Recent studies have shown that emotional intelligence is just as important to success in life as your IQ. While having high levels of intelligence is certainly helpful, being able to identify and manage your emotions can make all the difference between failing and succeeding.

On the other hand, there are some experts who believe that EQ (or emotional intelligence) can actually be more crucial than IQ when it comes to achieving success.

They claim that while someone with very high IQ may succeed at doing something, they may lack the motivation to keep practicing their craft and trying new things.

Emotionally intelligent people recognize what motivates them and how to use those incentives to help them achieve their goals.

So which side do you fall on? Is emotional intelligence an equally essential skill or not? Let’s look into the evidence and talk about it!

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How Emotional Intelligence Compares To IQ

We will now compare emotional intelligence to traditional intelligence.

Factors that affect emotional intelligence

There are several factors that influence someone’s emotional intelligence (EI). These include genetics, early childhood experiences, life events, socialization, culture, religion, and psychology.

Genetics play an important role in determining how emotionally intelligent you are. Your parents pass onto you both genetic information and emotions, which help develop your EI.

Early childhood experiences also have an effect on your EI. Experiencing negative experiences as child can make it harder to recognize and understand other people’s feelings.

Life events such as getting married or divorced, having children, and moving often change who your friends are and what kind of relationships you have. This can be difficult if you don’t know about others’ feelings and aren’t able to relate to them.

Socialization is another factor that affects your EI. As mentioned before, experiencing certain things can hurt your ability to recognize and understand other people’s emotions. For example, growing up with parents who were never present may cause you to believe that only lonely people feel sad.

Culture also makes a difference when it comes to developing your empathy. Living in a society where everyone has a job meansyou won’t know what it feels like to be unemployed, for instance. Culture also gives us norms that tell us what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. People who violate these rules are thought of as bad roles models.

Pearson's emotional intelligence test

The most well-known way to assess your EQ is via the VIA questionnaire, which was made famous by Daniel Goleman in his bestselling book _Emotional Intelligence_. This questionnaire has 10 questions that evaluate you according to five factors: motivation, self-awareness, understanding others, empathy, and control.

The first three of these focus on how you feel about yourself, what people do, and whether they understand things through their own experiences or looking at numbers and logic. The last two relate to whether you can control your emotions and if you are able to show sympathy to other people.

By assessing all of these aspects, the VIA questionnaire as a whole gives an overall picture of someone's EQ.

Mayer's emotional intelligence test

A growing number of professionals are proposing that instead of only assessing if someone is intelligent, we should also assess their emotional intelligence. This comes from the theory that emotions play an integral part in how well people function socially and professionally.

There are several different tests to measure someone's emotional intelligence (EI). Some of the most common include:

* The Mckenna Test for Emotional Awareness
* The Cook-Greer Test for Emotional Control
* The Trait EI Questionnaire

This article will focus on the Mayer Emotion Quotient (MEQ) test, which was created by Peter Mayer in 2002. He developed this test to determine someone’s level of emotional intelligence.

The MEQ test has six scales you must complete within 15 minutes. These scales evaluate your ability to recognize your own feelings, identify the feelings of others, be able to describe your own feelings, control your feelings, use appropriate emotion regulation strategies, and apply these skills in daily life.

By looking at each scale separately, you get a better understanding of what areas of EQ individuals may need help with. For example, some people may have trouble identifying their own feelings or describing them correctly. Others may not know how to regulate their emotions appropriately. And many people struggle applying these concepts in everyday situations.

However, once they're applied to real life scenarios, everyone possesses a certain degree of emotional intelligence.

Combining emotional and traditional intelligence

Recent research suggests that there is no longer a need to choose between only using either one of these types of intelligences. Rather, we can combine them into something more powerful.

Traditional intelligence comes from logic and reasoning. It includes concepts such as math and language skills.

Emotional intelligence involves understanding your emotions and how others feel around you. This includes things like empathy and self-awareness.

Combined, these two qualities are referred to as “competence in emotion regulation” or “emotion competence.” People who have this kind of emotional intelligence are able to recognize their own feelings and those of other people, and they use these insights to regulate their emotions.

