Research by Eby, Adam, Russell & Gaby, (2000) demonstrated how imperative emotional intelligence and personality is in achieving success, significantly stating how people adapt to the environment, and obtain goals.
According to Carmeli (2003) senior managers with high levels of emotional intelligence develop more positive attributions, with the ability to focus on controllable factors, increased awareness and empathy for staff, and achieve more positive outcomes, also senior managers with high levels of emotional intelligence are able to segregate wok and home life more effectively.
Research by Schulte et al. (2004) suggested that emotional intelligence is not a unique concept, their research suggests that other variable’s such as personality traits, IQ, cognitive Intelligence, and gender contributed a significant variance in the scoring of emotional intelligence, which would suggest limitations EI tests in identifying the correlation between Emotional intelligence and career success.
According to Conte (2005) the self-reporting measure of emotional intelligence testing could impact the reliability and validity of results, suggesting if someone is partaking in an EI test for a specific purpose they may cognitively think through an appropriate answer. Which would suggest separating the mesh of other variables, and personality traits with key aspects of emotional intelligence is a challenge; suggesting a close relation between the big 5 and emotional intelligence.
Salovey & Mayer, (1990) who first introduced the concept of EI in 1990, define EI as how people express emotion, regulate, and adapt the utilisation of emotions within application to tasks and problem solving, and suggest EI can be improved. Unlike personality traits that are fixed, if someone is neurotic at 15 years of age they are likely to be neurotic at 50.
Although it is important to note different researchers describe emotional intelligence in different ways for example Goleman (2000) describes EI as self-awareness and perception of others, Martinez & Alda, (2005) defines EI as an extraction of non-cognitive skills and one’s ability to deal with external pressure. Emotional Intelligence like personality Traits can be difficult to define as they are an abstract concept, although Emotional intelligence is comparatively new, and does not have the scientific research base as the FFM.
Research by Zadal (2004) examined the correlation between emotional intelligence and personality traits using the Goleman’s inventory test, which demonstrated a correlation between emotional intelligence and extraversion. Consistent with other research, extraversion appears to appear predominantly linked to emotional intelligence. Extraversion also has a strong correlation to performance.
Research by Williams, Myerson, & Hale (2008) suggests a person’s ability to process information has a correlation with behaviour, which affirms that individual differences play a role in an individual’s behaviour, although what is not clear is the correlation, context, consistency.
Conclusion
According to Pekaar, van der Linden,Bakker & Born (2017) There is a correlation of Emotional intelligence tests and individual’s performance at work. The research suggests emotional intelligence is a combination of individual differences and has a correlation to personality and several other variables in performance, emotional intelligence plays a bigger role in success in certain occupations. Though it is likely to be a correlation rather than a causation.
References:
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