A New Look at Emotional Intelligence - A Dual-Process Framework

Personality and Social Psychology
Review
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A New Look at Emotional Intelligence: A Dual-Process Framework

Marina Fiori
Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2009 13: 21 originally published online 29 December 2008
DOI: 10.1177/1088868308326909
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A New Look at Emotional Intelligence:
A Dual-Process Framework
Marina Fiori
University of Illinois at Chicago
In this article, the author provides a framework to guide 2006), and Journal of Organizational Behavior
research in emotional intelligence. Studies conducted up (Ashkanasy, 2005) have devoted commentaries and spe-
to the present bear on a conception of emotional intelli- cial issues to controversial questions regarding EI, such
gence as pertaining to the domain of consciousness and as the definition of the construct, its measurement, and
investigate the construct with a correlational approach. the components that should be included in a model of
As an alternative, the author explores processes under- EI. The debate is particularly fervent because consider-
lying emotional intelligence, introducing the distinction ing the ability to deal with emotion in oneself and oth-
between conscious and automatic processing as a poten- ers as a form of intelligence is, in many ways,
tial source of variability in emotionally intelligent groundbreaking. Up to 30 years ago, the term EI would
behavior. Empirical literature is reviewed to support the have seemed like an oxymoron: Emotion and cognition
central hypothesis that individual differences in emo- were considered opposite forces, reflecting a dualistic
tional intelligence may be best understood by consider- conception of instinct and mind (Damasio, 1994).
ing the way individuals automatically process emotional Recently, research has demonstrated the interplay of
stimuli. Providing directions for research, the author emotional and cognitive processes in human functioning
encourages the integration of experimental investigation (Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2000; Phelps, 2005),
of processes underlying emotional intelligence with and the flourishing of articles on EI to some extent
correlational analysis of individual differences and reflects this paradigm shift.
fosters the exploration of the automaticity component Despite the excitement derived from considering EI as
of emotional intelligence. a novel form of intelligence, deep criticisms have also
been raised. Researchers lament broad and unclear theo-
Keywords: emotional intelligence; unconscious processes; retical definitions (Becker, 2003; Matthews, Roberts, &
dual-process models; individual differences; abil- Zeidner, 2004), lack of incremental validity (Davis,
ity model; process-oriented approach; automatic Stankov, & Roberts, 1998; Landy, 2005; Matthews,
processes; emotionally intelligent behavior; auto- Roberts, & Zeidner, 2004; Van Rooy & Viswesvaran,
maticity; awareness
2004), and poor psychometric standards of current mea-
sures of EI (Becker, 2003; Conte, 2005; Davis et al.,
1998; Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2004).
S ince the construct of emotional intelligence (EI) was
introduced in the scientific psychological literature
by Salovey and Mayer (1990), a variety of opinions
about EI as a useful psychological construct have been Authors Note: The author thanks Professor Galen Bodenhausen and
expressed, ranging from unconditional glorification, the two anonymous reviewers who assisted her in the revision process.
They have been an invaluable source of guidance, insight, and enthu-
such as that EI is the best predictor of success in life
siasm for this work. Correspondence concerning this article should be
(Goleman, 1995), to strenuous denigration, such as that addressed to Marina Fiori, Department of Psychology (MC 285),
EI is an invalid concept because individuals cannot rea- University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison St., Chicago, IL
son with emotions (Locke, 2005). From 2001 to the 60607-7137; e-mail: mfiori@uic.edu.
present, leading journals including Emotion (Phelps, PSPR, Vol. 13 No. 1, February 2009 21-44
2001), Academy of Management Review (2003, Volume DOI: 10.1177/1088868308326909
28, Issue 2), Psychological Inquiry (Martin & Erber, 2009 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
21

22 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY REVIEW
My purpose in the present article is to advance toward the most promising field of research in EI, namely
research in the field by addressing some of these concerns. ability models, I conceptualize EI as the ability to process
I propose to reconceptualize EI within the scientific emotional information by means of specific skills. Hence,
literature of social cognition and emotion, in particular I embrace the definition of Mayer and Salovey (1997)
dual-process models, and to use this framework to clar- that EI is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and
ify controversial results regarding the theoretical defini- generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand
tion and incremental validity of EI. emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively
Although attempts to ground EI within emotion and regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intel-
intelligence literature exist (Barrett & Salovey, 2002; lectual growth (p. 5). I employ their model based on the
Matthews, Zeidner et al., 2004), little attention has distinction of four subabilities or branches of EI as the
been placed on considering a literature particularly starting point of my theoretical revision.
important to the social psychologist, namely work in I investigate the possibility that Mayer and Saloveys
social cognition, and connecting it to research on EI. (1997) model may be improved by positing that con-
Furthermore, most research in EI has been conducted scious and automatic processes come into play. I employ
with a differential approach, overlooking the psycho- the theoretical framework of dual-process models
logical processes underlying individual differences in EI. which assume that behavior depends on the interplay of
I contend that the distinction between conscious and automatic and conscious processesto describe
automatic processing in emotional experience is funda- processes underlying EI and integrate it with the analy-
mental to both understanding the psychological dynam- sis of individual differences in EI.
ics of EI and accounting for additional variability in Throughout the article, the term automatic is used
emotional intelligent behaviors. with a generic connotation; it indicates processes that
possess one or more characteristics of automaticity:
unintentionality, efficiency, uncontrollability, and
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND unawareness. As the level of discussion requires a more
fine-grained approach to automaticity, I introduce a
Two schools of thought characterize the current litera- specific terminology to refer to different aspects of auto-
ture on EI. On one hand, ability models conceive EI as a matic processing.
form of intelligence, encompassing abilities to manage This article is organized as follows: I first present an
emotions (e.g., Mayer & Salovey, 1997). On the other overview of Mayer and Saloveys (1997) EI model, elu-
hand, mixed models conceptualize EI as represented by a cidating how their theorization lacks attention to
wider range of skills, including competence and traits such processes that may be involved in EI, in particular auto-
as zeal, persistence, and self-control (e.g., Bar-On, 1997; matic processes. I then support the hypothesis that auto-
Goleman, 1995). Approaches differ with respect to not matic processes play a role in EI by describing research
only the definition of EI but also its assessment. Whereas that shows automaticity in emotional processing and its
ability models rely on performance measures, mixed effect on behavior. I next introduce a reconceptualiza-
models mainly use self-report questionnaires. In perfor- tion of EI according to a process-oriented approach,
mance measures, a correct answer may be identified: with particular attention to a dual-process framework,
Individuals are asked to pick from a list which emotion in which I suggest that individual differences in EI may
best describes how a person is feeling in a hypothetical sit- be associated with differences in the way conscious and
uation. In contrast, self-report measures allow for a vari- automatic processing operates in high- and low-EI indi-
ety of answers: Individuals are asked to indicate how good viduals. Specifically, I propose to focus the attention on
they are at identifying other peoples emotions. In this processes characterized by lack of awareness, named
case, there is no correct answerthe emotion describing unconscious processes, and to distinguish the psycho-
the persons feelingbut individuals are allowed to logical mechanisms associated to the presence or
express their opinion, modulating it on a Likert-type scale. absence of awareness as a way to understand the auto-
Research reveals that the mixed models of EI are most maticity component of EI. I finally discuss assessment
susceptible to criticism (Brackett & Mayer, 2003; methods aligned with the reconceptualization of EI and
Brackett, Mayer, & Warner, 2004; Caruso, Mayer, & provide directions for future research.
Salovey, 2002; Daus & Ashkanasy, 2003; Day & Carroll,
2004; Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Hartel, 2003; Lopes et al.,
2004; Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999; Mayer, Salovey, MAYER AND SALOVEY FOUR-BRANCH MODEL
& Caruso, 2004). In consideration of these findings, and
consistent with the position of some authors (Ashkanasy The term EI as described by Mayer and Salovey
& Daus, 2005) who advocate for converging efforts (1997; Salovey & Mayer, 1990) refers to the extent to

Fiori / AUTOMATIC PROCESSING IN EI 23
which people use emotions to guide and inform their and the evolution of emotional reaction. Individuals
thinking. Processing of emotional information is part of high in EI are able to figure out the impact of their
everyday life, yet people differ in the way they pay behavior on other people and use this knowledge to
attention to and rely on their emotional abilities. Some improve interpersonal relationships. Emotion under-
use emotions in a productive way, for example, to standing encompasses empathy, which is the ability to
improve the quality of their performance or to accom- experience others feelings.
plish their goals. Others use emotion in a less efficient The previous three branches constitute the founda-
way, for example, to direct attention away from the task tion on which the most sophisticated ability can flour-
in which they are engaged. ish: management of emotions. This branch is based on
The main characteristic of the model is that it consid- awareness of emotional reaction as well as regulation of
ers EI as an ability. The authors emphasize the intelli- mood and emotions in oneself and in others. Individuals
gence component, which underlies the mental abilities may be more or less successful at improving bad mood
required to process emotional information, as opposed or at attuning themselves to the mood required in a par-
to dispositional components responsible for categories ticular circumstance.
of behavior, like traits. For this reason, Salovey and Mayer and Saloveys work on EI undoubtedly pre-
Mayer (1990) claim that EI cannot be assessed with sents advantages compared to other theorizations (e.g.,
self-report measures, which tap into personality con- Bar-On, 1997; Goleman, 1995); for instance, the
structs rather than abilities. Instead, they propose to authors definition of EI as composed by four clearly
assess EI by means of performance-based measures. The defined abilitiesas opposed to the blanket definition
test the authors introduced to measure EIthe Mayer- of EI as a mixture of skills, competence, and personal-
Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (Mayer, ity characteristicsallows for testing theoretical
Salovey, & Caruso, 2002)comprises a series of tasks, assumptions, for example, that EI should be treated as
such as recognition of emotional stimuli and analysis of an ability (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Furthermore, the
emotional situations, for which a correct answer may be test they introduced to measure EIthe MSCEIThas
identified. Consistent with Mayer and Saloveys theo- been improved throughout the years and has become
rization of EI as a general factor arranged in four suba- the best ability measure of EI in circulation. Despite
bilities, the test provides a general EI score and four these acknowledgements, it seems as if some features of
scores for each ability or branch of the model: (a) the EI have not been considered in their model. Limitations
ability to perceive emotions in oneself and in others, of Mayer and Saloveys model are considered next.
(b) the ability to use emotion to facilitate thought, (c) the
ability to understand emotions, and (d) the ability to
manage emotions. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: LOOKING INTO
The first branch regards individual differences in per- MAYER AND SALOVEYS EI MODEL
ceiving emotions in oneself and in others. Recognition of
other individuals feelings occurs mainly through the Among the top of the list of priorities for research in
perception of nonverbal cues, like facial expressions and EI, Mayer et al. (2004) argue for understanding the
body language. Although the ability to perceive basic processes underlying EI (p. 211). Indeed, their model is
emotions is universal (Ekman, 1989), people differ in predominantly descriptive. The authors describe the
how accurately they perceive their own and others emo- abilities that should be included in a model of EI with-
tions. Some people may be resistant or unable to under- out developing an in-depth analysis of what processes
stand how they are feeling; others may tend to perceive might be involved to produce them; their emphasis on
emotions as pleasant or unpleasant only; a few people general qualities (Matthews, Roberts et al., 2004), such
may possess a vast repertoire of emotional nuances to as the ability to regulate emotions, says little about the
describe their and others emotional experience. specific functions that differentiate high- and low-EI
The second branch represents a more complex abil- individuals. Mayer and Salovey follow a psychometric
ity than emotion perception: using emotions to enhance taxonomic approach to EI: Their main interest was in
or facilitate thought. This ability plays a role when identifying a reliable and valid test to measure differ-
people make a choice by anticipating how they would ences in EI and to correlate the tests results to various
feel in a certain situation or when they pay attention to outcomes. However, they did not include in this
what a certain feeling is communicating in a decision- approach the investigation of what processes exactly
making process. Individuals differ in the way they use lead to successful emotion-based performance. The issue
emotional information to pursue their goals. of clarifying the nature of EI may be addressed by inquir-
The third branch refers to understanding emotion and ing into how high- and low-EI individuals process emo-
includes knowledge about the causes, the consequences, tion information. The analysis of processes underlying

