Abstract
Our “Principles and Updates” article in this issue discussed the nature of emotional intelligence and its place in the overall intelligence pantheon. We welcome the comments by Schlegel and by Legree, Mullins, and Psotka, who describe their current research in the area and how it further informs our understanding of ability-based emotional intelligence.
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We hope that our ability model of emotional intelligence, updated in this issue (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2016), will encourage researchers to examine further the nature of emotional and related intelligences, as well as the measurement of those mental abilities. The researchers who commented on our article are engaged in projects exactly along those lines.
Schlegel (2016) highlights important contributions from the Geneva Emotions Group. She reviews research on physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and other elements that accompany specific emotional responses. Based on this work, Schlegel has developed a new set of emotional intelligence test items that fall squarely within the problem-solving areas specified in our ability model. Moreover, her new items can be veridically scored using standards developed in the articles she cites, similar to the research we have used to establish veridical standards for the youth version of the MSCEIT (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2014).
Legree, Mullins, and Psotka (2016) argue that emotional intelligence measured by the MSCEIT is a clear candidate for inclusion within the pantheon of well-established broad intelligences, such as memory retrieval and quantitative intelligence. These researchers first divide MSCEIT response patterns into (a) a participant’s shape score—the similarity of the participant’s response shape and the shape of the mean scores, (b) a participant’s mean level of response, and (c) the dispersion of their responses. Legree et al. argue that the shape scores are most informative about emotional intelligence and that a focus on those can “reinvigorate and extend EI measurement and theory” (Legree et al., 2016, p. 301). In our opinion, their work represents an important area of psychometric exploration that further contributes to what we know about emotional intelligence and intelligences more generally.
We believe each of these researchers’ suggestions contribute to the ability-based approach to defining and measuring emotional intelligence. Their works extend our thinking and we look forward to their further contributions to the area.