Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Examples of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is the “ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior” (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).

Emotional Awareness (Understanding Emotions)

Self-awareness, or the ability to recognize and comprehend one’s own emotions, is a vital emotional intelligence skill.

Beyond acknowledging one’s feelings, however, is being conscious of the effect of one’s actions, moods, and emotions on other people.

According to research by Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, 95% of individuals believe they are self-aware. Still, only 10 to 15 percent genuinely are, which can cause problems for the people one interacts with.

To become self-aware, one must be capable of monitoring one’s emotions while recognizing different emotional reactions and correctly identifying each distinct emotion.

Self-aware individuals also can recognize the connections between the things they feel and how they act.

Recognizing and Differentiating Complex Emotions

A foundational example of emotional intelligence is the practice of emotional granularity, which is the ability to precisely define your internal state rather than using broad, generic labels.

• Identifying the root cause: An executive or student might claim they are experiencing general “stress” or “anxiety,” but upon deeper reflection, they realize they are actually feeling “envious” of a colleague’s success or resources.
• Uncovering hidden emotions: A father who is chronically irritable and critical of his new wife’s decision to babysit her grandchildren might appear simply angry. However, an emotionally intelligent breakdown reveals that he is actually experiencing jealousy and a fear of losing her attention.
• Noticing secondary emotions: Emotionally intelligent individuals recognize when they are having a reaction to a reaction, such as a parent who feels angry at a child’s misbehavior, but then subsequently feels guilty or ashamed about having experienced that ange

Here are some tips on improving one’s self-awareness:

• Ask for constructive feedback from others.

• Keep a journal of one’s thoughts and feelings.

• Practice mindfulness – try meditating.

• Pay careful attention to one’s thoughts and emotions.

• Pursue one’s passions and do what makes one happy.

• Learn new skills and set goals for oneself.

• Reflect on one’s experiences and be grateful.

• Use positive self-talk daily.

• Work on building a growth mindset.

Emotional Self Regulation (Managing Emotions)

Emotionally intelligent individuals do not suppress their feelings, but they proactively manage how those feelings dictate their behavior.

This does not mean taking emotions out of sight and essentially “locking” them away, hence hiding one’s true feelings.

It just means waiting for the right time and place to express them. Self-regulation is all about communicating one’s emotions appropriately in context. A reaction tends to be involuntary.

The more in tune one is with one’s emotional intelligence, the easier one can transition from an instant reaction to a well-thought-out response.

People with healthy self-regulation skills also tend to have heightened conscientiousness. They reflect on how they influence others and take accountability for their actions.

Here are some tips on improving one’s self-regulation:

• The intentional pause: Before engaging in a coping mechanism, such as stress-eating a bowl of ice cream, a person might pause to ask, “Is this physical hunger or emotional hunger?” and actively assess how the ice cream is temporarily feeding a feeling of stress rather than solving it.

• Aligning with values during an emotional storm: If a person discovers a profound betrayal, such as being cheated on, their immediate emotional impulse might be a red haze of rage telling them to run the betrayer over with a car. Emotional intelligence involves looking at that intense jealousy and anger with curiosity, and asking, “How do I behave in line with my deeply held values in this situation?” rather than surrendering to destructive urges.

• Accepting impermanence: A highly emotionally intelligent five-year-old child who recognizes he is in a “blue” mood (feeling unpleasant and low energy) might calmly tell an adult that he does not need a strategy to fix it, because he knows the emotion is impermanent and will naturally pass.

Social Empathy (Perceiving Emotions)

Empathy, or the capability to comprehend how other people are feeling, is crucial to perfecting emotional intelligence.

However, it involves more than just being able to identify the emotional states of others. It also affects one’s responses to people based on this knowledge.

While empathy involves understanding or relating to another’s pain, empathy without emotional intelligence can lead to compassion fatigue, where a person becomes entirely lost in someone else’s suffering.