EI may reveal that individuals differ in how they engage responsible for emotionally intelligent behavior in real
in mechanisms responsible for emotionally intelligent situations.1 Either possibility points to the importance
performance. of considering automatic processesprocesses that
Mayer and Saloveys assumption of entirely conscious strongly rely on procedural knowledgeas an addi-
emotional experience raises concerns in terms of how EI tional source of individual differences in emotionally
is measured, in that conscious processes may not be the intelligent behavior beyond conscious processes.
only component responsible for emotionally intelligent Mayer and Saloveys theorization raises concerns not
performance. Most items of the MSCEIT represent per- only in terms of how EI is measured but also of how it
formance in hypothetical situations, not actual perfor- is conceptualized. In fact, the authors rely on the assump-
mance. For example, emotionally intelligent individuals tion that emotional experience pertains to the domain of
are those who are able to identify the best strategy to consciousness. They did not address the point that an
cope with a situation characterized by high emotional automatic component might be involved in EI, nor did
involvement. Yet some individuals may be good at mind- they mention any automatic processing underlying EI.
fully thinking and describing how they or a generic Indeed, the test they introduced to measure EIthe
person should behave in hypothetical situations but not MSCEITis strongly based on conscious processing:
as good at actually performing the behavior. Items require participants to recognize emotions con-
The distinction between declarative and procedural veyed through pictures, identify emotions matching a
knowledge (Anderson, 1985) may clarify this point. certain situation, choose which emotion best describes
Declarative knowledge refers to representation of facts, how a person would feel in a certain situation, and iden-
rules, and procedures necessary to perform a task suc- tify the strategy that would best work to cope with an
cessfully. It is also called the knowing what of a task emotionally demanding situation. Although automatic
because it is related to general principals of functioning. processes may contribute to some extent to the choice
In contrast, procedural knowledge represents the skill to of the correct answer (see Jacoby, 1991), the assump-
use declarative knowledge in actual performance. It is tion underlying such items is that individuals are aware
called the knowing how because it is related to prac- of their emotional experience, they intentionally use
tical execution of a task. The top-down approach in emotions to facilitate thought, they mindfully under-
cognitive literature (Sun, Peterson, & Merrill, 1996) stand what they or other people are feeling, and they are
emphasizes that practice strengthens the relationship able to regulate emotions consciouslyeven though in
between declarative and procedural knowledge. First, different degrees. Indeed, to find the correct answer,
individuals acquire explicit knowledge of how to do individuals need to be engaged in thoughtful reasoning
something, and then, with practice, they learn how to about their own and others emotions.
use it in procedural skills. Thus, in early stages of skill However, recently, one of the most salient issues in
acquisition, individuals may know the rules for execut- emotion research has been the relationship between
ing a task without being good executors. With respect emotion and the unconscious (see, e.g., Feldman
to EI, this means that individuals scoring high on the Barrett, Niedenthal, & Winkielman, 2005). Despite the
MSCEIT may not show emotionally intelligent behavior fact that the role of automatic processes has not been
in real emotionally salient situations because they may clarified thus far, it seems unquestionable that there is
have declarative knowledge about emotions, which an automatic component in emotional experience:
helps to score high on the test, but lack the procedural Research supports that automatic affective reactions
skill necessary to use emotions successfully in actual may influence preferences and behavior (Winkielman &
behavior. Berridge, 2004). Similarly, in social cognition literature,
In addition, research also supports another alterna- a vast array of studies emphasizes automaticity in atti-
tive: Individuals may be good at performing a task but tudes and behavior (e.g., Bargh, 2007): Processes we are
not at describing how they perform it (Sun, Merrill, & not aware of profoundly influence judgments about
Peterson, 2001). In fact, once a skill becomes highly ourselves and other people. The issue has not been
proceduralized, it can be performed without having approached with respect to EI yet, even though it may
much support of declarative knowledge. For instance, clarify debated issues, such as the theoretical definition
individuals may be able to automatically perform a and the validity of the construct.
task despite not consciously relying on the steps needed The acknowledgment of a potential automaticity
to do it. According to this possibility, individuals scor- component of EI has been brought up by Zeidner,
ing low on the MSCEIT may show high EI in interper- Matthews, and Roberts (2003), who observed that
sonal encounters. In fact, individuals may lack much emotional behavior, ranging from facial expres-
declarative knowledge responsible for high scores on sion to responding to nonverbal social cues, appears to
the MSCEIT but have highly proceduralized skills be implicit (p. 71). Although they touched on the point

of automatic processing of emotional information, awareness; the process is not intentional, or individuals
Zeidner et al. (2003) have not followed up this claim do not recognize it as the cause of their action/state; the
with any further elaboration in relation to EI. process is not controlled, or individuals are not able to
The analysis of conscious and automatic processes stop it once it started; and the process is efficient and
involved in EI might clarify what outcomes EI predicts. operates under low cognitive resources.
In fact, current theorization might be missing variability Surveyed studies are arranged in subsections reflecting
in emotionally intelligent behavior because of automatic the four components of the EI model. This organization
processes that have not been considered thus far. Thus, is chosen to facilitate the illustration of the main argu-
it appears appropriate to incorporate the debate about ment, namely that automatic processing may account for
automatic emotional experience and to inquire about emotionally intelligent behavior, and it does not imply
the role automaticity might play in EI theorization and that each of the four subabilities of the model is distinc-
research. I address this issue in the following section. tively associated with specific automatic processes.
Evidence Supporting the Effect of Automatic Automatic Processing in Perceiving Emotions

Processing in Emotional Experience
A consistent body of research supports the idea that
The purpose of the literature review is twofold: First, individuals may perceive a stimulus without awareness of
by relating the construct of EI to the core mechanisms perception (Merikle, Smilek, & Eastwood, 2001).
of emotional processing, I aim to shift the debate from Perception of emotional expressions is a fundamental skill
the mere description of what is EI to the explanation of for daily life: A person who realizes that his or her boss is
what processes might constitute EI, including automatic disappointed in his or her work, rather than pleased, may
processes. Second, consistent with the perspective of plan a more efficacious course of action. After all, accu-
those who encourage the integration of individual dif- rately detecting emotional signals has increased the
ferences with the analysis of emotion processes (e.g., chances of survival throughout human evolution.
Gohm & Clore, 2000; Seo & Barrett, 2007; Underwood, Murphy and Zajonc (1993) conducted one of the
1975), I intend to show that the construct of EI may be seminal works analyzing the effect of subliminal affec-
best understood considering how individuals differ in tive priming on information processing. In a series of
processing emotion information. experiments, they compared the effects of two cate-
Studies are surveyed from emotion and social cogni- gories of priming stimuli (affective and cognitive) on
tion literature and have been conducted with an exper- different exposure times (4 ms and 1,000 ms) on liking
imental approach (i.e., manipulating variables and rates and judgments of objective characteristics of stim-
comparing effects between experimental conditions). At uli. More specifically, in one experiment, researchers
the end of each subsection, I discuss how an individual primed participants either subliminally or supralimi-
difference perspective may complement this approach. nally with angry and happy faces; then, they showed an
Specifically, I analyze how variables might differ not ambiguous stimulus (Chinese ideographs) for 2 s, ask-
only between conditions but also within, depending on ing participants to rate how much they would like it.
individual differences in EI. Results showed that the effect of priming was related to
The distinction between conscious and automatic the length of exposure: In the subliminal condition, par-
processes is controversial. Some authors claim that ticipants exposed to priming of happy faces liked the
these processes should be considered as extremes of a target more than participants exposed to angry faces; in
continuum, others to different ways to process informa- the supraliminal condition, differences in liking rates
tion (see Martin & Erber, 2006). Because evidence indi- after happy and angry face priming were not significant.
cates a different brain localization for conscious and It is interesting that when the judgment of the target
automatic processing (e.g., Morris, Ohman, & Dolan, referred to objective characteristics, such as its shape
1998) and research seems to move toward considering instead of liking rates, and participants were primed
differences in processing as a core-processing distinc- with cognitive stimuli (e.g., circles, squares) rather than
tion in the study of social cognitive neuroscience affective ones, the pattern of results was exactly the
(Lieberman, 2007, p. 276), herein I embrace the latter opposite: Participants judgments were influenced only
position: The term conscious is used to indicate qualita- by the supraliminal prime. Overall, results suggest that
tively different processes than automatic. affective evaluation may occur very fast and without
Research has been included in the literature review awareness, whereas cognitive evaluation requires more
according to a conception of automaticity for which any conscious processing.
of these conditions suffice to characterize a process as Along the same lines, Winkielman, Berridge, and
automatic (Bargh, 1994): The process is not accessible to Wilbarger (2005) hypothesized that subliminal presentation

