Identifying the components of emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and use emotions. It is most often initialized as EQ, which may seem strange, but understanding where this came from is useful in understanding what emotional intelligence is. EQ was coined in 1987 by Keith Beasley when he developed the concept to measure emotional intelligence, and he called the measurement the Emotional Quotient.

Since then, EQ has become synonymous with the concept that it measures and has supplanted EI as the shorthand for emotional intelligence. Beasley chose EQ because it was similar to the measurement term for intelligence, which was called the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). IQ measures a person’s relative intelligence to others in their age group by dividing their personal score on an intelligence test, known as their mental age, by the average score of people who are the same age (down to the month), known as the chronological...