Social Skills and Emotional Intelligence

"Decent human being”. Goleman, 1995 restructured the idea and expressed high EI with “maturity & character”. Though all these ideas about EI seem to be speculative & it is clear that the construct of EI has been misinterpreted in the literature hence the same was also misinterpreted even by the research community. The problem with the assertion on large scale was that it was claiming that high EI helps the people to succeed in life. Though this reasoning was not clear & rational as Mayer & Salovey, 1993 stated that “scientist have not yet proven that emotional intelligence predicts anything at all or even that it is a discrete quantity, distinguishable from general intelligence; the construct is too new”. To overcome the confusion Goleman presented his adaptation of a few existing models & he further emphasized how emotional intelligence changes throughout the life. By presenting the idea for the awareness of research community Goleman suggested the way for various interventions & researchers, educators & parents started to focus on the children having deficits in this particular area with a better understanding of the early signs & problems exhibited at a young age in the children of this group & felt a need of developing intervention or training program for such groups.

Emotional intelligence is considered as highly malleable and may be developed through appropriate learning interventions, life experiences and through regular training (Goleman 1995). The results of the experiment have also shown an improvement in Emotional intelligence of individuals who had participated in an EI training program in comparison to those who were not given any related training. James Dozier gave is idea about emotional intelligence even before the term EI came into its existence. He expressed his thoughts as “The ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion and regulate emotion in self and others”.

The literature indicates that EI is related to personal, social, emotional & several other dimensions of intelligence as it is not only concerned with the adaptation of an individual to new situation but increases the ability to deal with the environmental demands. It is also conceived that the EI may be measured by measuring the ability of a person to cope with the problematic situation.

Till date IQ of an individual has been understood as a fixed number/value & remains same throughout the life where as EQ develops & changes with the advancement of age & gradual learning. In recent studies it has become evident that emotional skills & EI develop over time & keep changing throughout life. In fact these skills may be improved through training & intervention program which is not possible in dealing with the concept of IQ. To depict the different dimensions of emotional intelligence as per the requirement different types of frame works and models have been developed. However the model developed by Goleman is considered as one of the best and more successful model among many other models as this model is quite comprehensive and has been referred by many researchers “EI, why it can matter more than IQ” by Goleman, the topic has attracted all the researchers , practitioners, psychologists and educationists working in the field.

To assess the EI of the individuals Raven Bar-On, 1997 developed a self-report measure of EI that could be used throughout of the research community. Bar-On defines EI as “an array of non cognitive abilities, capabilities & skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands & pressure”. He reviews EI as “an array of non cognitive abilities, capabilities & skills that influence one’s ability to succeed in life & directly influences one’s general psychological well-being (i.e. one’s present mental condition or overall degree of emotional health)”. It is important to note that emotional quotient (EQ) is not a fixed construct & changes with advancement of age unlike IQ because EI is based on learned habits.

According to Salovey theory (Goleman 2000, P.68-69) emotional intelligence is based on following principles:-

Self-awareness- The ability of an individual to be in accordance with one’s own feeling and to see the impact of one’s feeling on others. Self awareness, recognition of the feelings and the capacity to monitor the feelings of one-self & others is considered as the crucial factors in understanding the self. The individual possessing this capacity is confident in oneself and in the decision he or she takes. The individuals with higher level of self-awareness are found to have better assertiveness, self-confidence, drive for task completion, cognitive ability to deal with complex situation, respect for individuality & diversity, sense of humor & have the respect for learning & teaching. On the other hand the people with lower score of self-awareness are found to be more egoistic, resilient, hardly recognize how one’s feeling affect others, show willingness to tolerate frustrations & delay & may have narcissism up to an acceptable level.

Emotion Handling or self management:-The ability to keep a control on negative emotions and impulsive behavior to be calm in stressful situations. It is based on self-awareness and dealing with the appropriate feelings with current situation through the capacity of self-calming, fast arousal, getting rid of anxiety, controlling outbursts and discussing disagreements calmly and avoiding the activities which undermine the individuals. The people who lack this capacity seems to struggle more with feelings of depression where as the people possessing these capacities show better vitality of life as the sub dimensions of this dimension include self- control, transparency & adaptability.

Self-motivation:- The capacity to direct the emotions to serve a certain goal. To get excellence and to develop creativity self motivation plays a significant role.

Empathy or knowing emotions of others:- It is the capacity based on awareness of emotions & motivates the human beings to give preference and care to the well being of others rather than to himself/herself. Empathy is awareness of the needs & feelings of others both individually & in groups. It helps the people to develop a stronger understanding of the situation of others. Empathy may often be difficult to achieve as to listen effectively to the verbal & non verbal massages of others, including body movements, gestures & other physical signs of emotions, using questions to know about the feelings of others & to get feedback for clarification of the understood feelings & to acknowledge & respect the feelings of others even on disagreement at some points & to avoid making judgmental comments is not an easy task to learn.