of angry versus happy faces would influence subsequent individuals may differ with respect to how they respond
beverage consumption (Study 1) and willingness to pay for to emotional cues subliminally presented. In fact, in
the beverage (Study 2). In Study 1, after rating their level of reviewed studies, researchers manipulated a stimulus to
thirst and hunger, participants were subliminally primed analyze effects on further information-processing or
with angry, happy, or neutral faces (exposure time was behavior-averaging data across all participants within
16 ms). Participants were then asked to indicate the gender each experimental condition. In general, this is a good
of a visible target (exposure time 400 ms). Afterward, strategy when individuals are supposed to react in the
participants rated their current mood and arousal and same way to stimuli; however, when individuals differ,
performed a drinking task in which they poured and averaging may be misleading. A more accurate analysis
consumed as much fruity beverage as they wanted. may be conducted by introducing an individual differ-
Results showed that thirsty participants exposed to ence variable. In particular, one of the components of EI
happy faces drank and poured more beverage than partic- is emotional perception, defined as the ability accounting
ipants exposed to angry faces. The effect disappeared for how people vary in their accuracy in perceiving emo-
when participants were not thirsty, revealing an interac- tions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). High-EI individuals
tion of affective and motivational factors, suggesting that might be more accurate than low-EI ones in identifying
automatic affective reactions may influence behavior emotional stimuli subliminally presented because of their
under certain incentive conditions. Results were replicated sensitivity to emotional cues.
in the second experiment in which subliminal priming of Support for this claim comes from Matsumoto et al.
happy faces not only influenced participants drinking (2000), who found stable individual differences in
behavior but also their willingness to pay more for it. peoples ability to accurately detect briefly displayed emo-
Liddell, Williams, Rathjen, Shevrin, and Gordon tional expressions. The authors used the masking para-
(2004) investigated the effect of subliminal and supral- digm employed in many studies involving subliminal
iminal priming on emotional perception by analyzing perception, with 56 pictures representing facial expres-
event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Faces with fearful sions of the basic emotions displayed for 200 ms and fol-
and neutral expressions were presented either sublimi- lowed by the same persons neutral expression lasting 1 s.
nally, with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, the inter- Scores were collected according to the correct number of
val between the onset of the target stimulus and the guessing of the emotions displayed. Importantly, the
onset of the masking stimulus) of 10 ms, or supralimi- authors found that individuals who were more accurate
nally, with a SOA of 170 ms, followed by a neutral in recognizing emotional expressions were also more
masking stimulus. Ratings of emotion accuracy and socially effective. In particular, international students
intensity were collected after each stimulus presenta- studying in the United States who were good at detecting
tion. Results showed that overall ERP responses were expressions of anger, disgust, and surprise in others were
significantly larger and faster for fear expression, as better at adjusting to the new social environment (Yoo,
opposed to neutral expression. Furthermore, the pattern Matsumoto, & LeRoux, 2006).
of activation was different between supraliminal and Correct recognition of emotions, especially negative
subliminal exposure: Subliminal priming activated ones, may be a strong advantage for guiding interper-
faster ERP reactions, indicating more rapid processing. sonal relationships. Still, sometimes facial expressions
Also, localization of responses was different in the two may appear for as little as a fraction of a second, as it
priming conditions, supporting the idea that processing happens for microexpressions; hence, only those who
of visual information may follow different pathways are particularly responsive to emotions, or high-EI indi-
than conscious perception, a finding confirmed by other viduals, can notice them and adjust their behavior to
studies (Morris et al., 1998). Finally, only supraliminal this perception, resulting in more efficacious social rela-
stimuli were consciously detected by participants, as tions. High-EI individuals are characterized by social
indicated by a posttest emotion identification task in effectiveness (Mayer, 2007). Fast recognition of emo-
which most participants correctly identified expressions tion cues might be the automatic process underlying this
of the target only in the 170-ms SOA condition. characteristic.
In summary, research shows that individuals may per-
ceive emotional cues even when stimuli are shown under Automatic Processing in Using Emotion to
the threshold of conscious perception. Furthermore, sub- Facilitate Thought
liminal perception of emotional stimuli may affect cog-
nition and behavior without conscious awareness from Research shows that mood influences the way indi-
the perceiver. Although much research has been con- viduals process information and make decisions: When
ducted to show the pervasive characteristics and effects in a good mood, individuals are inclined to judge the
of subliminal perception, less has been done to show that target more positively than when in a bad mood. These

mood congruency effects, consisting of judgments related to the situation obtained better investment out-
biased toward the current mood state, have been comes. In this specific case, affective experience was
explained by the fact that emotional information acti- analyzed at the level of conscious description of feelings
vates thoughts in memory with the same affective and their association to the task at hand, but other find-
valence (Bower, 1991; Isen, 1987). ings support that individuals may rely on feelings with-
Schwarz and Clore (1983) provide an explanation of out having accessible introspection to their effect during
mood congruency effects that does not involve memory the decision-making process.
processes. According to the mood-as-information For instance, Damasio, Tranel, and Damasios (1991)
theory, current mood is considered a source of informa- somatic marker hypothesis is based on the assumption
tion for the judgment at hand: Individuals rely on how that decisions are guided by somatic sensations signal-
they feel about the situation/target for making a deci- ing the goodness of different options and directing
sion, even when the feeling depends on unrelated factors. attentional resources to the choice that is more promis-
In fact, generally, individuals are not able to distinguish ing. Somatic markers may operate at an overt level,
between incidental feelings and feelings elicited by the such as when individuals realize their body changes and
target, drawing mistaken conclusions about it. When the emotional reactions associated to the choice, or at a
individuals question the relationship between their feel- nonconscious level, such as when individuals are not
ing and the object of judgment, mood congruency effects aware of their body activity. According to Baumeister,
may disappear. Of note, according to this theory, feelings Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007), somatic markers rep-
do not always bias decision making; they may serve as resent the automatic affective response to the learned
an accurate source of information when feelings are in experience of having done something right or wrong;
fact attributable to the target, such as when they provide thus, in the authors view, affective responses promote
signals regarding the most optimal choice (Damasio, adaptive behavior through facilitation of learning.
1994). Yet how do people realize when it is the case to Using a gambling task in which participants have to
trust feelings? The answer to this question lies at the core chose cards from four decks, two of which are more
of EI. One way through which individuals may distin- advantageous than the others, Carter and Smith-
guish when an emotional reaction is incidentaland Pasqualini (2004) found that individual differences in
therefore misleadingfrom when it provides informa- skin conductance responses before the disadvantageous
tion on the current situation may be related to question- choice predicted higher money gain. Individuals who
ing the source of emotional reactions and becoming performed worse tended to produce less intense mark-
aware of the possible effects of emotion on behavior. ers. The authors did not measure EI, but it might have
When participants realized the potential influence of influenced results. High-EI individuals might have
primes on an impression formation task, contrast effects stronger autonomic responses, not necessarily perceived
instead of assimilation effects were observed (Lombardi, at a conscious level of awareness, which guide their
Higgins, & Bargh, 1987; Newman & Uleman, 1990). behavior. Such sensitivity to visceral sensation may rep-
Similarly, high-EI individuals might be more skilled at resent a strong advantage for guiding behavior toward
using affective responses only when they matter. One the most profitable choice, an advantage that individu-
way to test this hypothesis would be by comparing the als may possess to varying degrees.
effect of emotion priming on behavior in high- and low- In summary, much research emphasizes the effect of
EI individuals. In consideration of the fact that angry mood on cognition and behavior. The introduction of
individuals tend to be more punitive in judging unrelated an individual difference variable may complement
targets (Goldberg, Lerner, & Tetlock, 1999), one could results. In fact, what is supposed to be a generalized
induce a certain emotion, such as anger, and observe its effect of mood on performance might exert different
effect on an impression formation task. High-EI individ- effects in high- versus low-EI individuals. In particular,
uals would be expected to show evaluation less biased by high-EI individuals might be characterized by a more
anger than low-EI ones when the target of evaluation is profitable use of mood/emotion as a source of informa-
not related to the object of anger. tion by either discounting its effect when the feeling is
When feelings are not incidental and arise as an incidental or integrating it within the decision process
appropriate reaction to the current situation, individu- when the feeling is contextual. Subgroups of high- and
als obtain better outcomes if they are able to attend to low-EI individuals may be compared with respect to
what they are feeling and integrate emotional experi- processes accounting for how emotion information is
ence into their decision process. In an investment simu- integrated into decision process, for example by induc-
lation, Seo and Barrett (2007) found that investors who ing emotion, observing its effects on behavior, and
were better at describing and differentiating feelings detecting physiological responses.

Automatic Processing in Understanding Emotion awareness of emotional contagion. More specifically,

