The emotional intelligence is a concept which was in particular popularized by the writer and psychological American Daniel Goleman, which presents this concept in the book éponyme.

The idea is to exceed traditional the Intelligence quotient like means of measurement of the intelligence.

Introduction and definition

The first studies on the emotional Intelligence (IE) appeared with the beginning of the year 1990 with work of Salovey and Mayer. Those define the emotional intelligence as follows:

a form of intelligence which supposes the capacity to control its feelings and emotions and those of the others, to make the distinction between them and to use this information to direct its thoughts and its gestures. (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).

These authors revised their definition of the emotional intelligence thereafter. According to this new definition, which also is most generally accepted, the emotional intelligence indicates:

the ability to perceive and express the emotions, to integrate them to facilitate the thought, to include/understand and reason with the emotions, like controlling the emotions at home and the others. (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).

A subject become popular

Shortly after the beginning of academic work, a book made the subject very popular: Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995a). This work covered, by arranging it in a scientific way sometimes not very, the majority of the literature of the time on the IE (Averill & Nunley, 1992; Salovey & Mayer, 1990; Mayer, DiPaolo, & Salovey, 1990; Mayer & Stevens, 1994) as well as a considerable number of additional research on the emotions and their relationships to the social brain and behaviors. It also mentioned educational programs intended to help the children to develop their emotional and social competences. The book put forward remarks already made by Mayer & Salovey whereby the people equipped with a great emotional intelligence could be more effective socially in various connections (Mayer & Salovey, 1990). Going even further, Goleman did not hesitate to protest high and strong the virtues of the emotional intelligence as well over the plan of the relations with our close relations as on that of the professional success, while also underlining its positive effects on our health (Goleman, 1995a, p. 13).

Did this combination of science and optimistic belief in the human resources attract a very large press coverage, so that it made the cover of the famous Time magazine under the title hooker “What' S your EQ? ” (Which is your emotional coefficient?). The journalist Nancy Gibbs declared there inter alia:

It is not your IQ. It is not even a number. But the emotional intelligence can be the best predictor of success in the life, redefining what it is to be intelligent. (Time, 1995)

In very little time, the general concept of emotional intelligence gained largely in popularity, appearing in many magazines and articles of newspapers (for a detailed list to see Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000).

Why such an interest for the emotional intelligence?

We identify several reasons with this phenomenon.

First of all, the majority of the authors considers that the emotional intelligence can be developed and trained, opening of this fact the doors of a new juicy market (books, formations, coaching, etc).

Then, the assertions of Goleman (1995a) according to which the IE could predict success academic and professional better than the Intelligence quotient does it (IQ), received an excellent reception on behalf of the American public. Indeed, this new concept made it possible to reduce the prevalence (exaggerated) of the recourse to the tests of IQ to the United States. It should be known that in the United States the “large IQ” were perceived in a rather negative way by the majority of people (Zeiner and Matthews, 2000) and that all that could decrease the too great importance of the intelligence quotient was generally perceived in a positive way (Epstein, 1998).

Lastly, the concept of emotional intelligence also came to counter the assertions of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) in their book The Bell Curve where the authors presented the intelligence like the best predictor of the success in many fields (school, work, social life, etc). They also affirmed there that the intelligence strongly depended on the socio-economic medium and that the differential distribution of this one according to the various sociocultural groups determined the chances of success mainly school or professional various social groups.

This message could with the being choice considered as pessimist for the less favoured social classes, or on the contrary like an incentive with a more thorough effort towards these last. The emotional intelligence, presented by Goleman like a competence also distributed through all the social classes and being able to be developed, can on its side either give again a message of hope, or to encourage the public authorities not to intervene.

The scientific research on the emotional intelligence, as a Construct clearly identified, is relatively scattered. Various models - sometimes opposed on the theoretical level - are in competition and the question of knowing if the emotional intelligence represents another thing that what the psychologists already know by other names is discussed.

Moreover, one multitude of texts and publicities related to commercial still added to confusion by their assertions streetwalkers, even fallacious.

In order to locate us in this field, initially let us define the terms “emotion”, “Intelligence” and “emotional intelligence” in order to better encircle this one.

Emotion, intelligence and emotional intelligence

In addition to the fact of having a good internal consistency and a substantial predictive capacity, any scientific theory must use with relevance and precision the technical language (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000). However, an main issue when the IE is studied, it is that certain theories refer precisely to the emotions and the intelligence whereas others, much broader, also integrate many other concepts such as for example the Motivation, the “consciencieusity” or persistence.

for lack of French: the word " consciencieusité" do not exist. " would have to be said; the fact of being consciencieux". OTHER NOTE: Despite everything, it is not a question to be conscientious but to have a better level of conscience, conscience also indicated under the terms of " conscience éclairée" or " full conscience". Aldophe Franck uses the word of conscienciositéDictionnaire philosophical sciences of [[Adolphe Franck] in its dictionary of 1845.]

Consequently, it is interesting to examine what recover precisely the terms “emotion”, “intelligence” and their combination.

The concept of emotion

The emotions are recognized as being one of the three or four types of mental operation, namely: the motivation, emotions, the Cognition S and (less frequently) the Conscience (Bath, 1855/1977; Izard, 1993; MacLean, 1973; Mayer, 1995a, 1995b, Plutchik, 1984; Tomkins, 1962; to see Hilgard, 1980; and Mayer, Chub & Carlsmith, 1997).

Quickly let us define these concepts according to the majority of these authors, such as Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2000) makes the synthesis of it.

The basic motivations occur in answer in internal states and thus include “engines” such as the hunger, thirst, the need for social contacts and the sexual desire. The role of the motivations is to direct the organization in the realization of simple acts to satisfy the needs for survival and reproduction. In their basic form, the motivations follow a relatively given temporal cycle (ex: thirst increases until it is sealed) and are generally satisfied in a specific way (thirst is satisfied by the fact of drinking).

