Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

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Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

On Deconstructing the Emotional Intelligence "Debate",

by Catherine S. Daus, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

and Neal M. Ashkanasy, The University of Queensland

From http://siop.org/tip/Oct03/16daus.htm

My summary of the article

Selected quotes

The full text of the article

References

My summary of the article - S. Hein

Basically the authors say Daniel Goleman and Reuven Bar-On have misled the public and the
academic community, and they criticize the academic community for being so easily deceived.
In their rejection of the Goleman and Bar-On models of EI, the authors echo the views of this
website and a growing number of academic researchers. In their own words, the authors say,

"Let us first begin by making one point crystal clear-we do not endorse a Goleman
(1995) or Bar-On (1997) type of approach to studying emotional intelligence...we
also feel that to an extent, they have done much more harm than good regarding
establishing emotional intelligence as a legitimate, empirical construct "

The authors have better things to say about the Mayer, Salovey and Caruso model of EI, and
their test of it. They call it the "gold standard" of what is available so far. They say the new

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 Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

edition of their test, the MSCEIT, is a better test of EI than the earlier versions created by
Mayer et al. They also say that the field of studying and measuring emotional intelligence is
still very young and it is understandable that there would be some concerns about even the
Mayer et al model, which they believe is the most well conceived model of EI at this point.

Selected Quotes from the Article

"...some academics in our field have a rather limited exposure and a very narrow-minded,
unsubstantiated view of the construct."

"It is unusual, and sometimes disturbing, to see scientists and researchers uncritically cite a
popular trade book alongside peer-reviewed articles."

"...psychologists should view emotional intelligence as based in ability and behavior, rather
than in self-reports of attitudes, preferences, and/or values."

"Let us first begin by making one point crystal clear-we do not endorse a Goleman (1995) or
Bar-On (1997) type of approach to studying emotional intelligence...we also feel that to an
extent, they have done much more harm than good regarding establishing emotional
intelligence as a legitimate, empirical construct "

"... ability approaches to emotional intelligence conceive of the construct as the ability to solve
emotional problems; it is developed in childhood and can be strengthened over time."

"According to Mayer et al. (2003), .'Emotional intelligence involves problem solving with and
about emotions'"

"...any researcher serious about studying emotional intelligence must consider an ability
approach, which is focused on emotional problem solving; we feel Mayer, Salovey and
Caruso’s approach sets the gold standard for this."

The Full Text

Neal Ashkanasy and I (Catherine Daus) had the distinct "pleasure" of debating Ed Locke and
Frank Landy on the construct of emotional intelligence at this past SIOP Annual Conference in
Orlando. I, unintelligently (emotionally or otherwise!), agreed to substitute for Peter Salovey
who had professional commitments that precluded him from attending. Apart from the

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 Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

discomfort of being in Frank Landy’s direct line of fire (to which anyone who has had the
privilege could certainly attest) and the sheer intimidation factor of standing and speaking to an
audience of standing-room-only capacity (Neal calculated about 350+ people), I feel the
experience was enlightening and valuable to me, as I learned what concerns academics in our
field have with the construct of emotional intelligence. However, it was also quite frustrating as
I feel that some academics in our field have a rather limited exposure and a very narrow-
minded, unsubstantiated view of the construct.

The primary arguments proffered by Landy and Locke can be captured in three broad points:
1. Emotional intelligence is little more than a loose conglomeration of extant personality traits.
2. Emotional intelligence does not meet psychometric standards.
3. Emotional intelligence has no clear measurement rubric-it changes all the time.

Our responses to these three points are integrally linked, particularly when we connect them to
our starting point, which is an ability model of emotional intelligence, exemplified by the
research of Mayer and colleagues (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999; Mayer, Salovey, &
Caruso, 2002; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitaraneos, 2001, 2003). Thus, our key point is:

I-O psychologists should view emotional intelligence as based in ability and behavior, rather
than in self-reports of attitudes, preferences, and/or values.

Let us first begin by making one point crystal clear-we do not endorse a Goleman (1995) or
Bar-On (1997) type of approach to studying emotional intelligence in the workplace. These
models may indeed be useful for organizational development and interventions, but they are
much too broad in scope, and do not appear to markedly differ from traditional personality
models or competency models. In addition, these two approaches have generated assessment
devices that are based upon self-report, yielding self- and other-perceptions of these traits
rather than an estimate of a person’s actual emotional ability.

In fact, we did not disagree with Locke and Landy’s points regarding the questionable nature of
these models, and we also feel that to an extent, they have done much more harm than good
regarding establishing emotional intelligence as a legitimate, empirical construct with
incremental validity potential. It is unusual, and sometimes disturbing, to see scientists and
researchers uncritically cite a popular trade book alongside peer-reviewed articles.

Rather, we suggest that the only approach that makes sense is one that meets these criteria:
(a) uses a skill-based or behavioral, preferably nonself-report method of measurement; (b)
focuses narrowly and specifically on emotional skills and abilities only; (c) has demonstrated
construct distinctiveness; and (d) has demonstrably good psychometric properties.

The Mayer et al. approach meets these criteria.

We begin with a definition of emotional intelligence. Our definition of emotional intelligence is

Mayer et al.’s (1999) definition:

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 Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

Emotional intelligence refers to an ability to recognize the meanings of emotions and their
relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on the basis of them. Emotional intelligence is
involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand
the information of those emotions, and manage them (p. 267).

Thus, ability approaches to emotional intelligence conceive of the construct as the ability to
solve emotional problems; it is developed in childhood and can be strengthened over time.