students took part in a laboratory session presented as
People differ in the way they understand emotions. an experiment on oral comprehension (Neumann &
Some of them parse their emotional experience simply Strack, 2000; Experiment 1). Participants listened to a
as pleasant or unpleasant, whereas others are able to 5-min philosophical text presentation and subsequently
differentiate nuances of feeling (Feldman, 1995). answered questions about their current mood and the
Although conscious processing is likely to play a major content of the presentation. The oral presentation was
role in peoples ability to understand their own and manipulated so that the tone of the speaker was neutral,
other peoples emotion because interpretation of behav- slightly sad, or slightly happy. Participants were told to
ior highly relies on deliberate thinking, studies demon- pay attention to the content of the presentation and to
strate that individuals may also understand emotions avoid their consciously noticing the emotional tone.
effortlessly and without conscious awareness. For Results showed a significant effect of mood manipula-
instance, the literature on the chameleon effect tion on participants mood ratings; simple contrasts
(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) shows that automatic per- revealed that after listening to the presentation, individ-
ception of other peoples gesture or behavior leads to uals exposed to the slightly happy tone condition
imitation by the perceiver. Based on the same principle, reported higher ratings for happiness, as opposed to
studies conducted on mood contagion show that indi- those exposed to the slightly sad and neutral condition.
viduals unintentionally express emotion consciously The fact that individuals reported feeling the same emo-
and nonconsciously perceived in others (Hatfield, tion the target was feeling suggests that they
Cacioppo, & Rapson 1994). Individuals exposed to detected/understood other peoples feeling. Thus, a pos-
facial expressions react by spontaneously moving facial sibility is that mimicry is the result of ones understand-
muscles (Dimberg, 1997): A happy face evokes zygo- ing of emotional messages. Another possibility is that
matic major muscle activity, related to the lips move- mimicry arises from automatic imitation of someone
ment to produce a smile, whereas a sad face evokes elses expression, which induces an emotional reaction
corrugator surecilii muscle activity, related to eyebrow through the feedback elicited by facial muscles (Strack,
motion indicating disapproval (Dimber & Thunberg, Martin, & Stepper, 1988). In the latter case, individual
1998). Dimberg, Thunberg, and Elmehed (2000) inves- differences in the ability to understand emotions would
tigated whether perception of a facial stimulus pre- be caused by mimicry-related facial feedback, which in
sented outside of conscious awareness elicited turn results in understanding others emotions.2 Both
emotional facial expression. Participants were ran- explanations emphasize the importance of mimicry as
domly assigned to one of three conditions: 30-ms pre- an automatic process underlying the ability to under-
sentation of happy, neutral, or angry faces as the target stand other peoples emotions.
stimulus, followed by a 5-s presentation of neutral faces Emotion understanding has been said to involve the
as the masking stimulus. A previous pilot test had comprehension of the meaning of emotions, coupled
shown that a 30-ms stimulus presentation was not with the capacity to reason about those meanings
accessible to conscious perception. Facial electromyog- (Mayer, 2007). Empathy, defined as the ability to recog-
raphy (EMG) of zygomatic major and corrugator super- nize and feel what another person is feeling, was found
cilii activity was recorded. As expected, participants to correlate with Branch 3, understanding emotion
exposed to the happyneutral combination showed (Mayer et al., 1999; Mayer, DiPaolo, & Salovey, 1990),
higher zygomatic major activity than the neutralneu- thus reflecting an aspect of EI (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
tral or angryneutral combinations. Furthermore, par- An individual differences study compared high- and
ticipants exposed to the angryneutral combination low-empathic individuals with respect to mimicry reac-
showed higher corrugator supercilii activity than they tions (Sonnby-Borgstrm, Jnsson, & Svensson, 2003).
did with the neutralneutral and happyneutral combi- Angry and happy faces were presented at different
nation. Overall, results confirmed that despite the con- exposure times17 ms, 56 ms, 2,350 mswith con-
scious exposure to the same neutral stimulus, participants stant presentation order. The researchers varied expo-
showed more sensitivity to emotional facial expression sure time to investigate the effect of different levels of
displayed outside of conscious awareness. conscious perception on mimicry. In a within-subject
Findings suggest that perceivers may not simply design, participants looked at angry and happy faces,
mimic expressions, but they also understand others which were displayed 10 times at each exposure time. A
feeling and experience the same emotion. For example, masking picture was also shown for 63 ms after the tar-
a study conducted by Neumann and Strack (2000) get face, as a distractor. Level of empathy was measured
investigated whether imitating other peoples emotional using the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional
behavior led to experiencing the same emotion with no Empathy (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972). The dependent

variable was facial muscle activity, particularly the no goal condition, supporting the hypothesis that indi-
zygomaticus major, indicating a smiling reaction, and viduals use automatic strategies to pursuing their goal
the corrugator supercilii, indicating a furrowed brow, of which they may not be aware.
recorded with EMG. Mimicking reactions were defined Importantly, in the second experiment, the authors
as the correspondence between exposure to angry face demonstrated that automatic strategies may help individ-
and activity of the corrugator supercilii and exposure to uals succeed in their goal to be liked more by others:
happy face and activity of the zygomaticus major. Participants automatically primed with an affiliation goal
At 17 ms exposure time, results showed no mimick- were liked more by a confederate (blind to the study) as
ing behavior. At 56 ms, an ANOVA combining affective a function of mimicking. The amount of mimicking was
stimulus by empathy level revealed that after being higher when participants had failed in a previous attempt
exposed to an angry face, high-empathy individuals to establish good interpersonal relationships, demon-
reacted with more corrugator supercilii activity than strating that mimicking was used as an automatic strat-
low-empathy individuals; similarly, after being exposed egy to create affiliation.
to a happy face, high-empathy individuals reported Better social relations characterize high-EI individu-
higher zygomaticus major activity than low-empathy als (Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008). Automatic
individuals. At 2,350 ms exposure time, there was no mimicry might be the mechanism underlying individual
interaction effect and a main effect was found only for differences in EI: High-EI individuals might show more
the corrugator. Although results of this study need to be mimic, which in turn generate better social perception
carefully considered because of limitations regarding and better interpersonal relationships.
the design of the experimentparticularly lack of con-
trol for anxiety as a possible confound in detecting Automatic Processing in Managing Emotion
threatening stimulithey suggest that individuals may Managing emotion refers to the way individuals reg-
differ in the way they react to emotional stimuli and ulate emotions. Most of the time emotion regulation
that their reaction may occur at an automatic level of strategies help to maintain or induce positive affective
processing. Assuming that emotionally intelligent indi- states and to avoid or reduce negative ones (for a
viduals are also empathic persons, this study suggests review, see Erber & Erber, 2001). However, depending
that high-EI individuals might more frequently mimic on the adaptive function of emotion, regulation strate-
other peoples behavior as a spontaneous indication of gies may also serve a different purpose. For instance,
understanding others emotions. individuals may delay immediate gratification when
A way to make sense of how mimicry as an indicator they think they can gain better advantages later on
of automatic understanding of others emotions may be (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989).
related to EI is by considering the social advantage of Since the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud
imitating others behavior. Automatic mimicry as been (1930/1961) on repression as a regulatory mechanism
proposed to function as social glue (Dijksterhuis, to suppress intolerable thoughts or memories, research
Chartrand, & Aarts, 2007) in consideration of several has started to explore the role automatic processes play
studies demonstrating correlations between rapport/lik- in emotion regulation (e.g., Mauss, Cook, & Gross,
ing and mimicry of behavior. The fact that automatic 2007). In addition, research supports the idea that
mimicry may endorse affiliation is well demonstrated by repressors, defined as individuals showing discrepancy
Lakin and Chartrand (2003). In the first experiment, between levels of anxiety at the physiological and
the authors tested whether conscious and automatic behavioral level (high) and at the self-descriptive level
affiliation goals led participants to mimic the target of (low), are not aware of their reaction in stressful situa-
affiliation. Participants were exposed to one of three tions (Derakshan & Eysenck, 1999) and that the effect
experimental conditions: subliminal priming with affili- of such a discrepancy may be costly in the long term,
ation words, such as friend (automatic-affiliation goal causing negative health outcomes such as exhaustion.
condition); explicit indication that they would lately Conversely, more recent studies raised the point that
interact with a person to perform a task together (con- automatic emotion regulation may be an efficacious
scious affiliation goal condition); and no goal indication way to manage emotions at no cost (e.g., Mauss, Evers,
(control condition). Soon after, participants observed Wilhelm, & Gross, 2006).
the behavior of a confederate with the instruction to In two experiments, Mauss et al. (2007) showed that
memorize his or her behavior. The confederate acted by participants primed with words referring to controlling
touching his or her face several times; participants were emotion reported no maladaptive cardiovascular responses
analyzed for how long they touched their face when (Experiment 2) and lower experience of negative emotion
watching the target. Participants in the two goal condi- (Experiment 1) than participants primed with words
tionsautomatic and consciousmimicked more than referring to expressing emotion.

In Experiment 1, students were primed with either improving mood. To assess the effect of intuitive affect
control or express emotion strategy with the regulation, Koole and Jostmann used the paradigm of
Sentence Unscrambling Task (Srull & Wyer, 1979). This the face in the crowd (hman, Lundqvist, & Esteves,
task requires participants to form four-word sentences 2001), in which participants, after filling out a question-
from a list of five disarranged words. About half of the naire designed to identify their action or state orienta-
sentences contained either a control or an express tion, were asked to identify a single discrepant face
synonym (such as impulsive or restrain). After the prime among a crowd of identical ones. Action- and state-ori-
procedure, which was meant to activate the correspond- ented individuals were first engaged in a visualization
ing emotion regulation strategy, participants completed task in which they had to recall either a demanding or
a mood questionnaire and were then involved in an accepting person from their past experience (Koole &
anger provocation situation characterized by a tedious Jostmann, 2004; Experiment 3). Then, they were
task and interaction with a noxious experimenter. A exposed to 3 3 matrices of either identical faces
mood questionnaire concluded the experimental session, (happy, neutral, or angry) or eight identical and one dis-
together with the debriefing. None of the participants crepant face (happy, neutral, or angry). They had to
were aware of the priming manipulation. press a different button when the faces were all the same
Results demonstrated that the control prime or one was discrepant.
affected participants anger reaction, as demonstrated In performing this task, individuals are generally
by participants lower anger ratings in the control faster to indicate when an angry discrepant face is pre-
versus express condition following the anger provo- sent, because of higher receptivity to threatening stimuli
cation. This result supported the hypothesis that auto- (hman et al., 2001). This effect was found in both
matic priming influenced emotion regulation strategy. state- and action-oriented participants; additionally,
To corroborate the finding that emotion regulation and as expected, the researchers found that action-ori-
may be automatically induced and to further explore ented individuals were quicker to detect happy faces in
the idea that the effects of regulation are cost free in a crowd of angry ones after visualization of a demand-
terms of physiological reactionsnot only subjective ing person but not after visualization of an accepting
reportsMauss et al. (2007) conducted a second exper- person. State-oriented individuals displayed no differ-
iment. The procedure was similar to Experiment 1, but ence in the two visualization conditions. This finding
an initial anger provocation was added to identify the demonstrates that action-oriented individuals, presum-
baseline arousal of each participant, together with ably relying on intuitive affect regulation, were more
recording of physiological reactions. Results showed no efficient to switch from negative to positive affect
differences in anger activation before priming; after indicated by quicker detection of a happy face in a
priming, the group exposed to the control condition crowd of angry onesas a strategy to mitigate negative
reported less negative experience of anger than the emotions.
express group, confirming previous results. But no Moon and Lord (2006) investigated the effect of
significant effect of priming on physiological response individual differences in fast and slow emotion regula-
was observed. This result, on one hand, confirms that tion processes on task performance. They tested the
automatic regulation was done at no cost; on the other hypothesis that fast emotion regulation processes
hand, it poses some concerns about the effect of the (FERPs), but not slow emotion regulation processes
priming manipulation in that one might have expected (SERPs), predict performance on a task characterized by
lower cardiovascular responses in the control condi- emotional involvement; furthermore, individual differ-
tion, compared to express condition, rather than no ences in FERPS were expected to predict performance
effect at all. beyond intelligence and self-report measures of emo-
Support for the idea that emotion regulation may tions. The assumption underlying three studies Moon
rely on automatic processing comes also from individ- and Lord conducted was that FERPs work by inhibiting
ual differences studies. According to Koole and or suppressing inappropriate emotions when individu-
Jostmann (2004), two different styles of self-regulation als cannot spend much effort on the task at hand; for
may occur when people deal with emotional response: this reason, individuals highly skilled in FERPs were
state orientation, which maintains the status quo by expected to perform better in tasks characterized by
passively enduring the emotional state, and action ori- need for fast or automatic emotion regulation. The first
entation, which actively regulates affective states. study and the other two follow-ups were based on the
Individuals high in action orientation are supposed to same procedure, which was meant to measure individual
be skilled in intuitive affect regulation, which refers to differences in FERPs: Participants watched for 150 ms
an automatic form of affect regulation activated only in two stimuli presented on the screen conveying oppo-
potentially stressful situations with the purpose of site emotions (i.e., a happy and a sad face); they were

