The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) is widely perceived as relevant to the workplace, home, and educational settings. Meanwhile, the scholarly work on EI has been challenged because of disagreements about many definitions and measures. At the most basic level, EI is the intelligent use of one’s emotions. Another definition is the ability to manage one’s own emotions and the emotions of others when interacting with them. The latter is sometimes separated from EI and called social intelligence (SI). This entry discusses the different levels at which EI has been studied, measures of EI, and research into efforts to help people develop EI.

First introduced to psychological research in academic journals by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 and then popularized by Daniel Goleman in ...