Emotionally intelligent individuals recognize when they are becoming overwhelmed by another’s feelings and know how to pull back and regulate themselves.

Furthermore, emotional intelligence recognizes that endlessly talking about feelings without moving toward strategies or solutions is often counterproductive, as it merely rehearses the negative emotion.

Instead, an emotionally intelligent listener uses compassionate questioning to help the person gain perspective, eventually guiding them toward a path of feeling better.

Here are some tips on improving social empathy:

• Be willing to share emotions.

• Listen to other people.

• Practice meditation.

• Engage in a purpose like a community project.

• Meet and talk to new people.

• Try to imagine yourself in someone else’s place.

Social Skills (Using Emotions)

The ability to interact well with others is another vital aspect of emotional intelligence.

Solid social skills allow people to build meaningful relationships with others and develop a more robust understanding of themselves and others.

Proper emotional understanding involves more than just understanding one’s own emotions and those of others. One also needs to put this information to work in one’s daily interactions and communications.

In the workplace or professional settings, managers benefit by being able to build relationships and connections with employees.

Workers benefit from developing a solid rapport with leaders and co-workers. Some prefer to avoid conflict, but it is crucial to address issues as they arise correctly.

Research shows that every unaddressed conflict can waste almost eight hours of company time on unproductive activities, damaging resources and morale.

Essential social skills include active listening, verbal communication, nonverbal communication, leadership, and persuasiveness.

Here are some tips on improving social skills:

• Ask open-ended questions.

• Find icebreakers that will help start conversations.

• Practice good eye contact.

• Practice active listening with the entire body.

• Notice other people’s social skills.

• Show interest in others and ask them personal questions.

• Watch one’s body language and that of others.

1. Lending a Compassionate Ear to a Frustrated Co-Worker

Employees will inevitably get upset, have bad moods, argue, and just generally have bad days.

In practice, compassion, understanding, and awareness are definite signs of emotional intelligence.

Awareness of and reacting to other people’s emotional states shows an understanding that all humans experience intense emotions and says that a person’s feelings matter.

2. Listening to Others Respectfully

Ever been to a conference when it seems like everyone is speaking over each other, trying to get the last word?

This is not only an indication of egos taking over and a lack of consideration for others; these are also indications of there being a lack of emotional intelligence.

When individuals are allowed to speak, and others listen without persistent interruptions, it is a good sign of EI.

It shows reciprocal respect between parties and is more likely to lead to a productive conclusion in meetings.

3. Being Flexible

Flexibility is a critical term in organizations today.

Building flexibility into how people function can be the difference between keeping the best workers and drifting out the door.

Emotionally intelligent leaders comprehend the changing needs of others and are ready to work with them rather than attempting to impose rigid restrictions on how people go about their work.

They do not expect everyone to work the hours they do, hold the same priorities, or live by precisely the same values.

Tips for Improving EI

Improving your emotional intelligence involves systematically training the way your brain and body process affective information.

The skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions are not fixed traits; they are highly malleable capacities that can be developed through deliberate practice.

Here are evidence-based, actionable ways to improve each of these five domains:

1. Recognizing Emotions

Recognizing emotions involves detecting signals both within yourself (intrapersonal) and in others (interpersonal).

Knowing when one is feeling anxious or angry can help process and communicate those feelings in a way that promotes healthy results.

Frequently checking in with yourself to accurately label complex emotional blends (e.g., “I feel curious but a bit anxious”) improves heart rate variability, enhances positive emotions, and turns the feeling into a source of wisdom rather than a point of suffering.