instructed to pay attention to one (the target) and as an implicit strategy to correct for negative emotion
ignore the other (the distractor). Afterward, a lexical generated by failure. EI was not measured in this experi-
decision task required participants to indicate whether a ment, but there might be differences in the level by
word was meaningful or not; the word was either con- which individuals engage in automatic self-enhancement.
sistent (e.g., the word sad after a sad face) with the tar- High-EI individuals tend to have higher self-esteem
get, consistent with the distractor, or unrelated to both (Brackett, Rivers, Shiffman, Lerner, & Salovey, 2006).
(control condition). Participants reaction times (RTs) to Automatic self-enhancement might be the mechanisms
the lexical task, in particular time taken to process the through which some individuals, high-EI ones, preserve
distractor-congruent words, were considered indicative high self-esteem.
of effectiveness of suppression mechanisms; individual
differences in RT were also considered. The criterion
measure was performance on two tasks requiring fast RECONCEPTUALIZING EI WITHIN
emotion regulation: a scrambled sentence task, in which A PROCESS-ORIENTED APPROACH
participants were instructed to form any sentence
except one with negative connotation using five out of A look at the emotion and social cognition literature
six available words, and an editing task, in which par- has revealed that the conception of EI as composed of a
ticipants had to correct spelling errors without paying set of abilities to deal with emotion based solely on
attention to the content of the text. To investigate the reflective mechanisms appears too restrictive: Affective
effect of emotion suppression in fast and slow emotion reactions are processed instantaneously and may influ-
regulation processes, researchers manipulated the SOA ence behavior with no or little involvement of conscious
between the two tasks, using intervals of 350 ms (sup- thinking.
posed to activate FERPs) and 2,000 ms (supposed to Furthermore, considerations of the mechanisms
activate SERPs). Both tasks were characterized by high involved in emotional processing have raised the possi-
emotional contentwhich could in principle interfere bility that individuals may differ with respect to how
with performance, if not controlled, because it subtracts they engage in emotional processing. Research on the
attention from the main taskand time pressure. perceptionbehavior link (Bargh, 1990; Bargh &
Results showed that performance was predicted by Chartrand, 2000) emphasizes the ubiquitous effect of
individual differences in RTs to the distractor-congruent automatic activation of concepts on congruent behav-
word in the lexical task, indicating an effective suppres- ior: Participants subtly primed with a word referring to
sion mechanism. Furthermore, and as expected, results rudeness were more likely to behave rudely (Bargh,
were significant in the 350-ms SOA conditionthat is, Chen, & Burrows, 1996).
at a subliminal levelbut not in the 2,000-ms condi- EI and the underlying core mechanisms of emotional
tion, demonstrating that suppression of inappropriate processing may be conceived of as the factor(s) interven-
emotions was effective only during FERPs. Finally, in ing between perception and behavior when the stimulus
line with hypotheses, individual differences in the abil- to be perceived is emotional or has hedonic valence
ity to suppress emotions during FERPs predicted perfor- (Figure 1). The assumption is that perception of emo-
mance after controlling for conscientiousness and tional stimuli does not exert the same behavior in all indi-
verbal intelligence. viduals: Some people may behave less rudely than others
Most of the literature on emotion regulation focuses after being primed with rudeness because they integrate
on intentional strategies individuals use to influence emotion with thought and action in a more profitable
their emotional state. Although effortful strategies play way, so as to make their behavior more effective with
a relevant role in emotion regulation, studies I have pre- respect to the context. These are high-EI individuals.
sented demonstrate that emotions may be regulated According to this conceptualization, understanding
automatically. Introducing EI as an individual difference individual differences in EI implies analyzing the steps
construct, findings suggest that high-EI individuals involved in emotional processing: They include reacting
might be more efficacious than low-EI individuals at to a stimulus as the first affective response, paying
automatically regulating emotions for better outcomes attention to physiological reactions activated by the
and to pursue their self-regulatory goals. stimulus and integrating them with current judgment,
For instance, in a similar vein to Koole and Jostmanns and understanding the effect of an affective reaction on
(2004) research, Chartrand, Dalton, and Cheng (2005) behavior and regulating its magnitude by either intensi-
found that participants who failed at automatic goal fying, lessening, or maintaining it. The steps involved in
pursuit (that is, at successfully resolving an anagram task emotion information processing, which by and large
when they were told to do their best) were more likely map into the four branches identified in Mayer and
to engage in self-enhancement to maintain self-esteem Saloveys model, may occur with no particular order

EI
CONSCIOUS AND AUTOMATIC

PROCESSES IN:
--Emotion perception
--Use of emotion to facilitate thought
--Emotion understanding
--Emotion regulation
EMOTIONALLY
EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENT
STIMULI
BEHAVIOR
Figure 1 Representation of how an individual differences approach may be combined with the analysis of conscious and automatic process-
ing underlying emotional intelligence.
during an emotional episode and are thought of as basic Automatic processing has evolved as a highly adap-
phases of emotional processing common to all individ- tive function. Without it, individuals would not be able
uals (Gohm & Clore, 2000). Still, for any psychologi- to handle the large amount of information that needs to
cal mechanism or process proposed by a theory, there be processed for executing daily activities. Automatic
may exist individual differences in the tendency or abil- processing may sometimes result in undesirable effects.
ity to engage this mechanism or process (Gohm & The literature on stereotypes documents well the risks
Clore, 2000, p. 682). Individuals may be more or less of relying heavily on automatic processing. At the same
sensitive to emotional cues, they may differ with respect time, individuals who are able to manage emotional
to the ability to discriminate feelings and integrate them reactions effortlessly and with no need for conscious
as a source of information for judgment, and they may attention have an advantage compared to individuals
vary in their ability to regulate emotional reactions. In who do not, because they end up having additional
addition, because each step of emotional processing resources at disposition that may be useful for other
may be executed consciously and automatically, individ- purposes.
uals may differ with respect to how they engage in each So far, I have used automatic as an umbrella term
type of processing. indicating processes underlying automaticity that
posses different characteristics. Automaticity has been
defined as uncontrollable, unintentional, efficient, and
A DUAL-PROCESS FRAMEWORK occurring outside of awareness. These features hardly
occur in an all-or-none fashion; indeed, the most
According to dual-process models (e.g., Devine, 1989; common scenario is likely to be one in which a process
Smith & DeCoster, 2000), behavioral and emotional possesses some features of conscious and some of
responses depend on the interplay between conscious automatic processing (Bargh, 1994). Because auto-
and automatic processing. Specifically, event perception maticity is not a unitary concept (Evans, 2008; Moors
elicits information processing characterized by low cog- & DeHouwer, 2006) and its features are conceptually
nitive effort and no conscious awareness; automatic pro- distinct, considerations about its occurrence may
cessing is accompanied or followed by conscious change according to the specific features analyzed.
processing, which may adjust the initial perception by Hence, to understand the role of automatic processes
means of cognitive resources. The framework of dual- in EI, it becomes important to focus attention on one fea-
process models may be used to describe EI in that both ture at a time. The characteristic of automaticity I believe
conscious and automatic processes characterize emotion is most relevant to EI is awareness. Processes occurring
processing and contribute to successful emotion-based below awareness are also known as unconscious
performance. In this section, I explore how. (Moors & DeHouwer, 2006), and from now onward, I

