Positive Psychology in Practice: Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life, 2nd Edition

Chapter 32The Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence

DAVID R. CARUSO, PETER SALOVEY, MARC BRACKETT AND JOHN D. MAYER

Disclosures: Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso receive royalties from sales of the MSCEIT assessment; Brackett and Caruso receive royalties from sales of a book used for school-based EI training; and Caruso and Salovey receive royalties from the sales of a book.

Human intelligence consists of a general factor, or g, which means that no matter how intelligence is defined and measured, its various components are moderately and positively correlated with one another (see, for example, Carroll, 1993). Yet, researchers have also found that underneath this general factor of intelligence, or the ability to learn and acquire knowledge, lies a number of more specific abilities or intelligences ranging from verbal to spatial intelligence. Over the decades, many specific abilities or intelligences have been proposed, including a set of intelligences sometimes referred to as “hot” intelligences. These hot intelligences operate on data that is important to us as humans, such as social relations and emotions. One of the more recently proposed hot intelligences is emotional intelligence (EI; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Even though EI was originally defined as an intelligence, where reasoning operates on emotions and emotions constructively inform reasoning, the term has been broadened to encompass a variety of views that some have labeled as soft skills or even more curiously, as noncognitive ...