• Enhance Interoception: To recognize your own emotions, you must improve your interoception: your brain’s ability to sense and interpret internal physical signals from your body.  You can train this by taking regular “interoceptive pauses” to scan your body for tension, posture, and autonomic arousal without immediately trying to change them.
• Avoid the “Hangry” Trap: Because the brain interprets homeostatic disruptions (like a drop in blood sugar) similarly to emotional distress, people frequently misinterpret physical needs—such as hunger or fatigue—as anger, anxiety, or irritability. Improving recognition means learning to accurately detect whether your body is sending an emotional signal or a basic physiological one.
• Track Nonverbal “Somatic Markers”: To recognize emotions in others, focus on their nonverbal cues rather than just their words. Pay attention to subtle shifts in vocal quality (e.g., a high-pitched, thin voice indicating restricted anxiety, or vocal perturbations that suggest a struggle to hold back tears). Observe posture, eye contact, and micromovements, recognizing that human nervous systems are constantly communicating safety or threat to one another below the level of conscious awareness.

2. Understanding Origins and Consequences

Understanding emotion requires operating like a detective to decode the “why” behind a feeling.

• Distinguish Primary vs. Secondary Emotions: A critical step in understanding is recognizing that the emotion you display (or see in others) is often a secondary emotion acting as a defense mechanism to mask a more vulnerable primary emotion. For example, a person might exhibit secondary, reactive anger because they are subconsciously trying to protect themselves from the primary, painful feeling of shame, fear, or abandonment. To understand an emotion, you must ask yourself: “What is the vulnerable feeling driving this reaction?”
• Identify the Unmet Need: Every primary emotion carries an implicit existential or interpersonal need. Sadness signals a need for comfort and connection; fear signals a need for safety; anger signals a need for boundary protection or justice. You can understand the origin of an emotion by asking, “What is at stake here, and what does this feeling need for it to be better?”.
• Analyze the Cognitive Appraisal: Emotions arise from how you appraise a situation. For instance, anger typically stems from a perceived injustice, while disappointment stems from unmet expectations. Understanding an emotion requires you to trace it back to the specific belief or interpretation you assigned to the triggering event.

3. Labeling with Precise and Accurate Words

Labeling emotions is far more than a vocabulary exercise; it is a profound regulatory tool.

• Practice Emotional Granularity: You must move beyond broad, unhelpful bins like “bad,” “stressed,” or “upset,” and strive for emotional granularity—the ability to use highly specific and nuanced words. Knowing the precise difference between feeling “anxious” (worrying about future uncertainty) and “envious” (comparing yourself socially) completely changes the coping strategy you should deploy.
• Use “Affect Labeling” to Tame the Brain: The simple act of putting a precise word to a feeling (affect labeling) actually alters brain activity. Research shows that accurately labeling a negative emotion reduces activity in the amygdala (the brain’s threat center) and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, inherently turning down physiological arousal and distress.
• Map Your Mood: If you struggle to find the right word, use an energy-pleasantness scale (like the Mood Meter). First, ask yourself if your physical energy is high or low. Second, ask if the feeling is pleasant or unpleasant. This places you in a specific quadrant (e.g., high energy/unpleasant), making it much easier to narrow down the label to words like “furious,” “panicked,” or “jittery”.

4. Expressing Appropriately Across Contexts

Expression must be strategically adapted to fit the cultural and relational environment you are in.

• Navigate Cultural Display Rules: Culture heavily dictates how emotions should be expressed. In Western, individualistic cultures, expressing assertive anger to defend one’s independent boundaries is often viewed as healthy. Conversely, in many East Asian or collectivistic cultures, expressing high-arousal negative emotions like anger is discouraged because it disrupts social harmony; instead, individuals may rely on more indirect communication or somatic (physical) expressions of distress. Improving expression requires multicultural humility and adapting your communication style to the context.
• Express the Primary Emotion, Not the Secondary One: In relationships, expressing secondary emotions (like lashing out in rage or withdrawing in cold silence) usually creates conflict. Expressing appropriately means sharing the underlying primary emotion. Saying “I feel hurt and lonely when you don’t ask about my day” is far more productive and invites connection, whereas yelling “You never care about anyone but yourself!” invites a defensive counterattack.
• Avoid “Co-Rumination”: When sharing emotions with friends, beware of simply venting. While venting can temporarily build a social bond, endlessly rehearsing a negative narrative without moving toward a solution (co-rumination) keeps you trapped in the negative emotion. Effective expression involves sharing the feeling to receive validation, and then actively working with the listener to broaden your perspective and problem-solve.

