ABSTRACT
The emotional intelligence (EI) approach investigates how people can use their emotional resources effectively from the theoretical perspective of intelligence; this chapter complements emotional intelligence research by studying the effective use of emotional resources from the theoretical perspective of the self. An emotional intelligence perspective entails studying how people can respond more appropriately to their social context when they apply abstract reasoning to their emotions, when they “think about feeling” (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). The self-perspective we develop is based on the observation that emotions always work together with cognition and motivation to help the person act appropriately in relation to the social context, or self-regulate (Carver & Scheier, 1981, 1990; Higgins, 1996a). This self-perspective differs from an emotional intelligence perspective in two principal respects. First, it posits that emotions need to be understood in the context of this self-system as a self-regulatory process. This also means that emotions cannot be studied separately from other self-regulatory processes, namely cognition and motivation. Second, it suggests that responding effectively is not necessarily a matter of managing emotions through abstract thought—an “outside-in” process in that it is self-reflexive or about the self—but rather is a matter of facilitating the natural functioning of the self-system—an “inside-out” process. In fact, this inside-out approach we advocate often involves clearing away a reflexive preoccupation with the self to reorient emotion, cognition, and motivation toward the social situation (Michel & Jehn, 2003; Michel & Wortham, 2002).
