Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth

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Summary: It was just about time
Review: As a Phd student in this field I find that although many words have been shed on that matter, few have bothered to take upon themselves the task of putting an order into this exciting yet very ambiguous concept.
This book, which I was eager to buy and read hoping for an updated and comprehensive review has far exceeded my expectations. To put it in simple words, the authors chose the prominent reserches to focus on, and they reviewd them in a critical manner. That sets the first milestone in the route of turning EI from an exciting yet evasive concept into a scientific discipline.
This book is therefore a must for both the scholarly and the popular reader who wish to expose themselves to what will soon become the cornerstone of this field.

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Summary: why am i unable to look inside the book?
Review: at least a table of contents would let me know what is inside!

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Summary: Great stuff
Review: Enjoyed it very much.
Zeidner and company did a wonderfull job explaining, refreshening and innovating EI.
Way to go.

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Summary: Superb scholarship in a contentious area
Review: This is a superbly scholarly work reviewing existing theories of emotional intelligence (and in passing social intelligence). The authors have carefully combed through various researchers' views on EI, often changing incidentally. They are quite critical of the popular uptake that followed Goleman's much cited work on EI. However, this is not a tarted up version of Golemans's work for a more high brow audience. Rather it is a sustained inquiry into the criteriology of EI. In other words are their scientific criteria separating EI from other human competencies and skills?

In many ways the meat of the book is taken up with the 'myth' aspect of EI rather than the alleged science. The book might have been better titled 'Emotional Intelligence: Fact or fiction?' And the authors are not shy to answer.

While the book is a review of relatively current research (some chapters appear not to reference almost anything after 1995), the authors main target is the lack of sustainable pyschometric tests. Their argument is that when one examines the variety of 'measures' of EI, one finds a variety of mismatched and often contradictory criteria which sometimes confute 'ordinary' measures of IQ with those of EIQ. Where IQ stops and EIQ begins is very unclear. A large number of test instruments are examined in this book and almost without exception found deficient.

The book concludes with a negative appraisal of EI as a distinct capacity that can be accurately measured by psychometric tests. Moreover, the authors are equally pessimistic about the validity of social intelligence as a distinct phenomenon. Perhaps gratutiously insulting to the the EI community are their later points to the effect that EI might be vacuous but we should still let the research run in the hope that something useful might arise in the future. It may be rubbish but sure let them at it anyway; what harm are they doing?

Overall I found the book provocative and one sided. The authors exhibit a form of analysis based on saying what EI is not, or could not be, without subjecting their own position (such as can be discerned) to sustained analysis. That is acceptable, but it is less informative. Secondly, lurking in the background is a strong IQ position, namely that all skills are ultimately manifestations of standrd IQ capacities. By this token the bright should be very socially skilled and the less bright not, but we know that society doesn't divide neatly on that point. Thidly, there is much in early child development about prosocial development that isn't covered in this book. Combining this with the absence of any discussion of conversational pragmatics, and a lacuna is exposed. To be fair however, the authors are taking on the EI community in terms of itself, hence they don't feel obliged to make arguments for them (presumably). However, it was something I noted. A final small point is that a few references in the text don't appear in the bibliography (e.g. Archer 1988 doesn't appear) which suggests the proof reading could have been more thorough.

Rating:
Summary: The best resource available on "emotional intelligence"
Review: We are all sick and tired of the exaggerated claims of some of the ostensive "EI" "gurus" (prime example, Mr. D. Goleman, who, unbelievably, has made a bundle selling books that have zero substance). It was about time that real academics, like Matthews et al. informed the uniformed about how to go about determining whether a factor can be considered as an individual-difference predictor of behavior/performance/etc. As readers will see, there is nothing much to EI, beyond that which we already know from the personality and general intelligence literature. Fans of EI will be let down; however, it is time that they let go of this mirage called EI and start to see the world from a more pragmatic perspective