INTRODUCTION

Thorndike (1920) did the early work on emotional intelligence by viewing

intelligence from a different dimension known as “social intelligence”.
Thorndike defined social intelligence as “the ability to understand and
manage men and women, boys and girls to act wisely in human relations”
(p. 228). In other words, social intelligence is about understanding and
managing others. Then, Gardner (1983) proposed multiple theory of
intelligence by defining intelligence as “the ability to solve a problem” (p.
25). In his multiple intelligence theory, intelligence was divided into eight
aspects including intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence.
Intrapersonal intelligence is about introspecting, while interpersonal
intelligence is about understanding others. Both intrapersonal and
interpersonal intelligence serves as a foundation for the development of
emotional intelligence concept by Salovey and Mayer (Mayer & Salovey,
1997; Salovey & Mayer, 1990).

In 1990, Salovey and Mayer expounded the term “emotional intelligence”.

The psychologist in the eighteenth century divided mind into three major
components namely cognitive, affective and motivation components. The
term “emotion” indicates affective component while “intelligence”
indicates cognitive component. According to Mayer and Salovey (1997),
emotional intelligence is a persons’ capability to perceive, express,
understand, use, and manage emotions in oneself (personal intelligence)
and in others’ (social intelligence) which lead to adaptive behaviour. In
other words, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and
regulate emotions, in this context, Bandura’s self-efficacy theory,
proposed that, belief held by an individual is the foundation in presenting
certain ability or skills effectively (Bandura, 1977). Therefore, if individuals
believe that they have the ability to understand and regulate emotions,
they will exhibit higher emotional intelligence.

Although, emotional intelligence was developed by Salovey and Mayer in

1990, it reached its fame in 1995 as Howard Goleman published a book on
emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995). Since then, emotional
intelligence was widely known and practised in the workplace as Goleman
(1995) professed that 80% of success at work is determined by emotional
intelligence and only 20% by ordinary intelligence. Interestingly,
emotional intelligence is acquired by learning adaptive emotional skills
and increases by time (Goleman, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
According to incremental theory, effort is compulsory in creating,
developing, and applying ability (Dweck, Chui, & Hong, 1995). Therefore,
as emotional intelligence is a form of intelligence (ability), it can be
enhanced by training and learning.
MODELS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Literatures have shown that the models of emotional intelligence have

been categorised into three models known as (1) ability model, (2) mixed
model and (3) trait model as different theorists defined emotional
intelligence differently and theorist like Bar-On, Goleman and Petrides
categorised emotional intelligence as a non-cognitive except Salovey and
Mayer, the pioneer of emotional intelligence. Generally, the existing
models have described emotional intelligence as personal intelligence
(understanding, managing and utilising emotion in oneself) and social
intelligence (understanding and managing emotion in others).

Variation in definitions of emotional intelligence proposed by major

theorists contributed to the development of various emotional intelligence
models. Salovey and Mayer(1990) defined emotional intelligence as “the
ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among
them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (p.
189). Goleman (1995) on the other hand explained that emotional
intelligence is any underlying personal characteristic that is not
represented by cognitive intelligence. However, Bar-On viewed emotional
intelligence as non-cognitive capabilities, competencies, and skills that
influence an individual’s ability to cope with environmental demands and
pressures successfully (Bar-On, 1997). By contrast, Petrides and Furnham
(2001) defined emotional intelligence as a trait and it is a constellation of
emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality
hierarchies. These various definitions of emotional intelligence have
contributed to the development of three emotional intelligence models:
(1) ability model, (2) mixed model and (3) trait model.

Generally, the existing models have categorised emotional intelligence as

personal intelligence and social intelligence. Salovey and Mayer (1990)
explained emotional intelligence as understanding and managing one’s
own (personal) and other’s emotions

(social). Similarly, Bar-On’s mixed model of emotional intelligence

included intrapersonal (personal) and interpersonal (social) dimensions
(Bar-On, 1997). On the other hand, Goleman’s (2001) refined mixed model
also focused on self-awareness and self-management (personal) and
social-awareness and relationship management (social). Likewise, Petrides
and Furnham (2003) agreed that emotional intelligence construct is all
about processing affectstacked information intrapersonally (personal) and
interpersonally (social). Therefore, it can be concluded that emotional
intelligence revolves within personal and social intelligence and the initial
model proposed by Mayer and Salovey (1997) is already saturated.

