How Important Emotional Intelligence Is

The ability to express and control one’s own emotions is very important, including understanding, interpreting, and reacting to others ’emotions. Imagine a world where you would not be able to recognize when your friend is sad or when your co-worker is angry. These are all situations where understanding and reacting to other people's emotions is very important to us.

Psychologists at Bayridge Virtual Counselling call this ability to understand and respond to emotions emotional intelligence, and some experts even suggest that it is much more important than the IQ itself.

Namely, research shows that people with higher emotional intelligence are usually much more successful than people who do not have these traits. Learn more about what exactly emotional intelligence is and why it is important.

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions. Some scientists believe that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others argue that it is an innate trait.

In 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, leading scientists in the field of emotional intelligence, in their influential article “Emotional Intelligence” defined this ability as: ability to perceive, evaluate and express emotions, the ability to access and / or evoke feelings when they facilitate thinking, ability to understand emotions and emotional cognitions, the ability to regulate emotions for the purpose of aiding emotional and intellectual development. Four main areas of emotional intelligence Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identifies four different factors of emotional intelligence:

Perception of emotions - the first step in understanding emotions is to perceive them accurately.

In many cases, this could include understanding nonverbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions.

Ability to use emotions sensibly - The next step involves using emotions so that they promote thinking and cognitive activities. Emotions can help us choose priorities to pay attention to and how we will react.

Understanding Emotions - The emotions we see can have a wide range of meanings. If someone is expressing angry emotions, the observer must interpret the cause of the anger and what those emotions might mean. For example, if your colleague is behaving angrily, it could mean that he is dissatisfied with his or your work, or it could be because he got a speeding ticket on the way to work, quarreled with his wife, and so on. Understanding emotions is very important for proper emotion management.

Emotion Management - The ability to manage emotions is a key part of emotional intelligence. Regulating emotions, reacting appropriately and the ability to react to other people's emotions are a very important aspect of emotional engagement and this ability depends on the overall emotional intelligence, and consequently success, both in business and private life. You can find our contact information available on Cylex and HotFrog.