Emotional intelligence is a fairly new term in the psychological and mental wellness space, with its inception only beginning in 1990. Though it may seem like an informal term exchanged within the mental wellness community, it’s actually an extensively studied topic in research. Since its recent inception at Yale, EI’s definition has been expanded and reshaped to include many facets of emotional behavior. It was first thought to be the ability to perceive emotions accurately, use emotions to facilitate decision-making, understand emotions, and manage emotions to “upregulate” positive emotions and “downregulate” negative emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). In the famous best-seller Emotional Intelligence, Why it Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman describes it as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Since then, factors like genera mood, adaptability to change, and various personality traits have been added to the search for what makes up EI. 

Regardless, we can all agree that EI separates itself from simple emotional awareness in that it combines all aspects of taking in emotional information, processing that information, and experiencing or outputting an emotional consequence. It’s an individual’s ability to recognize the malleable nature of their emotions, and is therefore necessary to have in order to fully understand how they are experiencing their present environment through those emotions.