ABILITY MODEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Ability model of emotional intelligence is made up of four sets of emotion

processing mental abilities, which arranged in the order from very basic to
higher-level ability. Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) model comprised of ability
namely (1) perception, appraisal and expression of emotion, (2) emotional
facilitation of thinking, (3) understanding and analysing emotions, and (4)
reflective regulation of emotions. Each group of the ability has four levels
that ranged from the very basic level to the highest advanced level.

Mayer and Salovey (1997) described perception, appraisal, and expression

of emotion dimension as the ability to identify and differentiate emotion in
oneself and in others. The process of perception, appraisal, and
expression of emotion starts with ability to identify one’s own emotions
via body arousal, inner feelings, and thoughts. Subsequently, as an
individual mastered in generalising emotions based on their self-
experience, the ability to identify others’ emotion by observing
surrounding cues develops. Following that, an individual could express
feelings coherently to the surrounding cues. Finally, an individual can
differentiate between accurate and inaccurate expressions of feelings, as
well as recognise or ascertain between honest and dishonest expressions
of feelings.

Another dimension of emotional intelligence in ability model is emotional

facilitation of thinking dimension (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Emotional
facilitation of thinking dimension is described as the ability to use emotion
in facilitating the thinking processes such as reasoning, problem-solving,
and interpersonal communication. At the basic level, an individual will use
emotions to prioritise thinking by focusing on important information in
their surrounding environment. Eventually, an individual can generate
vivid emotions to aid judgments and memory process. An individual will
feel, manipulate, and examine the generated emotion deeply to plan or
make a decision. Once then, an individual can think from various
perspectives by utilising their emotional mood swing. Specifically, bad
mood leads to pessimistic thoughts while good mood leads to optimistic
thoughts. As the mood swings, thinking style will shift too. Hence, an
emotionally intelligent persons tend to be more flexible while constructing
a plan as they use emotional mood swing ability (Mayer & Salovey, 1997;
Salovey & Mayer, 1990). The highest level in emotional facilitation of
thinking dimension is the ability to recognise reasoning induced by the
emotion. Happiness (emotional state) facilitates creative and inductive
reasoning while sadness (emotional state) facilitates deductive reasoning.

The third dimension, understanding and analysing emotions, explains an

individual’s ability to classify emotions and understand meanings implied
by those emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Labelling emotions and
recognising similarities and differences between the emotions labelled is
fundamental for understanding emotion. For instant, joy is an emotion of
great delight or happiness meanwhile, sadness is an aversion emotion
that makes us wants to cry and withdraw ourselves from the surroundings
(Reeve, 2009). Succeeding that level, leads to the ability to interpret the
emotion and its origin, like sadness accompanied a loss; happiness
accompanied gain. Once then, the person can understand the complex
feelings or blended feelings at a time, such as simultaneous feelings of
love and hate. Finally, an individual mastered in understanding and
analysing emotions, able to recognise transitions between emotions. For
instant, anger can be a shame or satisfaction based on the circumstances
of a situation.

The last dimension, reflective regulation of emotion dimension is the

ability to prevent, reduce, enhance, or modify our own and others’
emotion (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). This encourages cognitive and
emotional growth of an individual. In fact, good regulation of emotion,
facilitate thinking processes to plan. Basically, individual with a good
reflective regulation of emotions tend to accept both pleasant and
unpleasant feelings. Eventually, they learn to engage or detach from an
emotion based on its utility. Subsequently, the individual could monitor
and reflect one’s own and others’ emotions. Finally, the individual will
become proficient in managing their emotions by enhancing pleasant
emotions and moderating unpleasant emotions.
The ability model is the most influential model as it purely uses cognitive
ability in processing emotions and scientifically proven. Furthermore,
Mayer and Salovey (1997) argued that emotional intelligence is ability
based and not a trait (consistent behaviour over time) as it increases by
age and training (Goleman, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Additionally,
Cherniss (2010) stated that the best model of emotional intelligence is
ability model as it follows the common definition of emotional intelligence,
“managing emotion in oneself and in others” which also agreed by other
major theorists including Petrides, Goleman and Bar-On. In this perceptive,
O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, and Story (2011) agreed that
instruments based on ability model are the best as it has the capability to
differentiate emotional intelligence from related variables such as
personality and other competencies. Therefore, in this study, the ability
model and instrument developed based on ability model was used to
describe the phenomena as it emphases the pure form of emotional
intelligence excluding trait.