will use this term accordingly. Unconscious may refer to effect of emotion remains largely inaccessible to individ-
different aspects of emotion, as individuals may be uals (Cleeremans, 2004) and may be at the origin of
(un)aware of (a) the causes of emotionthat is, of emo- biased behavior. Individuals formulate beliefs about the
tional cue in the environment that elicited the emotional causes and effects of emotion that eventually are used to
reaction; (b) the content of emotionthat is, the emotion explain their own and others behavior in the form of
they felt (anger, happiness, contempt, etc.); and (c) the lay theories. As demonstrated in the seminal work by
effect or consequences of emotional reaction on cognition Nisbett and Wilson (1977), these nave explanations
and behavior. Each aspect of awareness involves different may be minimally or not at all related to the real deter-
unconscious processes and, as such, requires a different minants of conduct. Instead, having a more accurate
paradigm of investigation. representation of emotions and, in particular, of the
Awareness of the causes of emotion is concerned possible effects of emotion on behavior may prevent
with studying processes of emotion perception that may unwanted effects and foster better adjustment to the
not require consciousness to elicit emotion processing. context. Realizing that primes may influence impression
These processes may be investigated with the subliminal formation, participants reacted with contrast instead of
perception paradigmthat is, varying stimulus presen- assimilation effects (Lombardi, Higgins, & Bargh,
tation time in a way that allows for observing how indi- 1987; Newman & Uleman, 1990). Furthermore, indi-
viduals differ in accuracy of perception and its effect on vidual differences in implicit theories of emotion pre-
behavior when the stimulus is presented under the dicted better socioemotional adjustment (Tamir, John,
threshold of conscious perception. Awareness of the Srivastava, & Gross, 2007); in particular, students who
causes of emotion also involves the analysis of processes believed that emotions were malleable had a better tran-
of allocation of attention. Theories of selective attention sition to college than students who believed them to be
(Broadbent, 1958) point out that individuals possess fixed and not subject to control. Knowledge of the
attentional mechanisms that focus on some information causes and effects of emotion characterizes high-EI indi-
in the environment instead of others. Allocation of viduals, as indicated in Mayer and Saloveys theoriza-
attentional resources to emotional stimuli triggers emotion and findings (Salovey & Mayer, 1990).
tion processing that eventually affects cognition and The first step for understanding automaticity in EI is
behavior. Still, individuals who do not respond to emo- identifying which aspect of the unconscious (cause, con-
tional cues do not start emotion processing in the first tent, and effect) is subject to investigation. The next is
place. Thus, exploring differences in allocation of atten- looking into the pathways through which a process may
tion to emotional stimuli may reveal the origin of indi- or may not be associated with awareness. The assump-
vidual differences in EI. tion is that unconscious processes may be of different
Awareness of the content of emotion concerns the kinds and, importantly, they may be linked to emotion-
study of processes of differentiation of affective reactions ally intelligent behavior through different psychological
and integration of body sensation into information pro- mechanisms (see Figure 2).
cessing. Individuals who are better at detecting body Preconscious processes are characterized by a lack of
changes experience feelings more intensely (Wiens, awareness at a given time but may become conscious
Mezzacappa, & Katkin, 2000). Introspective sensitivity to when attention is directed to them (Baars, 1988), which
body changes was found to be related to better detection means that these processes are potentially accessible.
of subliminal emotional stimuli and better anticipation of The hypothesis I made, that high-EI individuals may
electric shocks (Katkin, Wiens, & hman, 2001). have higher sensitivity (or attention) to emotional cues,
Furthermore, the ability to discriminate emotions was implies that for these individuals, preconscious emotion
associated with several positive outcomes, such as success- processes related to the cause, content, and effect of
ful emotion regulation and better decision making (Barrett emotions on behavior may more easily enter awareness
& Gross, 2001; Seo & Barrett, 2007). High-EI individu- and become a source of information for decision
als, as measured by the MSCEIT, were better at heartbeat making and accurate perception of others emotions.
detection (Schneider, Lyons, & Williams, 2005). According to that, high-EI individuals are characterized
Collectively, this line of research highlights that awareness by an awareness of emotional aspects that in common
of emotional reactions is an important requirement for people are not accessible. Individual differences in pre-
using emotion appropriately. Yet individuals may not be conscious processes underlying EI may be investigated
aware of what they are feeling; of note, this fact does not with free verbal reports regarding situations in which
compromise the effect of emotion on behavior. individuals are encouraged to come up with explana-
Awareness of the effect of emotions is concerned tions of the way emotions may influence behavior.3
with studying accessibility of beliefs about emotion and Of a different nature are processes that may not
the effect of such beliefs on behavior. Knowledge of the become apparent even when attention is directed to

Conscious processes
EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR
Automatic processes
Uncontrollable Efficient Unintentional
Unconscious
Source of
individual
differences
Preconscious Implicit Automatized
processes processes processes
Assessment
Direct measures Indirect measures Direct and Indirect methods
measures
Figure 2 The different components of automatic processing and their influence on emotionally intelligent behavior.
them. An example of these processes, that herein I will awareness as a function of automatization. They may
call implicit processes, are mental processes, such as start as preconscious processes. For instance, before I
rapid affective appraisal leading to emotion or intuitive was talking about the importance of being aware of the
affect regulation processes as described by Koole and effects of emotion on behavior as a way to prevent
Jostmann (2004), in which the input stimulus or the unwanted emotion contagion. Awareness of effects of
process may not reach the threshold of awareness emotion may be conceived of as a preconscious process
because it is too fast to be perceived or because it is that becomes accessible under certain conditions: The
structurally inaccessible to awareness. Individual differ- more you pay attention to emotional aspects, the more
ences may emerge through experimental tasks that look you are likely to use emotional information in your
at the occurrence of the process with indirect mea- decision process. Still, knowledge of the effects of emo-
suresthat is, making inferences on the process on the tion, once inferred from instances and experienced
basis of its effect on performance. Appropriate aware- through effortful and conscious processing, may
ness checks (see Bargh & Chartrand, 2000) should be become automatized and guide behavior as a habitual
used to make sure that awareness was not implicated. response (Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994). Habits, as a form
Finally, another kind of unconscious process regards of goal-directed automatic behavior, may be activated
skill-based or learning-based processes that have been without conscious awareness (Aarts & Dijksterhuis,
labeled by some scholars as automatic (Logan, 1992) 2000); this implies that the simple presence of emo-
and that I will call automatized to differentiate them tional cues may be sufficient to activate the habitual
from the automatic processes with a generic connotation response that, in high-EI individuals, corresponds to
that I have used throughout the article. Automatized highly adaptive behavior. Baumeister et al. (2007) pro-
processes develop with practice and involve changes in pose that consciously experienced emotions leave in

memory the trace of the behavior associated to a certain higher effects when the stimulus is emotional.
situation; when a similar situation is encountered, the Automatized processes may also play a role in perceiv-
same emotion is automatically activated as a guide for ing emotion. For instance, there is evidence that indi-
behavior. Logan (1988) describes automatized perfor- viduals may be trained to consciously recognize
mance according to a single-step memory retrieval microexpressions (Ekman, 2003). Emotional signals
account: Initially, individuals perform a task going that initially escape awareness may become detectable
through a series of steps, or if-then rules, connecting the through attention and learning. Yet once individuals
input to the production of the output. With practice, an become experts in doing that, they may perceive emo-
association between the input and output is formed in tional signals without being aware of their perception
memory so that once the input is perceived, the output as the result of automatization.
automatically follows bypassing the intermediate steps. A line of research that illustrates well the different
The fact that automatized performance results from components of unconscious processes in EI is the one on
direct association of input and output suggests that the lie detection. Experts in detecting deception may be con-
intermediate steps may not be consciously accessible. sidered examples of high-EI individuals, particularly
Hence, methods based on conscious recalling of the because of their use of nonverbal emotional cues to
steps executed during performance, such as guided understand others true intentions and feelings (see
recall or think aloud protocols (Ericsson & Simon, OSullivan, 2005). Several studies assessed peoples abil-
1998), may not reveal all the pathways leading to ity to detect deception in experts such as police officers
unconscious behavior; indirect measures based on speed and individuals from law enforcement agencies. On
of execution in which proof of automaticity is detected average, peoples ability to detect deception is slightly
by rapidly performing emotion operations would be a above chance (Bond & DePaulo, 2006); good lie detec-
good complementary solution. tors use more nonverbal cues and microemotional sig-
The distinction of different types of unconscious nals, such as foot movement changes or variations in size
processes is fundamental to identify the source of indi- of the pupils, to understand whether the person is truth-
vidual differences in EI. Furthermore, as illustrated in ful or not (DePaulo et al., 2003). From the analysis of
Figure 2, it provides directions on which assessment the strategies used to identify liars, it was found that
methods, such as direct and/or indirect measures,4 some of them were conscious and directly accessed by
would be most appropriate to detect variability in emo- experts, such as observing liars eye gaze, which is also a
tionally intelligent performance. Notably, the various EI strategy recommended in popular forensic textbooks
subabilities are likely to rely on more than one type of (although not very helpful in deceiving liars); other
unconscious process, with each of them following a dif- strategies emerged through procedures that encouraged
ferent route to automaticity. participants to think aloud and disclose the strategies
For instance, the source of automaticity of perceiv- they followed to catch deception. Indeed, some strategies
ing emotion may be dissected as having preconscious, are based on preconscious processesthat is, they
implicit, and automatized components. The precon- may become accessible through deep thinking about it
scious component is the one responsible for the detec- and attention.
tion of emotional information in the environment Of note, the fact that lie catchers may access mental
without the individual being mindfully conscious of processes does not necessarily imply that those
doing that. Individual differences could be analyzed by processes led to the correct detection. A growing body
asking individuals to spontaneously recall emotional of evidence points out that lie detectors may fail when
details of a situation or come up with explanations asked to make explicit assessments of veracity and suc-
regarding the effect of emotion on behavior; high-EI ceed more often when truthfulness is assessed through
individuals would be expected to have greater aware- indirect measures, such as judging how much the liar
ness of emotional stimuli and their effect when atten- was sympathetic, which captures a more spontaneous
tion is directed to them. Implicit processes in perceiving and immediate evaluation of the target than the system-
emotions come into play when individuals incorporate atic approach of the think aloud protocols (Granhag,
emotional information in the environment into think- 2006). Collectively, findings suggest that there may be
ing processes or behavior without being able to report aspects of lie detection that escape conscious thinking
that they have done so. Here, individual differences and direct recall of strategies used to make a decision
could be investigated using the subliminal presentation but that rely on gut feelings and intuitions as the main
paradigm, in which the presence of implicit processes source of the correct decision (DePaulo & Morris,
would be revealed indirectly by the effect of the stimu- 2004; Granhag, 2006). It seems likely that such aspects
lus on subsequent performance/behavior, with the are related to what Lieberman (2000) calls social intu-
assumption that high-EI individuals should manifest ition, or the ability to make inferences about others

