Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Research, Measurement, Applications, and Controversies

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a recent psychological construct, and also one of the most discussed aspects regarding intelligence. Moreover, it reflects the study of the interrelations between emotion and intelligence, which allows us to infer the complexity of its conceptual field, as well as its methodological difficulties. This article aims to inform the reader of the current status of EI from a scientific point of view. Therefore, it comprises the current EI theoretical models, as well as its main characteristics, qualities, pitfalls, critics, applications and correlations with other psychological constructs. Additionally, it will be discussed the types of instruments that have been used to assess EI, including aspects and researches related to the capacity of these scales to predict behavior, independently of the existing psychometric measures. Although the progress in the development of the EI theory is noticeable, as well as the tests that are devised to measure it, there are still problems remaining unsolved which ought to be better investigated like those related to construct validity and the types of existent scales. These and other aspects will be reported and discussed throughout the article.