According to Mayer et al. (2003), "Emotional intelligence involves problem solving with and
about emotions" (p. 1). Such measures require performance tests to assess the construct. For
example, in their most recent measure, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
(MSCEIT; 2002), the subscales and tests require the participant to view a series of faces and
report how much of each of six emotions is present, answer questions about emotional
scenarios and responses (e.g., judge how much joy one might experience while planning a
party), and solve emotional problems (e.g., decide what response is appropriate when a friend
calls you upset over losing her job).

Many other measures, particularly the more popular, commercial ones such as the BarOn Eq-i
(1997) and Goleman and colleagues’ measure, the Emotional Competence Inventory
(Boyatzis, Goleman, & Rhee, 2000) sample a broad range of individual differences and as
such, tend to show quite substantial overlap with the Big Five (see, for example, Davies,
Stankov, & Roberts, 1998; Dawda & Hart, 2000). The danger of this, of course, is that we are
simply seeing "old wine in new wineskins" and calling something by a fancy, sexy new name,
emotional intelligence, when it is simply measuring some other well-established personality
trait. We believe that this was at the heart of Locke’s argument (and a large part of Landy’s)
and suspect that they might agree with the following statement by noted emotion researcher,
Joseph Ciarrochi, and colleagues (Ciarrochi, Chan, Caputi, & Roberts, 2001): "Generally, we
should not make up a test and call it EI when really it is a measure of some other, well-
established personality trait" (p. 28). We also couldn’t agree more! The Mayer, Salovey,
Caruso model has shown little to no overlap with the Big Five personality constructs (Mayer et
al., 1999; Mayer et al., 2001) and small to medium overlap with other, well known personality
constructs such as positive and negative affectivity (Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000; Ciarrochi
et al., 2001). We concur with Ciarrochi and colleagues’ (2001) assessment: "Perhaps one of
the greatest strengths underlying the MEIS is its distinctiveness" ( p. 31).

The original measure of Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso, the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence
Scale (MEIS) was the first comprehensive ability measure of emotional intelligence.
Psychometric evidence for this measure, its reliability, convergent and discriminant validity
were all reasonable. In the debate, the point was raised by Landy that some of the subscales
of the MEIS had low reliabilities. This is indeed the case. While we feel it is a moot point to
clarify since the newer MSCEIT does not suffer from this problem, we do wish to inform the

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reader, lest he or she be suspicious that we are ignoring important contradictory evidence.
Depending on the type of scoring chosen, the internal consistency reliabilities for the 12
subscales (tapping four branches of Perceiving, Facilitating, Understanding, and Managing
emotions) ranged from .49 to .94 (consensus scoring), and .35 to .86 (expert scoring; Mayer et
al., 1999). Total branch reliabilities were all higher, reasonable, and their use recommended by
the authors. We feel it critical to emphasize that one or two subscales with less than desirable
reliabilities, for a measure in its theoretical, psychometric, and empirical infancy, is not only
quite reasonable, but also to be expected as a natural step in construct specification and
measurement development. In fact, their revised measure, the MSCEIT, addressed and
rectified most of the low reliabilities-branch score reliabilities for this measure ranged from .76-
91. Further, a confirmatory factor analysis provided convincing support for their proposed four-
branch factor structure (Mayer et al., 2003). Advances in scoring have also been made with
the MSCEIT, addressing earlier concerns with the first-generation test. It is certainly far from a
perfect measure, but seemingly robust enough for serious use.

In the debate, Landy quipped that, much like the weather, if you don’t like how emotional
intelligence is measured, "stick around…it’ll change." The implication, of course, is that this
measure can’t be trusted; that researchers in the area of emotional intelligence don’t know
what they want to measure or how to measure it. To counter, first, as we directly said in the
debate, and as we reiterate here, any researcher serious about studying emotional intelligence
must consider an ability approach, which is focused on emotional problem solving; we feel
Mayer, Salovey and Caruso’s approach sets the gold standard for this. Second, of course
measures change! This is the hallmark of empirical inquiry and measurement development…
the essence of the hypothetico-deductive model. Indeed, we feel it quite remarkable that for a
construct that is roughly only a decade or two old, there has been as much work on
measurement development and refinement as exists. I’m not sure that we were this far along a
mere 10 years after Galton measured the craniums of visitors to a fair or Binet asked school
children a few simple questions.

References

Bar-On, R. (1997). The Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQ-I): Technical manual. Toronto,
Canada: Multi-Health Systems, Inc.

Boyatzis, R. E., Goleman, D., & Rhee, K. S. (2000). Clustering competence in emotional
intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Competence Inventory. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker
(Eds.), The handbook of Emotional Intelligence: Theory, development, assessment, and
application at home, school, and in the workplace. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Ciarrochi, J., Chan, A., & Caputi, P. (2000). A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence
construct. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 539-561.

Ciarrochi, J., Chan, A., Caputi, P., & Roberts, R. (2001). Measuring emotional intelligence. In

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 Will the Real Emotional Intelligence Please Stand Up?

Ciarrochi, Forgas, & Mayer (Eds.), Emotional Intelligence in everyday life: A scientific inquiry.
Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Davies, M., Stankov, L., & Roberts, R. D. (1998). Emotional intelligence: In search of an
elusive construct. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 989-1015.

Dawda, D. & Hart, S. D. (2000). Assessing emotional intelligence: Reliability and validity of the
BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I) in university students. Personality and Individual
Differences, 28, 797-812.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (1999) Emotional intelligence meets traditional
standards for an intelligence. Intelligence, 27, 267-298.

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002). Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional

Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) User’s Manual. Toronto, Canada: MHS Publishers.

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., Caruso, D. R., & Sitaraneos, G. (2001). Emotional intelligence as a
standard intelligence. Emotion, 1, 232-242.

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., Caruso, D. R., & Sitaraneos, G. (2003). Measuring emotional
intelligence with the MSCEIT V2.0. Emotion, 3, 97-105.

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