluation of a response. Finally, there is a distinction between knowledge and action. Conventional ability measures are performance measures. A person taking a vocabulary test is tested on his or her knowledge of the meaning of words: The test and the performance are seamlessly integrated. An expert in the definition of words, a lexicographer, would score high on a vocabulary test and would be able to define words accurately. By contrast, expert knowledge of appropriate emotional behaviors
Book review
111
might not enable a person to respond in an emotionally appropriate manner. An emotionally inept scholar of emotion is not an oxymoronic amalgam of expertise and action. Interest in emotional intelligence has been increasing over the last decade. Tentative efforts to measure individual differences in emotional intelligence have not produced evidence of a trait that relates to important life outcomes. There is little or no research indicating that existing measures of emotional intelligence have incremental predictive validity for important outcomes over and above measures of intelligence and personality. It is not clear whether subsequent research based on existing tests will provide strong evidence for the construct of emotional intelligence. It may be necessary to develop different measures. However the field develops, I believe that it will profit from the many insights contained in this book.
References Dawda, D., & Hart, S. D. (2000). Assessing emotional intelligence: Reliability and validity of the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) in university students. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 797 – 812. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2003). Trait emotional intelligence: Behavioural validation in two studies of emotion recognition and reactivity of mood induction. European Journal of Personality, 17, 39 – 57. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 185 – 211.
Nathan Brody Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 50 Walbridge Road, West Hartford, CT 06119, USA E-mail address: [email protected] 17 May 2003