5. Regulating with Effective Strategies

Emotion regulation requires a flexible toolkit. When emotions hit, you must decide whether to use “bottom-up” physical strategies or “top-down” cognitive strategies.

• Use Bottom-Up (Physiological) Tools for High Arousal: When you are highly triggered, panicked, or enraged, your prefrontal cortex is impaired, making it nearly impossible to “think” your way out of the emotion. In these moments, you must regulate from the bottom up by changing your physiology. Highly effective tools include the physiological sigh (a double inhale through the nose followed by a long exhale through the mouth to rapidly offload carbon dioxide and lower heart rate), deliberate cold exposure to build resilience to adrenaline, or using physical touch and soothing environments.
• Use Top-Down (Cognitive) Tools for Reframing: Once your physical arousal is manageable, you can use your mind to shift the emotion. A powerful top-down tool is psychological distancing. Instead of immersing yourself in the pain, talk to yourself using your own name or the pronoun “you” (e.g., “How are you going to handle this situation, [Your Name]?”). This verbal shift tricks the brain into viewing the problem objectively, as if you are giving advice to a friend. Mental time travel is another tool: ask yourself how you will feel about this stressor a week, a month, or a year from now, which instantly broadens your perspective and diminishes the immediate sting.
• Create “If-Then” Plans (WHOOP): To make regulation automatic, preemptively plan for your triggers. Use the framework of Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan. Identify the obstacle that usually dysregulates you, and formulate a strict “If-Then” protocol (e.g., “If I feel intense chatter and anxiety about a work project, Then I will step away from my desk for a five-minute walk in nature”).
• Beware the Self-Regulation Paradox: Finally, ensure that your regulation strategies are not just fancy forms of avoidance. True emotion regulation is not about suppressing or running away from all discomfort. Healthy regulation involves using tools to bring your nervous system back into a “window of tolerance,” but then allowing the underlying emotion to be fully felt, processed, and released.

Cognitive and Attentional Shifting

Managing emotions often requires actively shifting one’s attention or adopting a new perspective to prevent a negative feeling from spiraling into total dysregulation.

• The “picture frame” distancing technique: If someone is being unfairly criticized or bullied by an angry family member at a dinner table, they might imagine a picture frame around the relative, observing them as if they are a character on a television show. This psychological distancing allows the person to remain curious about why the relative is so angry, rather than internalizing the hostility and bursting into tears or a fit of rage.
• Mental time travel: When confronted with an overwhelming problem, a person might use mental time travel to ask themselves, “How will I feel about this next week, next month, or next year?”. This instantly broadens their perspective, reminding them that the intensity of the emotion will naturally fade as time stretches on.
• Modifying attention: In the workplace, if a professional feels intensely frustrated by a colleague during a Zoom meeting, they might actively shift their gaze out the window to look at trees and birds instead of glaring at the colleague on the screen, thereby preventing themselves from saying something they will regret

Beware the Self-Regulation Paradox

While regulating your emotions is vital, you must avoid the “self-regulation paradox.”

This occurs when you constantly use tools like breathing exercises or journaling merely to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions.

If you simply suppress or sidestep feelings like grief or anger without ever letting them complete their cycle in your body, they become trapped. 

True emotional intelligence means using regulation tools to get yourself back into a “window of tolerance,” but then allowing the emotion to be fully felt, processed, and released without letting it dictate your actions.

A core principle here is changing emotion with emotion; an unwanted or maladaptive emotion (like toxic shame) cannot easily be reasoned away, but it can be transformed when you co-activate a stronger, opposing, and adaptive emotion (such as self-compassion or assertive anger)

Why is Emotional Intelligence Critical?

