Behind the Research #2: Jack Mayer and David Caruso

Guess what? When you set out to hire for or measure emotional intelligence (EI) you may be measuring something totally unrelated to the skills to accurately perceive, understand and manage emotions. That’s because the term is used to describe a wide range of unrelated traits and skills. As a result, it is easy to select for the entirely wrong set of attributes. The good news is that you can avoid these issues by taking a closer look at what various EI tests claim to measure.The paper “Emotional Intelligence and Socioemotional Attributes: Distinct Constructs and Their Uses” is one of the top six most downloaded articles over the past five years published in the Consulting Psychology Journal.There are several costly errors people can make when they set out to measure or hire for emotional intelligence (EI). The reason is that the term means many, very different things. Are you looking for assertive, optimistic people or are you seeking people who have the skill to “read the room”, connect with others, understand emotions and manage tough situations? Both approaches are valid, but they predict different workplace behaviors. Conflating the two dilutes their effectiveness and can lead to bad decisions. If you are interested in the first set of attributes, you are not measuring EI, instead you are measuring what we call socio-emotional attributes. If your interest is in the latter category, you still face a few challenges. Since many people over-estimate their EI you need a measure of EI that assesses hard skills in an objective manner. In this podcast we’ll talk about a new, objective measure of EI, the Mayer Salovey Emotional Intelligence Test Second Edition, how it measures EI and was developed based on more than 20 years of research.John D. Mayer, PhD and David R. Caruso, PhD, join Rachel Boehm, PhD, to discuss why the paper matters for coaches, consultants, researchers, and business leaders. If you are using emotional intelligence for your work in any way, this is a must-hear interview!Read the paperConnect with John D. Mayer:John D. Mayer is an American psychologist and professor at the University of New Hampshire. He specializes in emotional intelligence, personal intelligence, and personality psychology. He co-developed a popular model of emotional intelligence with Peter Salovey. Mayer and Salovey co-developed the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) with David R. Caruso.https://cola.unh.edu/person/john-d-mayerConnect with David R. Caruso:David R. Caruso is the co-founder of Emotional Intelligence (EI) Skills Group, the co-author of the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), a consulting psychologist to thousands of executives, and served as a Senior Advisor to Yale University.https://eiskills.com/Connect with Rachel Boehm:Rachel Boehm is the founder of RB Strategies, which provides reputation management and performance coaching to leaders and teams. She is a multimedia practitioner and member of Division 13’s Research Domain.https://www.rachelboehm.com/