Emotional intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence

The first definition of Emotional Intelligence as such was provided by two American psychologists, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, who in their 1990 article “Emotional Intelligence” defined it as:

“the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”
(Salovey, Mayer, 1990)

Later, Salovey defined the five domains of Emotional Intelligence made famous by Daniel Goleman’s popular works. These five domains are: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skills.

The concept of Emotional Intelligence, as well as the broader idea of multiple intelligences, finds its anatomical basis in our growing understanding of the brain’s structure. Today we know that different areas of the brain are associated with specific skills and abilities that can be independent of each other. This is why the term “emotional brain” is used to refer to areas of the limbic brain responsible for emotional functions. The most well-known area of the “emotional brain” is certainly the amygdala, named after the Greek word for almond due to its shape. Our most intense emotional responses, whether negative and aggressive or motivated and enthusiastic, are linked to the amygdala.

The amygdala and the limbic-emotional system

Learning the specific skills of Emotional Intelligence means being able to train and enhance them: becoming more self-aware, capable of controlling impulses, self-motivated, empathetic, and able to build satisfying relationships. All qualities that can be decisive in creating a better, more aware, inclusive world oriented towards the improvement of the whole.

The perspective of Pedagogy for the Third Millennium

Patrizio Paoletti writes in Crescere nell’eccellenza (2008):

“The famous dichotomy between rational and emotional does not translate into a simple scientific or cognitive dispute, but powerfully influences interventions both in clinical-therapeutic and educational-training fields.
In the near future, we will be engaged in resolving this thorny issue, needing to restore to emotional intelligence its decisive role that it has always played in the evolution of the individual and the society in which it manifests.
Schools will need to redesign their role by offering training pathways aimed at stimulating emotional skills in order to prepare new managerial classes capable of responding to the complex and intricate worlds that lie ahead. The lack of social skills in the workplace is the major problem employers face daily. […]

If in the past acquiring a higher educational degree represented a form of guarantee for the future, today it is normal worldwide to encounter individuals highly profiled in terms of IQ; yet this proves every day to be increasingly less predictive of their real ability to integrate into a work team and cooperate to enhance its productive capacity.
We can affirm that emotional intelligence is emerging as the key element for the world we are entering, representing the ability that, once made conscious, can produce real advantage.”

(Paoletti, 2008:79-80)