This may include being aware of what makes you feel good about yourself and/or what could make you feel bad, and then acting on that knowledge. You can also compare your own level of happiness with that of earlier times, and determine whether it is higher or lower than before.

You can also consider why you might be feeling unhappy at the moment and work on solving the problem until you feel happier. All of this happens within your mind — so learning how to manage your mental state takes both emotional and logical thinking.

Blog post: Why should I care about EQ?

Why should you care about emotional intelligence (EQ)?

First off, let us look at why having some EQ is important.

Lessons for those with low emotional intelligence

Overly high levels of empathy can actually be detrimental to your loved ones’s happiness. When you try too hard, things can get out of control – you feel overwhelmed by emotions, which only makes people feel more anxious or stressed.

At these points, someone may no longer trust you, or even believe you are there for them. You could hurt their feelings by not agreeing with something they say, or giving up on someone because you feel bad about it.

This is why some people with very strong empathic abilities often find that their relationships go downhill quickly. They might become so focused on helping others feel good that they forget about themselves.

It is important to learn how to regulate your own emotions, but only when you have enough self-confidence. Too much empathy can sometimes be a detriment to your success in life.

Lessons for those with high emotional intelligence

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in emphasis placed on what is referred to as “emotional intelligence.” This term was coined back in 1990 by Daniel Goleman, who wrote an article about it for Psychology Today.

Since then, this concept has spread like wildfire across all areas of life, from work to education to health. People have studied EI extensively and it seems that everyone has something they can teach you about it.

Many believe that we are only able to achieve certain things if we learn how to control our emotions. Therefore, people with higher levels of EI succeed in the workplace because they are able to manage their emotions more effectively than others.

This may sound obvious, but it actually makes sense. We would not strive to do anything without feeling some kind of motivation or desire to perform the task.

Without these feelings, someone could easily put off doing whatever it is they want to do. They might even give up completely when they find themselves unable to motivate themselves.

Fortunately, research shows that people with higher levels of EI also feel happier and less stressed. This means that they are likely to enjoy spending time downplaying their emotions and achieving their goals.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace

Over the past few decades, emotional intelligence (EI) has been gaining momentum as an important factor to success in the workplace. It is considered a skill that every person should have, but unfortunately not many people do.

This isn’t necessarily your fault, however. Because EI has become such a popular concept, most employers don’t know how to assess it. They may believe that if someone seems emotionally stable then they must have high levels of EQ, so they fail to evaluate whether those with low levels of emotionality are actually less capable than others.

Another reason why some people might seem like they don’t have much empathy can be due to their use of sarcasm and humor. Some people use these tools excessively, making it hard for other people to tell when you aren’t being genuine.

Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter too much because we all need empathy to survive.

Without it, we would probably stop talking once we realized that our friends or colleagues didn’t agree with us about something. We wouldn’t talk to people after they hurt our feelings, and we would definitely go through our daily routines without realizing what was happening to each other.

Emotions play a big part in interpersonal relationships, which is one of the main reasons why having enough emotional intelligence is so crucial to life. Luckily, you can improve yours.

Lessons learned

Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in emotional intelligence (EI) as an integral part of overall personal effectiveness. While early theories about EI focused mostly on how to improve your own level of emotion regulation, it is now considered a separate domain of talent that can be practiced and improved like any other skill.

Many experts believe this shift happened because research showed that people with higher levels of EI are more successful in employment and in life. They also found that having high levels of EI makes you happier, which seems counterintuitive but has been proven many times over.

Another theory suggests that being emotionally intelligent helps explain why some individuals succeed while others fail. By understanding our own emotions and those of others, we can learn what traits contribute to success and what ones hinder it.

Both views agree that developing your emotional skills is important, though they differ on whether it’s possible to achieve such goals outside of education or professional settings. Some say it's impossible, whereas others think it's achievable via self-help strategies and courses.

Regardless, most acknowledge that improving your emotional literacy is a worthy goal. And although it may feel unrelated to other areas of development, building strong relationships is one of the biggest benefits.