feelings and intentions without having a conscious reactions occur (Barrett, 2006). Indeed, automatic
understanding of how these inferences were originated. responses are not immutable and rigid, but they are sen-
The idea that behavior may be efficient and intelli- sitive to the characteristics of the context as well as
gent without awareness is somehow counterintuitive: other characteristics, such as the perceivers goals and
In the social psychology literature, unconscious focus of attention (Blair, 2002). Cervone et al. (2008)
processes are often associated with negative outcomes, found that some aspects of self-knowledge were rele-
such as prejudice and stereotyping. However, uncon- vant to certain contexts but not others. The knowledge
scious processes may lead to positive as well as negative appropriate for the situation at hand may be activated
outcomes, depending on the characteristics of the indi- by environmental cues. For instance, Macrae,
vidual, such as the content of the mental representa- Bodenhausen, and Milne (1995) found that the same
tions related to emotion, and the characteristics of the stimulus (a Chinese woman) could be automatically cat-
context. In fact, once a stimuluswhether coming egorized in different ways (woman or Chinese) depend-
from the internal world or perceived in the environ- ing on contextual cues, such as chopsticks or makeup.
mentactivates emotion processing, emotion informa- The ability to use the right emotion knowledge in the
tion may be processed without the perceiver being right place at the right time is an important characteris-
aware of its occurrence. At that point, what makes the tic of high-EI individuals, as the positive outcome of
difference between emotionally intelligent and emo- emotion-based performance often depends on the con-
tionally unintelligent behavior is (a) the accuracy of text in which behavior occurs. Showing empathic reac-
beliefs relating emotion to behavior, which may have tions may be appropriate in cultures valuing emotion
become tacit (i.e., used in practical behavior but diffi- expressivity but not in that endorsing emotion suppres-
cult to verbalize) and (b) how much such beliefs apply sion. The choice of which emotion content to bear on in
to the current situation. a given situation may be done unconsciously and
Mechanisms of emotional processing are supposed to through integration of background information, such
be the same for all individuals, but individuals differ as cultural norms, or peripheral emotion cues, such as
with respect to the level of awareness by which emotion faces expressing emotion as opposed to unexpressive
information is processed and the content of emotion faces.
processes, which influence whether the outcome is pos- Another way in which contextual factors may influ-
itive or negative. Individuals with chronic egalitarian ence emotion-based performance is by providing the
goals were able to counteract the activation of stereo- conditions that enable conscious and automatic pro-
types (Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999). cessing to occur. In general, any behavior is the result of
Similarly, high-EI individuals might have more accurate both processes. Still, conscious processes are more likely
lay theories about the influence of mood/emotion on to play a major role when there is plenty of time and
behavior, which inform their conduct. Accurate lay the- availability of attentional resources; in such circum-
ories include the acknowledgement that emotion may or stances, individuals may be able to consciously perceive
may not relate to the target of evaluation, with conse- stimuli and reflect on the effect of this perception on
quences on how emotion reactions are integrated into cognition and behavior. Conversely, when resources are
decision making and, in turn, affect behavior. With scarce, such as when attention is captured by many
practice, managing emotions according to accurate stimuli at the same time or the person is engaged in mul-
beliefs might have become an unconscious and efficient tiple tasks, then automatic reactions are unlikely to be
source of intelligent emotional behavior, as opposed modified by conscious ones.
to relying on mistaken lay theories as a guide for behav- In summary, a deeper understanding of which
ior in low-EI individuals. Note that in this case, the pre- processes might constitute EI requires specification of
conscious process of knowing of the effect of emotion which aspect of automaticity is under consideration and
on behavior would become accessible to awareness the mechanisms associated to it. Analysis of the aware-
through attention and, after extensive practice, reach ness aspect has revealed that processes related to being
again the condition of unawareness because of highly aware of the cause, content, and effect of emotion
proceduralized or automatized behavior. requires distinct considerations and paradigms of inves-
Individual factors, such as knowledge about emo- tigation; furthermore, the exploration of the mechanisms
tion, are not the only ingredients influencing emotion- associated with awareness or lack of it has uncovered
ally intelligent behavior: Contextual factors also play a some important source of individual differences in EI. As
role. Contextual factors may provide cues to make the far as regards the issue of how the discussed automatic
automatic response situated, as emotion concepts are mechanisms may contribute to successful emotionally
not context free and knowledge of appropriate emo- based performance, I have proposed that both individual
tional reactions originates in the context where such and contextual factors play a role.

THE NEW LOOK OF EI: CONSIDERATIONS ON expressive agnosia, which is a pathology characterized
HOW TO INVESTIGATE IT by the inability to distinguish facial expressions, into-
nation, and body language in others, or patients suffer-
The picture of EI emerging from the analysis of auto- ing from alexithimia, which is a deficit in describing
matic processes in affective experience is quite complex: and understanding ones feelings, may represent the
Emotion processes underlying EI may be executed con- group of low EI.
sciously and automatically, interrelate with each other, On the other extreme of the spectrum, highly emo-
and contribute differently to performance according to tionally skilled individuals might be identified according
the characteristics of the person, such as sensitivity to to a specific domain. In the domain of emotion under-
emotional cues or beliefs about emotions, and charac- standing, I already mentioned the experts in deceiving
teristics of the situation, such as availability of atten- deception. In the domain of emotion regulation, good
tional resources and contextual features in which the performers are those who are able to regulate their feel-
stimulus is embedded. ings according to the situation and use feelings to pur-
Mayer and Saloveys theory of EI has focused on ana- sue their goal. Professional actors or professional
lyzing individual differences in how individuals mind- athletes might well fall into this group as individuals
fully reason with emotion and reflectively use emotion who need to regulate feelings and use them appropri-
to enhance thinking and behavior. Still, emotion pro- ately to be good performers in their profession.
cessing includes automatic processes. To move forward, Once target groups are identified, assessment meth-
EI theory needs to take this fact into account as the first ods may be compared within and between groups to
priority. In addition to developing models of EI that understand how high- and low-EI individuals process
contemplate automatic emotion processing, researchers emotion information. In choosing which laboratory
should specify which aspect of automaticity is the object task to use, researchers should consider which aspect of
of investigation and which processes contribute to it. In automaticity they are interested in and what underlying
this article, I have emphasized the feature uncon- mechanism is associated with its occurrence.
scious over the other characteristics of automaticity, Considerations of the former define the domain of auto-
yet a thorough analysis of the contribution of other maticity and of the latter provide information on
aspectsparticularly of efficiencyto emotionally whether individual differences in EI are more likely to
intelligent behavior would also be advisable to further occur at the conscious or automatic level. Furthermore,
explore the automatic component of EI. researchers should also bear in mind the correspon-
Concerning the issue of how to assess individual dif- dence between the task they pick and the subabilities of
ferences in automatic processes underlying EI, herein I EI to which the task refers. For instance, the subliminal
suggest a way to proceed in this direction. It takes inspi- perception paradigm may be used to identify individual
ration from what was called the cognitive correlates differences in perceiving emotion. Subliminal priming is
approach in cognitive psychology (see Pellegrino & based on displaying emotional pictures at very brief pre-
Glaser, 1979) and is based on investigating emotion sentation times immediately followed by a mask that
processes that are differentially related to high- and has the function to delete the image of the prime in
low-EI individuals. visual memory after the stimulus has disappeared. The
Groups of high- and low-EI individuals are identi- hypothesis to test would be whether high-EI individuals
fied, and their performance in laboratory tasks is com- are more sensitive than low-EI ones to emotional, but
pared to see whether individuals differ with respect to not neutral, stimuli. Of note, the fact that a laboratory
how they process emotion information. Subgroups may task is chosen to map into a specific subability of EI
be arranged according to scores on the EI test (the does not imply that correlations with the other subabil-
MSCEIT being the most reliable ability test in circula- ities would not be expected. In fact, experimental tasks
tion). Alternatively, a criterion measure different from are meant to tap into mechanisms of emotion process-
performance on the MSCEIT may be employed to iden- ing, which may all be related to the abilities included in
tify high- and low-EI individuals. In fact, as already EI. Thus, accuracy in subliminal perception of faces
mentioned, the risk of mainly using an assessment would be expected to correlate with emotion perception
method tapping into declarative knowledge of emotion, as well as emotion regulation because individuals may
such as the MSCEIT, is that individuals who have regulate their behavior according to emotional stimuli
highly proceduralized emotion knowledge do not nec- perceived in the environment. Similarly, emotional con-
essarily fall into the group of those who score high on tagion may be analyzed as a process common to emo-
the MSCEIT. A way to avoid this risk is to use an exter- tion perception as well as emotion understanding
nal criterion for identifying groups of high- and low-EI because it may indicate perception of emotion in others
individuals. For instance, patients suffering from but also interpretation of others emotions.

Suggestions about which laboratory tasks may be by a secondary task. One could test whether high-EI
better suited to study processes underlying EI come people are as effective in understanding someones feel-
from the literature of priming and automaticity in social ing when under cognitive load as opposed to a situation
cognition (see Bargh & Chartrand, 2000) and personal- in which they have full attentional resources available.
ity psychology (see Robinson & Neighbors, 2006). Beyond attention allocation, accessibility of chronic
Laboratory tasks are based on indirect (or implicit) beliefs about emotion is another process underlying EI that
methods; that is, they rely on performance of mental might be analyzed with laboratory tasks. Chronically acces-
processes as a measure of individuals characteristics as sible constructs are those that are habitually activated. The
opposed to direct (or explicit) methods based on intro- association between representation of a situation and
spection and self-ratings. Because I already mentioned related behavior is strengthened with frequency of use and
tasks that may be employed to analyze the unconscious may become automatic and occur outside of awareness
aspect of automatic processing in EI, I will now turn to with practice (Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994). Mental represen-
describe tasks well suited for testing another two tations that individuals use to guide behavior are also
aspects of automaticity: efficiency and unintentionality. known as nave theories and, as a form of schemata, con-
Being able to allocate processing resources to certain tain both declarative and procedural knowledge (Snow &
stimuli instead of others may be an important factor Lohman, 1989). Accessibility of schemas is increased by
influencing emotionally intelligent performance. saliency and priming, and schemas are activated without
Attention determines where emotion processing starts. intention and awareness. Inferences about the structure of
High-EI individuals might have a preference for alloca- schematic knowledge are based on assessing response time
tion of attentional resources to emotional stimuli. to associate emotion constructs. For instance, participants
Earlier I mentioned the relevance of paying attention to may be required to decide as quickly and as accurately as
what one is feeling as a way to integrate emotional reac- possible which emotion may have influenced behavior in a
tions into either thinking processes/decision making and certain situation: Speed of association is taken as an indica-
to regulate intensity of feelings (Seo & Barrett, 2007). tion of accessibility of the emotionbehavior connection
Attention to emotional signals may be helpful to per- (Robinson, 2004). The ease with which individuals sponta-
ceive microemotional signals that guide interaction with neously come up with explanations of behavior may be
others, as Yoo et al. (2006) demonstrated. Some mea- another way to identify implicit theories about emotion, as
sures of attention allocation employ time taken to react is spontaneous recall of emotion details referenced in expla-
to a stimulus as an indication of the amount of nations of behavior. Because the activation of certain asso-
resources devoted to it and for this reason are suitable ciations in memory is spontaneous, these techniques may be
for assessing the efficiency aspect of automaticity. The employed to reveal the unintentional component of auto-
lexical decision task is an example of such measures. maticity in emotionally intelligent behavior.
Strings of letters that spell as a word or a nonword are In summary, research in areas akin to EI provides
presented and participants indicate whether the string is insightful suggestions about how to expand the study of
meaningful or not. The claim that EI individuals auto- EI to include underlying processes. Laboratory tasks
matically allocate attention to emotion stimuli implies may be much more informative for understanding the
that high-EI individuals should be quicker to recognize nature of EI than the correlational studies that have
a string that spells as an emotion word compared to dominated the field so far. Their employment is funda-
nonword and neutral word spells. To distinguish the mental to reveal the underpinnings of a complex and
contribution of automatic and conscious processes on fascinating construct such as EI.
emotionally intelligent performance, it would be helpful
to vary the level of conscious awareness in each task in
a similar vein to the contrastive analysis proposed by IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH:
Baars (1988). A RESEARCH AGENDA
Other tasks helpful in revealing underlying processes
are based on the manipulation of attentional demands. About 30 years ago, Underwood (1975) suggested
High-EI individuals are characterized by using less cog- analyzing psychological processes in light of naturally
nitive effort to solve emotional problems (Mayer, 2007). occurring individual differences. More recently, the
This claim may be tested using the dual-task paradigm: issue of combining a process-oriented and an individual
Participants are asked to perform two tasks at the same differences approach has been raised in emotion
time under conditions of loaded attention capacity (see research (Gohm & Clore, 2000; Larsen, 2000): As a
also Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988, on cognitive busy- way to deepen the study of hypothesized processes,
ness). An emotional task is automatic and efficient to the researchers are encouraged to not only manipulate
extent that it may be completed without being affected variables but also measure characteristics in which

