Emotional
intelligence, "the ability to perceive, appraise and express emotions
accurately; the ability to access and generate feelings to facilitate cognitive
activities; the ability to understand emotion-relevant concepts and use
emotion-relevant language; and the ability to manage one’s own emotions and the
emotions of others to promote growth, well-being, and functional social
relations" (Mayer & Salovey, 1997), was first introduced into the
field of  psychology by Daniel Goleman’s widely popular and influential book Emotional
Intelligence in 1995. Since then, there has been an ongoing debate on the
concept at different levels of analysis. The first level of analysis is the
intellect versus emotions debate, that whether intellect is superior to emotion
or emotions are what make life worth living. The second level of debate is on
whether and how emotions can be measured, and how it differs from the
measurement of intellect.. Finally, the last level of debate is about the
foundations underlying emotion and thought.

This book is a collection of articles designed under
four basic themes in order to explore what exactly emotional intelligence is
and in particular, the underlying psychological components that when brought
together emerge as emotional intelligence. These basic themes which also form
the main chapters of the book are perceiving and appraising emotions; using
emotion to facilitate thought; understanding and communicating emotion
concepts; and managing emotions in oneself and others. Articles included in
these chapters aim to link ongoing basic research on affect and emotion to the
ideas embodied in the emotional intelligence concept. In doing so, they provide
evidence for the value of emotional intelligence as framework for organizing
and advancing theory and research on emotion. Last chapter titled extensions
aims to stretch the boundaries of emotional intelligence idea in new and useful
ways.

Part I of this book deals with the processes involved
in perceiving and identifying emotions in oneself and others. Bachorowski and Owren
describe the functional acoustics in an emotional signaling system. They argue
that there are direct and indirect ways in which perceivers attribute emotion
to targets on the basis of their nonlinguistic vocal properties. Especially
interesting are the ways in which declarative knowledge about the vocalizer
interact with prosodic features of the vocal cues to produce an emotional
impression in the listener. Perhaps even more apparent are the emotional cues
provided on the canvas of the page. Elfenbain, Marsh and Ambady describe the
crucial role of reading facial expressions in emotional intelligence. Their
chapter addresses how the meanings of facial expressions are interpreted
against a contextual backdrop. Experimental evidence suggests that using or
judging emotions "intelligently" involves the regulation of the
ability to recognize facial expressions, but nevertheless it is valuable only
within its context and adaptive environment. The most important issue is how
people use emotional information, not merely that they can perceive it. In the
last article of the first chapter, Nelson and Bouton argue that the types of
judgments described in the first two articles may have their basis in
associative learning. They detail the associative processes that modify or
change the affective value of a stimulus. These properties of acquisition and
change in the affective significance of stimuli have profound implications for
other aspects of an emotional response. Together, these three articles begin to
characterize how we come to view certain kinds of cues as emotionally meaningful,
and certain types of information as emotionally relevant.

Part II describes how affective experiences come to
influence thought and action. Gohm and Clore focus on the idea that feelings
are functional because they provide information in social judgment. A failure
to attend to emotional cues may rob one of important information for judgment,
decision and action. Gilbert, Driver-Linn and Wilson also describe the
informational value of emotions, specifically the value of anticipated
affective states. They argue that the processes involved in "impact bias",
the tendency to misjudge both the duration and the intensity of predicted
affective reactions, may play out in retrospective accounts of emotional
reactions as well, leading  to the idea that prospective and retrospective
judgments have more in common with each other than they do with actually
experienced affective states. Schwarz’s article also supports the hypothesis
that feelings serve informative functions. It deals with the impact of emotions
on the choice of different processing strategies. The expansive orientation
facilitated by pleasant emotions encourages top-down information processing
that is creative and heuristic driven. In contrast, the detail-oriented focus
facilitated by unpleasant emotions encourages bottom-up information processing
that is stimulus driven, deductive and engenders the careful scrutiny of
incoming information. Schwarz’s ideas about how moods tune the cognitive system
have implications for a range of outcomes, including stereotyping, attitude
change and analytical reasoning. Niedenthal, Dalle and Rohmann also discusses
how feeling tunes cognitive processing. The emotional aspects of stimuli form a
core organizing principle around which they can be grouped into concepts. They
argue that discrete emotional experiences function as the glue in perceiving
these concepts, and therefore people literally perceive the world differently
depending on how they are feeling.

Chapter eight deals with the question that whether
emotional intelligence influences psychological phenomena related to persuasion.
The chapter begins by barking back to the debate concerning the role of general
intelligence in attitude change. In so doing, by investigating the studies on
positive and negative relations of intelligence to individual differences in persuasibility.
DeSteno and Braverman argue that individual differences in emotional
intelligence also function in a similar fashion much like general intelligence,
represents a combination of specific abilities and skills. The last chapter in
Part II chapter provides a neuroanatomical basis for the idea that feelings
influence strategic information processing and planned behavior. According to
Savage one of the central purposes of emotion is to assist cognitive processing
and strategic behavior. Using examples from psychopathology, especially
obsessive-compulsive disorder, savage details how orbital frontal cortex allows
individuals harness affective information during the early stages to responding
to stimuli, especially those that are novel or ambiguous in some way.

Part III deals with understanding emotion, such that
individual’s knowledge base about emotion and their ability to represent
symbolically elements of the emotional response. Denham and Kochanoff give a
useful summary of the development of emotional knowledge base that may be
involved in other aspects of emotional intelligence. In the following article,
Lane and Pollermann describe the different levels of information that
characterize individuals’ understanding of emotional experience.  Using a Piagetian
framework, they suggest that there are different levels of development, from
understanding emotional experience in a simplistic ways to a more complex
conceptual system that is precise and multifaceted.

Part IV focuses on managing emotion which is a central
domain of interest in research on emotional intelligence. The first article by
Gross and John is about providing a framework for understanding the range of
strategies involved in emotion regulation. They are also concerned with the
effects of such strategies, in particular the consequences of suppression.
Next, Tugade and Fredrickson point out the value of positive emotions. They
suggest that positive emotions provide a powerful antidote to negative
reactions. The final chapter by Parrott explores the consequences of
challenging the deeply held belief that hedonism alone is the primary motive
for emotion regulation. Parrott argues that there may be circumstances in which
it is useful to cultivate negative emotions, which can sometimes be the guide
to thinking clearly and behaving appropriately.

The last part of the collection provides three
interesting directions for future research in emotion. In the first article,
Russell and Blanchard suggest that a person cannot be intelligent unless one
knows what to be intelligent about. The final two chapters provide examples of
how emotional intelligence can make contact with research traditionally
considered to be outside the realm of emotion. While Ferguson and Bargh
show how a person’s initial affective appraisal of a stimulus influences one’s
attitudes, Blair explores some potential links between the Theory of Mind, the
ability to represent mental states of self and others, and various facets of
emotional intelligence.

Since the publication of Emotional Intelligence
by Goleman, even though there has been considerable work on the topic, there is
not much research on the examination of basic processes underlying emotional
intelligence. This collection is aimed to fill this gap in emotional
intelligence literature. The editors bring a wealth of experience to this book
by assembling a top-notch group of contributors. Even though it is particularly
useful and informative for the researchers in the field and students, it may
also be appealing for people outside of the field of psychology who want to
learn how emotions shape and influence our thoughts, actions and behaviors.

© 2004 Kamuran Godelek

Kamuran Godelek, Ph.D., Mersin University, Department of
Philosophy, Mersin, TURKEY