With regard to the emotions, it would seem that they appear in the mammals to announce the changes (real or imaginary) in the relations between an individual and his environment in order to provide an adequate answer. For example, anger appears in answer to a threat or an injustice; the fear appears in answer to the danger.

The emotions do not follow a rigid temporal cycle but answer the external changes in the relations (or perception interns those). Moreover, each emotion organizes several basic behavioral answers to these relations; for example, the fear organizes the attack or the escape. The emotions are consequently more flexible than the motivations, but not yet as much as are not to it cognitions.

Cognitions, make it possible the organization to learn from its environment and to solve problems in new situations. These trainings are often done with an aim of satisfying the motivations or in order to create or of maintaining emotions positive.

Cognition includes/understands the Apprentissage, the memory and the Solution to problem. It is done on line and implies an intentional treatment of the Information based on the training and the memory (see Mayer and Al, 1997 for a detailed review of these concepts).

These three types of basic mental operation are integrated and combine in a broader structure ( system framework ) to generate more complex mechanisms to form the Personnalité of an individual. These relations are illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1. Personality and its principal subsystems The intermediate level of figure 1 represents the interaction between the motivation and the emotions (on the left) and between the emotions and cognitions (on the right). According to Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2000), it is only on the latter level emotion/cognition which the concept of emotional intelligence must be of which they can legitimately assert paternity.

Accordingly, it was thus useful to clarify the direction which these authors give under the terms here used because that enables us to note that a great number of other models of IE overflow in fact of the original framework. Thus, for example, when Goleman integrates the concept of coil-concept into its model, it introduces into the IE a construct of personality much more complex which implies also another level of treatment: that of the motivations. The expression emotional intelligence , thus something which implies belongs to the intersection of the emotions and cognitions. According to this prospect, in order to evaluate a theory more or less touching with the emotional intelligence, it is necessary to measure the degree to which the theory in question refers to this intersection.

Designs of the intelligence

Various significances are given at the end of intelligence. However, that one speaks about artificial intelligence, human intelligence or economic intelligence, all imply the fact of gathering information, of learning from this one and of reasoning with it; they imply a whole a mental ability associated with cognitive operations.

• the model of the mental skills was represented in its pure form by Terman (1921, p.128), which affirmed that the intelligence of an individual was function of his capacity to carry out an abstract reasoning (see the article IQ). In fact, the academic conferences on the intelligence conclude inevitably that the first sign of intelligence is an elevated level of mental skills such as the abstract reasoning (Sternberg, 1997)

• Bertrand Russell, in his Essais skeptics, is ironical about the fact that for the movement behaviorist, the only measurement of acceptable intelligence is… the income! It is registered of course out of forgery against this design.

• the intelligence, conceptualized as an abstracted reasoning, often proved to be a good predictor of the success and more particularly of the academic success. But this capacity of prediction is far from being perfect, leaving most of the unexplained variance. Thus, Wechsler (1944, p. 444) said already that individuals with similar IQ could strongly differ in their capacity to control their environment.

How to consider and circumvent this capacity of prediction limited?

A first possibility is to think that the human life is naturally complex and prone at the same time to the chance and complicated interactions.

A second approach can be to seek better ways to measure the intelligence (ex: Sternberg, 1997). A third manner is to allot to the differences in predictions of the success starting from the IQ to a combination of factors “not-intellectuals” such as the features of personality.

These approaches all are complementary and all were used with various degrees of effectiveness in order to improve the psychological predictions of academic success and professional.

Lastly, a fourth alternative consists in redefining the intelligence itself like a combination of mental skills and features of personalities not-intellectuals. Thus, Wechsler (1943, p.103) wondered whether the not-intellectual, i.e. the conative one and the emotional one, could be allowed as factors of the general intelligence.

Although the majority (if not the totality) of the researchers in the field of the intelligence are of agreement on the fact that features other than the intelligence predict success, much are opposed to the idea that these other characteristics are intelligence strictly speaking. As mentioned above, there exists a theoretical long tradition which distinguishes the mental skills (ex: the cognition) of the motivations and the emotions. According to several authors (Salovey & Mayer, 1994; Sternberg, 1997), to call “intelligence” these not-intellectual characteristics darken their significance. Thus, kindness in the human relations, skills sporting (ex: kinesthetic skill), and certain musical or artistic talents all were described as intelligence at one time or another. However, of the authors like Scarr (1989, p.78) draw our attention to the fact that:

Qualifier these capacities of intelligence returns justice neither to the theories of the intelligence, nor with the features of personality and other talents specific which rest beyond the consensual definitions of the intelligence.

The empirical research results illustrate in a repeated way that the mental skills are generally not connected (ex: absence of Correlation) to the milked personality in a simple and obvious way (although certain studies find bonds more complex and more modest: to see for example, Mayer, Caruso, Zigler, & Dreyden, 1989; Sternberg & Ruzgis, 1994).

Certain models of the emotional intelligence that we will further see define the IE as being a mixture between skills and other provisions and features of personality. The principal motivation to proceed of the kind for these theories seems to be the desire to make hold under the same label what resembles in fact a whole of various elements which predict the success. This position is strongly criticized by Mayer Salovey and Caruso (2000) which wonders sarcastically about the fact that one can qualify the alcoholic drink tiredness “” because just like alcohol, it causes road accidents.

These made precise details, we now will present various theoretical paradigms of the emotional intelligence which are attached each one to two great models. Initially, a model known as of the “skills”, in which the IE seems a pure form of mental skill and, consequently, like a pure intelligence. Then, a mixed model, in which the emotional intelligence is rather a combination of mental capacity and features of personality (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000).

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