MIXED MODEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Mixed model of emotional intelligence enjoys the goodness of both

competency (ability) and general disposition (trait). There are two big
mixed models of emotional intelligence proposed by Bar-On (Bar-On,
1997) and Goleman (2001) respectively. Basically, Bar-On’s mixed model
is more theoretical, meanwhile Goleman’s mixed model is more to
practical.

Bar-On (1997) is viewed emotional intelligence as non-cognitive

capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence an individual’s ability
to cope successfully with environmental demands and pressures (Bar-On,
1997). The original model has five dimensions with 15 components.
Intrapersonal skills comprise self-regard, emotional selfawareness,
assertiveness, self-actualisation, and independence, while interpersonal
skills consist of empathy, interpersonal relationship, and social
responsibility were described in the first and second dimensions,
respectively. This is then followed by adaptability dimension that includes
problem-solving, flexibility, and reality testing. The fourth dimension is
stress management comprises stress tolerance and impulse control. In the
last dimension, general mood such as happiness and optimism were
explained. In 2000, Bar-On (2000) refined his original model by re-
categorising the components into constituent components (self-regard,
emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, empathy, interpersonal
relationship, problemsolving, flexibility, reality testing, stress tolerance;
impulse control) and facilitators (selfactualisation, independence, social
responsibility, optimism; happiness). Figure 1 shows the shows the original
Bar-On’s mixed model of emotional intelligence with five main dimensions
and components in each dimension. Studies have been proven that trait
emotional intelligence as overlapping even similar to general personality
factor (Van et al., 2017), although Petrides and Furnham (2001) stated
that trait emotional intelligence is located at the lower levels of
personality. To add on, trait emotional intelligence seems to be reframing
emotional intelligence into mainstream of known Big Five personality
theories. Petrides (2009, 2010) argued that emotional intelligence is a
trait and not intelligence, which actually does not make sense. Intelligence
as an ability to solve problems (Gardner, 1983), similarly, emotional
intelligence is the ability to identify, understand, and relate of an emotion
to solve problems which involves information processing and memory
(Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000). Moreover, according to Horn and Cattell
(1966), intelligence can be fluid (reasoning; problem-solving) or
crystallised (knowledge; experience). With this aspect, fluid emotional
intelligence is based on processing emotion-information; meanwhile the
crystallised emotional intelligence is based on knowledge and experience
(Ortony, Revelle, & Zinbarg, 2007). Additionally, Carroll (1993) stated that,
in order to consider a proposed intelligence as a new domain of cognitive
intelligence, it should show positive associations with the existing
intelligence factors; concurrently not highly overlapped with existing
intelligence. In this aspect, study by Schulte, Ree, and Carretta (2004)
proved that emotional intelligence is a new kind of intelligence as it
moderately correlated to general intelligence (g) and the impact of
general intelligence on emotional intelligence was predicted by both
personality and gender. Cherniss, Extein, Goleman, and Weissberg (2006)
also agreed that emotional intelligence is different from both intelligence
quotient (IQ) and personality. Therefore, it clearly shows that emotional
intelligence is an intelligence and not to be clustered as personality.

Furthermore, intelligence increases with age (Horn & Cattell, 1966; Mayer
et al., 2000). In contrast, personality trait is inborn characteristic, which
persists over time and situation (Mayer & Salovey, 1997; Morris & Maisto,
2002). In fact, studies on emotional intelligence agreed that emotional
intelligence increases with age (Goleman, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
Therefore, emotional intelligence should not be measured as a trait. To
apply this model, it is contentious that emotional intelligence is
intelligence. Hence, using this concept to evaluate emotional intelligence
is incongruous and unsuitable.

CONCLUSION
The review concludes that emotional intelligence revolves within personal
and social intelligence and the initial model proposed by Mayer and
Salovey (1997) is already saturated. Ability model is the best model to
elaborate emotional intelligence phenomena as emotional intelligence is
(1) viewed as an intelligence; (2) founder of emotional intelligence
proposed this model; (3) ability model fits well with the common
definition, “managing emotion in oneself and in others” (Cherniss, 2010);
(4) emphases pure form of emotional intelligence excluding personality
trait (O’Boyle et al., 2011).