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a core survival mechanism that facilitates rational decision-making and physiological health.

It involves the RULER skills: recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions.

These skills constitute the ability to identify and manage feelings effectively in ourselves and others.

Far from being a “soft skill,” EQ allows the brain to process vast amounts of experiential data. This data guides our moral judgments and practical choices.

Without these emotional signals, the rational mind becomes overwhelmed by infinite possibilities

1. It is the Engine of Rational Decision-Making

Historically, society has pitted logic against emotion, but modern affective neuroscience reveals that rationality without feeling is virtually impossible.

Emotions act as “somatic markers” or intuitive gut feelings that guide our choices.

Rather than being irrational, emotions function as a highly complex background processor; they instantly crunch “billions of gigabytes” of experiential data to tell you whether a situation feels right or wrong.

By automatically steering you away from obviously bad choices and narrowing down your options, your emotions give your rational mind a curated subset of choices, giving it a chance to succeed without becoming overwhelmed.

Consequently, emotional evaluations often form the accurate basis of our most profound moral, ethical, and practical judgments.

2. It Drives Peak Performance and Goal Attainment

In the realm of high achievement, emotional intelligence is a critical predictor of success.

Achieving “high hard goals” inevitably requires navigating the complexities of other people, who stand between you and your dreams.

Peak performers use EQ to build and maintain robust social support networks, which biologically alter how the brain perceives stress.

When you encounter a massive obstacle alone, your brain registers it as a threat and sounds an alarm of anxiety.

However, if you have a highly functioning social network built through active listening and empathy, your brain appraises the same obstacle as a manageable challenge.

3. It Protects Physical and Mental Health

High emotional intelligence—specifically the skill of emotional granularity (labeling feelings with high precision)—is directly correlated with measurable physical health benefits.

Accurately labeling your emotions improves respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and heart rate variability (HRV), which are key physiological markers of resilience, better sleep, and lower anxiety.

When individuals lack EQ and cannot differentiate between feeling anxious, sad, or angry, they often suffer from undifferentiated global distress that exacerbates psychological disorders.

Furthermore, by effectively regulating emotional intensity, emotionally intelligent individuals prevent the chronic activation of the fight-or-flight response, thereby saving their bodies from the intense wear-and-tear (allostatic load) that leads to physical illness and burnout.

4. It Prevents Empathy from Becoming Destructive

While empathy is a beautiful trait, empathy without emotional intelligence can be dangerous and lead to compassion fatigue.

For example, caregivers or medical professionals who easily “catch” their patients’ negative emotions can quickly become paralyzed by despair if they do not know how to regulate themselves.

Emotional intelligence allows an individual to maintain self-other awareness—recognizing that they are getting lost in someone else’s feelings and deliberately pulling back to re-regulate.

It enables a person to shift from merely absorbing someone’s pain to offering compassionate, non-judgmental active listening that actively helps the other person gain perspective and feel better.

5. It Fosters Self-Restraint and Interpersonal Effectiveness

On a daily basis, emotional intelligence stops us from being hostages to our impulses. Emotional awareness is positively correlated with self-restraint and impulse control.

By recognizing that an intense feeling of anger might actually be a secondary reaction masking a deeper feeling of shame or fear, an emotionally intelligent person can stop themselves from lashing out.

This translates to better conflict resolution at home and in the workplace.

Emotionally intelligent individuals do not endlessly vent or “co-ruminate” on negative feelings without a strategy, as they know this merely rehearses and amplifies the distress.

Instead, they regulate their own reactions, accurately read the vocal tones and facial expressions of others, and co-regulate the people around them to foster psychological safety and trust.

Emotional Intelligence and Success

It is not the most intelligent people who are the most prosperous or the most fulfilled in life.

Many people are academically genius and yet are socially incompetent and unsuccessful in their careers or their intimate relationships.

