ABSTRACT

At the Third Annual Spearman Conference from which this chapter comes, emotional intelligence was then assigned, appropriately, to the session on “New Constructs,” a designation indicating its still uncertain, albeit promising, status. The concept of emotional intelligence—the idea that one can reason with emotion or, conversely, that emotion can enhance thought—joins two areas of psychological function that are more commonly thought of as separate. Indeed, areas of research into emotion and intelligence are separate, and their practitioners don’t often have reason to enter into dialogue.