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I’m sure most of you have heard of IQ, but have you heard of EQ?

The term emotional intelligence was first proposed in 1990 by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. Ever since then, the idea of emotional intelligence has been researched and questioned by many psychologists. I’m not really going to get into the detail of the history of it all but instead, focus on how emotional intelligence affects all of us and what use it could be to you.

You’d think that someone who has a high IQ score would have a high EQ but in fact there is no real correlation between those numbers at all. Some people are just lucky having a high IQ and EQ but there’s also those who have a lower IQ but higher EQ which still allows them to progress in the world.

Unfortunately, school and jobs rely way too much on testing of intelligence (which aren’t completely accurate) so why are these tests taken so seriously? And what do they really tell us about ourselves?

I’m not a professional psychologist so I can’t answer that question in depth, but I can give you some basic ideas on how these tests affect us as a society.

The MSCEIT was a test created to measure emotional intelligence and in doing so four components were stated to be what emotional intelligence was made up of:

Perceiving emotions
Using emotions
Understanding emotion
Managing emotion

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Now, you’re all probably thinking ‘yeah I’m pretty good at all of those’. But more often than not we don’t realise that our emotional intelligence is most likely lower than we expect, I mean we all like to believe that we’re great listeners and understand other emotions but when we truly think about it how do we really know?

The reason why emotional intelligence has become a significant part of intelligence research is that it is tested during job recruitment processes. Those who score high on an emotional intelligence test are more likely to receive a higher rating, be more satisfied with their job and cope better with stress and in jobs such as those which require customer service their interpersonal skills are better.

So, if you’re good at talking to people than you’re likely to get a job.

But where does that leave people who have a low EQ, people who don’t have ‘social skills’? It’s so easy to classify people into categories, superior, inferior. But we often forget, where does that leave people who have a lower IQ and now a lower EQ?

Those who don’t have the best social skills will find it hard to get a job. That’s the truth, and maybe in some ways it makes sense but there are people out there who work hard and who are smart who won’t get a certain job because of their interpersonal skills. However, we tend to forget that interpersonal skills are a set of skills that we can improve on, EQ scores are not definite, people can get BETTER at socialising.

I guess that’s the good thing about emotional intelligence, it’s something we can improve on. So, if you’re someone who is good at socialising then it’s a sign you are emotionally intelligent, and if you’re someone who isn’t good at socialising then there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s always room for improvement.

For some people, interpersonal skills are something they have naturally whereas for others it has to be learnt, personally even though I like to think of myself as a good listener and reader of emotions I’m pretty much sure my social skills are practically non-existent and something I’m still learning.

Zahra Al-Haddad

Do Your Interpersonal Skills Make You Intelligent?