ABSTRACT
One important issue in studying the effect of EI on performance is its distinctiveness and incremental value over the traditional intelligence concept, i.e., general mental abilities (GMA, or IQ as referred by the popular media). If GMA is highly correlated with EI or EI does not have incremental validity over important criterion variables, it may not be worthwhile to study EI. Although we had come up with a preliminary model which explained the different roles of GMA and EI in human performance, the evidence we gathered had one important limitation. In most of the samples we studied, we used only a proxy measure of GMA in our analyses. For example, we used the university entrance examination results for university student samples and education level for employee samples.
