Emotional Intelligence And Personal Success: How Are They Related?
A concept that has become popular in recent decades—not only in the academic field, but also in society in general—is emotional intelligence By this we understand the ability to recognize and understand emotions, both our own and those of others, in order to regulate the responses we could give in our interpersonal relationships.
In this sense, we could maintain that emotional intelligence has a double dimension. On the one hand, it is oriented towards the intrapersonal level, since it refers to our abilities to monitor our own feelings and emotions in order to then be able to act in a way that is aligned with what we think and feel. However, emotional intelligence emphasizes the ability to notice these states in others with the aim of relating in a more adaptive way with respect to the environment.
Although the concept is increasingly accepted by society, in the academic field it has not been free of criticism (the same thing that happens with a large part of the theoretical constructs that are developed to infer what happens within the human mind); but this does not mean that even so there is evidence in favor of Emotional intelligence could be predictive of certain variables that are extremely important for living a full life which make up what we consider personal success, the topic that we will develop in this article.
To understand this topic in greater detail, it is important to note that the furor around emotional intelligence is due to the fact that it allowed us to deviate from the traditional conception of intelligence. Broadly speaking, the latter argues that intelligence implies the score obtained in certain psychometric tests capable of evaluating high-order psychological functions such as problem solving. For its part, emotional intelligence conceives that an intelligent person would be able to identify and regulate their own emotional states as well as compare them with those of others, adding a new dimension of analysis regarding this topic (although it is true that other authors previously had already pointed out the limits of intelligence understood only as reasoning, as Gardner maintained in his development regarding multiple intelligences).
Yes indeed, This does not mean that certain tests or traditional psychometric tests such as the intelligence quotient (IQ) have become obsolete In fact, they are often used even today since they are standardized tests that predict factors such as professional performance and academic performance. However, as we mentioned at the beginning, emotional intelligence has also found evidence in favor of this task.
David Goleman, the author who popularized this construct, pointed out that “emotional skills are more important for job success than intellect and technical knowledge,” and that a person with an average IQ could achieve success if he had emotional intelligence. above average. Next, we will present the findings of some research that studied whether there really is a relationship between emotional intelligence and success, as Goleman assumed.
Is there a relationship between emotional intelligence and personal success?
In order to answer this question, it would first be necessary to determine what we mean by personal success. As it is a term whose meaning falls on the subjectivity of each person, it is difficult for us to find research that studies the direct relationship between this concept and emotional intelligence. However, we can dissect it. Success can involve many things: cultivating a purpose, achieving professional achievements, having a high satisfaction and quality of life, taking care of physical and mental health… are just some of the many dimensions that personal success could encompass.
Take, for example, Professional achievements as one of the factors of personal success The literature on this subject is extensive. Some research has found that there is a statistically significant relationship between high emotional intelligence scores and greater likelihood of performing a job better. In fact, this hypothesis was widely corroborated. Other hypotheses that were partially supported by empiria were that emotional intelligence could contribute to predicting a person’s leadership, and that, in addition, its contribution as a predictive factor of leadership would be greater than that of intellectual competencies. In other words, we could maintain that developing skills related to emotional intelligence—such as the ability to bond with others by understanding their emotional states, being empathetic, communicating assertively, among others—would be of great importance to achieving success at work.
For many other people, however, success does not mean achieving significant goals in the workplace or obtaining great achievements in academics (regarding the latter, by the way, many studies have been carried out with high school and university students that found significant relationships between deficiencies related to emotional intelligence and poor academic performance, drug use and disruptive behaviors). Contrary to the ingrained notion we carry of “success,” many people tend to link success with high satisfaction with their lives. Well, the results indicate that People with higher levels of emotional intelligence tend to consider themselves more satisfied with their own lives, as well as having greater self-esteem. As if this were not enough, the fact that a person scores high regarding the emotional intelligence variable is related to lower levels of anxiety and depression.
In light of the findings presented, we could support the idea that the development of the capabilities of emotional intelligence is related not only to the notion of success in terms of achieving achievements at work or having good academic performance, but also with success linked to variables of psychological well-being in general.