individuals may differ. In the present work, I proposed matrix between traits and methods, different patterns of
to put into action this advice with respect to the study relationships between variables may be analyzed, such
of EI. I contend that the analysis of individual differ- as correlations between the two measures of EI for each
ences in EI should be complemented by the investigation trait and correlations between the four abilities of EI
of how processes underlying EI operate in high- versus within each method. Furthermore, the use of confirma-
low-EI individuals. tory factor analysis to MTMM data allows us to com-
Within a process-oriented approach, I outlined a pare the goodness of fit between predicted and observed
framework based on the distinction between conscious models representing the construct (Marsh, Martin, &
and automatic processes and discussed the importance Hau, 2006). Competing models may be tested against
of dissecting the automaticity component of EI accord- each other as far as the expected overlapping of auto-
ing to the features of, as well as the mechanisms associ- matic and conscious processes is concerned. Measures
ated with, awareness. This new look at EI expands and based on conscious and automatic processes would be
complements Mayer and Saloveys original theorization expected to show a mild correlation with each other; in
in several ways: By looking into the processes underly- fact, no task is process pure (Jacoby, 1991), and both
ing EI, it sheds light on mechanisms that might be types of processing are expected to influence any perfor-
responsible for differences in emotionally intelligent mance to some extent. Moreover, measures of conscious
behavior, an aspect that has received little attention and automatic processes would be expected to load on
from current theorization and research. By investigating the higher order factor of EI and correlate with more
the relevance of automatic processing and its interplay than one subability because of the fact that some under-
with conscious processing, it challenges the idea that EI lying emotion processes may be in common with more
should be thought of as a construct pertaining to the than one subability of EI.
domain of consciousness. By combining a process-ori-
ented and a differential approach, it expands the study Assessing Incremental Validity of EI
of individual difference to the investigation of processes
The distinction between conscious and automatic
underlying such differences.
processes calls for testing the incremental validity of EI.
Importantly, the present contribution provides a
The issue of whether EI predicts outcomes such as qual-
framework to guide further investigation in the field.
ity of interpersonal relationships, successful career, or
Indeed, if automatic processing plays a role in EI, as I
academic achievement beyond personality and intelli-
argue in this article, then current research is missing an
gence is controversial. Among research conducted on
important aspect accounting for the construct and a
the ability model, some authors found support for incre-
source of variability in emotionally intelligent perfor-
mental validity of EI (Lopes et al., 2004; Lopes, Salovey,
mance. Further research should take into account auto-
& Strauss, 2003), whereas others found less encourag-
matic processing to develop theory and assessment of EI.
ing results (Amelang & Steinmayr, 2006; Brackett &
Mayer, 2003).
Evaluating Construct Validity of EI
The reconceptualization of EI according to a dual-
Research should test the validity of the construct of process framework provides another way to approach
EI as defined by conscious and automatic processes. The the issue: A portion of unexplained variance of previous
assertion that both conscious and automatic processes studies might be accounted for by automatic processes,
constitute EI would be supported if different methods a component that, to the knowledge of the author, has
used to measure EI converge toward the same underly- never been included in any study on EI. In light of
ing construct. More specifically, measures of EI such as results found in research on the relationship between
the MSCEIT and measures based on laboratory tasks implicit and explicit processes in social and personality
such as the subliminal affective priming should con- psychology (Perugini, 2005), I expect that automatic
verge toward the same construct of EI. processing will account for unique variance in the crite-
A multitraitmultimethod approach (MTMM; ria. Still, the weight of automatic processes depends on
Campbell & Fiske, 1959) may be employed to test which performance conditions are appraised. Automatic
convergent validity. MTMM analyzes intercorrelations processing should predict spontaneous emotionally
between two or more traits or constructs and two or intelligent behavior or behavior under scarce attentional
more measurement methods. With respect to EI, multi- resources, whereas conscious processing should predict
ple traits would be the four abilities or branches of the deliberate behavior and action performed under avail-
Mayer and Salovey (1997) model, whereas the two ability of attentional resources. It is also possible that
methods would be measures based on conscious and automatic and conscious processing interact to produce
automatic processing. By means of the correlation emotional intelligent behaviors.

Exploring the Origin of Individual Differences in EI decoding rules, or rules about how to express and inter-
pret such emotions, vary a great deal across cultures
Further research should explore the antecedents of
(Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, in press). Explicit and
automatic and conscious emotional processing.
implicit norms about the most appropriate emotional
Appraisal theories emphasize that emotions are
responses in a given culture shape individuals reactions
elicited by evaluations of stimuli; such evaluations
to emotion to the point that they become a spontaneous
occur for the most part nonconsciously (Scherer,
and automatic way to regulate emotions (Mauss,
2005). Emotion perception, use of emotion to facili-
Bunge, & Gross, 2008).
tate thought, emotion understanding, and emotion
Given the growing body of evidence that culture
regulation may arise from conscious and automatic
influences emotional experience, it is reasonable to
appraisals of stimuli. Because appraisal processes
wonder whether EI remains a key construct across cul-
depend on knowledge structures (Cervone, 2004), at
tures. Because emotions have played a fundamental
the origin of individual differences in patterns of
role in human evolution (Darwin, 1965), the ability to
appraisal between high- and low-EI individuals, there
use emotions for ones own advantage must be crucial
might be differences in emotion knowledge, as
in any culture. Yet the manner in which being emotion-
Wranik, Barrett, and Salovey (2007) suggest.
ally intelligent is conveyed may change according to
Previous experience and the cultural environment in
cultural factors, such as social norms and customs. The
which a person is embedded contribute to persons
study of EI across culture may reveal some important
knowledge about emotion and eventually shape their
aspects of the construct, such as the universality of its
appraisal of situations. A situation may be interpreted
features. For instance, individual differences in EI may
in many different waysand consequently determines
be investigated as depending in part on the content of
different emotional experiencesaccording to the con-
emotion knowledge and in part on the mechanisms of
text. For instance, the gesture of kissing on the cheek to
emotion knowledge acquisition. A comparison of high-
greet a person may be perceived as appropriate and wel-
EI individuals across countries might reveal that the
coming in some cultures but intrusive and perhaps out-
former varies according to culture, whereas the latter
rageous in others. Complex emotion knowledge might
functions the same way regardless of the country of
be associated with fine-grained appraisal processes,
origin.
which ultimately lead to appropriate adjustment to the
Another issue worth exploring across cultures is the
context (realizing when it is the case to kiss on the check
extent to which emotional adaptation may be due to
to greet a person). High-EI individuals might have more
unconscious processes, such as implicit learning.
complex emotion knowledge than low-EI ones, perhaps
Implicit learning has been defined as the acquisition
because they developed a wider range of associations
of knowledge that takes place largely independently of
between situations and appraisals and/or because they
conscious attempts to learn and largely in the absence of
possess a larger repertory of explanations for a certain
explicit knowledge about what was acquired (Reber,
event and/or because they experienced the efficacy of
1993, as cited in Lieberman, 2000, p. 112). More
different strategies in dealing with the situation. Of
specifically, Lieberman (2000) proposes to consider
note, the complexity of emotion knowledge includes
implicit learning as the cognitive basis of social intu-
knowing what and knowing how of emotion, and
ition: Individuals decode details of nonverbal behavior
the association between knowledge and appraisal works
that provide crucial information about others indepen-
even when individuals are not aware of what deter-
dently of conscious learning attempts. Social intuition
mined their emotional reaction.
and implicit learning may be the keys of social and emo-
tional adaptation, and they may be investigated study-
Investigating the Relationship Between
ing individuals who changed their culture of origin,
Culture and EI
such as global managers or individuals who moved
The extent to which EI may be considered culturally from their home country. Successful global managers
bounded is still open to debate (Zeidner, Matthews, & might be characterized by greater plasticity for acquir-
Roberts, 2001). All human beings share the basic emo- ing new emotion knowledge; for them, adaptation to a
tions of happiness, anger, fear, contempt, surprise, dis- new environment should be faster and less costly than
gust, and sadness. Yet the influence of culture on how for common people, perhaps because once they (uncon-
such emotions are expressed, regulated, and even sciously) learned how to pick up emotion information
decoded is pervasive. The cultural environment directs in the environment, they were able to apply what they
the focus of attention, and therefore the object of per- had implicitly learned to new situations and cultures
ception, toward emotional cues that are valued in a cer- and get a fairly good understanding of others inten-
tain culture (Mesquita, 2003). Also, display and tions and feelings with little effort.

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Evidence Supporting the Effect of Automatic Automatic Processing in Perceiving Emotions

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Automatic Processing in Understanding Emotion awareness of emotional contagion. More specifically,

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CONSCIOUS AND AUTOMATIC

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EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR

Uncontrollable Efficient Unintentional

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