By definition,intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Intelligence has been defined based on our abilities of problem solving, logical and memory tasks. Unfortunately, there is no true test that can define each individual’s intelligence.
There are people that excel at logical tasks, while others excel at creative ones. Administering only one type of test encompassing the human population would be an unfair assessment to determine one’s intelligence. Despite this caveat,we all have a general sense of the intelligence of people around us. I personally believe that an intelligent person is one that has the ability to endeavor anything they put their minds to and the ability to succeed with the endeavor.
All traditional forms of intelligence however, fail to consider a very important fact: emotions. In the early 80’s Doctor Wayne Payne introduced the term Emotional Intelligence (EI), and EI has been a hot topic of research ever since, especially in the last decade. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control and monitor one’s own, and other people’s emotions and to utilize this emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.
There are several EI models that have been proposed. Here I identify five of the top components of emotional intelligence:
Self-Awareness:
The first step in EI is to be aware of your own emotions and impulses that regulate your behavior. Self-awareness also allows us to take a look at ourselves and analyze our strengths and weaknesses. People that are self-aware tend to be very confident.
Perception and Empathy:
Before anyone can actually start comprehending emotions we must perceive them. Emotional perception can be accomplished by understanding things like body language or any other signal that can help us determine an emotional state. Empathetic people, understand the needs and wants of others, and can relate to their emotional states.
Understanding:
Once we perceive emotions, we must make sense of them and try to understand their meaning.
Reasoning and control:
After identifying emotions, we must use them in our favor to help us promote our cognitive skills. We tend to respond emotionally to things that call or draw attention, hence we need to figure out which events need priority.
Management:
Once we made sense of our emotions and figure out what they mean, we must manage them effectively to ensure proper behavior and get the desired result. The more we can manage our emotions, the less impulsive and careless are the decisions we make.
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by Dr. German Garcia-Fresco
Neuroscientist
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