What emotion is this person feeling?
A. Happy
B. Sad
C. Angry
I took an online emotional intelligence test and it asked questions like this, along with questions about what I would do in certain situations.
Emotional intelligence, in the book, is defined as the "ability to understand our own emotions and those of others, and to apply this information to our daily lives". I didn't really think about the actual definition as I was first reading, but after reading more about emotional intelligence online, I now have a better understanding of what it is. This link has really useful articles to the ins and outs of emotional intelligence.
The one article I found most helpful was, "What Emotional Intelligence Is and Is Not". This article explains that emotional intelligence is not personality traits. It says people with high emotional intelligence understand the meanings that emotions convey and can use emotional episodes in their lives to promote specific types of thinking. I found these things in the article especially interesting.
The other article I found interesting was "10 Ways to Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence". The article outlines things you can do to improve emotional intelligence such as write thoughts and feelings down and tune into your unconscious feelings. Recently, employers have implemented training to boost their employee's emotional intelligence. Does this formal training method actually work? I guess we will have to wait for more research to be done in order to find out.
This is a very interesting point. I think that emotional intelligence is something that can be improved, however I think that some have more emotional intelligence than others naturally. Training for employees to boost emotuonal intelligence has the potential to be effective in my opinion. However, people must be willing to improve it and be able to pay more attention to their feelings and those of the people around them.