By 1985, he thought he’d found a partial answer in what he called a person’s Emotional Quotient (EQ), an obvious parallel to the long-standing measures of cognitive or rational abilities that we know as IQ, or Intelligence Quotient.
But what exactly makes up one’s emotional quotient (also called emotional intelligence)? BarOn’s original definition (1997) has been revised to the current definition we use: “A set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way” (Multi-Health Systems, 2011, p. 1). EQ covers everything from how confident we feel, to our ability to express emotions constructively instead of destructively, to our skills in forming successful relationships, to our ability to stand up for ourselves, to setting and achieving goals, to handling the stress we all face.
This was an interesting hypothesis, but it remained untested—until Bar-On developed an instrument which became known as the EQ-i, which stands for Emotional Quotient Inventory. He believed emotional intelligence was made up of a series of overlapping but distinctly different skills and attitudes which could be grouped under five general theme areas or “realms,” then further subdivided into 15 components or “scales.” This was essentially what came to be referred to as the Bar-On model of emotional intelligence, upon which the EQ-i was developed. Even when the EQ-i was in its infancy, Bar-On had a hunch that the skills it was designed to measure would eventually prove to be even more important than traditional cognitive skills when it came to successfully coping with life’s demands.
Source: Stein, Steven J., PH.D. and E. Book, M.D., "The EQ Edge, the third edition",2011
No comments:
Post a Comment