Intellectual ability or intelligence quotient (IQ) is not enough on its own to achieve success in life.

Undoubtedly, IQ can help one get into university, but your Emotional Intelligence (EI) will help one manage stress and emotions when facing final exams.

IQ and EI exist in tandem and are most influential when they build off one another.

Emotional intelligence is also valuable for leaders who set the tone of their organization.

If leaders lack emotional intelligence, it could have more far-reaching consequences, resulting in lower worker engagement and a higher turnover rate.

While one might excel at one’s job technically, if one cannot effectively communicate with one’s team or collaborate with others, those specialized skills will get neglected.

By mastering emotional intelligence, one can positively impact anywhere and continue to advance one’s position and career in life.

EI is vital when dealing with stressful situations like confrontation, change, and obstacles.

Emotional intelligence helps one build stronger relationships, succeed at work or school, and achieve one’s career and personal goals, as well as reduce group stress, defuse conflict, and enhance job satisfaction.

It can also help connect with one’s inner feelings, turn purpose into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to oneself.

During these times, it is essential to remember to practice kindness, and being in touch with our emotions can help us do just that.

History of Emotional Intelligence

In the 1930s, psychologist Edward Thorndike explained the concept of “social intelligence” as the ability to get along with other individuals.

During the 1940s, psychologist David Wechsler suggested that different practical elements of intelligence could play a critical role in how successful people are in life.

In the 1950s, the school of thought was known as humanistic psychology, and scholars such as Abraham Maslow concentrated attention on how people could build emotional strength.

Another critical concept to arise in the development of emotional intelligence was the concept of multiple intelligences.

This idea was put forth in the mid-1970s by Howard Gardner, presenting the idea that intelligence was more than just a single, broad capacity.

Emotional intelligence did not come into our vernacular until around 1990.

The term “emotional intelligence” was first utilized in 1985 as it was presented in a doctoral dissertation by Wayne Payne.

In 1987, there was an article written by Keith Beasley and published in Mensa Magazine that used the term emotional quotient or EQ.

Then in 1990, psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey published their milestone article, Emotional Intelligence, in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality.

They described emotional intelligence as the capability to monitor one’s and others’ feelings and emotions, discriminate among them, and use this knowledge to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Salovey and Mayer also initiated a research study to develop accurate measures of emotional intelligence and explore its significance.

For example, they found in one investigation that when a group of people saw an upsetting film, those who ranked high on emotional clarity, or the ability to recognize and label a mood that is being experienced, recovered more quickly.

In a different study, people who scored higher in the ability to perceive accurately, understand and appraise others’ emotions were sufficiently capable of responding flexibly to changes in their social environments and building supportive social networks.

But despite it being a relatively new term, attraction to the concept has grown tremendously.

In 1995, the concept of emotional intelligence was popularized after the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book  Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Boyatzis, R. E., & Goleman, D. (2011). Emotional and social competency inventory (ESCI): A user guide for accredited practitioners.  Retrieved December,  17, 2019.

Eurich, T. (2018). What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it).  Harvard Business Review, 1-9.

Gardner, H. E. (2000). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. Hachette UK.

Goleman, D. (1996).  Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (1999). Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence.  Intelligence, 27 (4), 267-298.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1993). The intelligence of emotional intelligence.  Intelligence, 17 (4), 433-442.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (2007).  Mayer-Salovery-Caruso emotional intelligence test. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems Incorporated.

Payne, W. L. (1985). A study of emotion: developing emotional intelligence; self-integration; relating to fear, pain and desire.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence.  Imagination, cognition and personality,  9 (3), 185-211.

Thorndike, R. L., & Stein, S. (1937). An evaluation of the attempts to measure social intelligence.  Psychological Bulletin,  34 (5), 275.

Wechsler, D., & Kodama, H. (1949).  Wechsler intelligence scale for children  (Vol. 1). New York: Psychological corporation.