Abstract
Recent studies had demonstrated that specific emotional intelligence (EI) abilities (as measured using the MSCEIT) were related to better performance on cognitive tasks that involved emotional information but not on their non-emotional counterparts. These findings suggest that cognitive control and other executive functioning processes (e.g., working memory) contribute to EI abilities. A well-functioning EI ability is crucial for a number of everyday activities and life outcomes. However, the evidence for training ability EI remains vague as to how these improvements occur. The purpose of this narrative review was to synthesize findings from past EI training research, specifically focusing on their methodology. This was to identify key aspects of the interventions used, to determine the prototypical features between them, as well as to propose a compelling research agenda for future EI training studies. Based on the features found in these studies, we identified two possible approaches in which EI improvements occurred. The first approach was through increasing emotional knowledge and related competencies through teaching and practice. These features were found in the majority of training interventions using a workshop-style training format, reflections, role-plays, and practice with other participants. The second approach used brain-training principles to improve basic cognitive processes, such as executive control or emotional inhibition. Using a cognitive training approach to EI training can provide several advantages, such as allowing researchers to examine EI improvements using the theories of (1) transfer; (2) plasticity; and (3) process-specific changes.
Highlights
Emotional intelligence (EI) broadly refers to a set of competencies in the processing, understanding, and regulation of affective information whether toward oneself or others (Mayer et al, 1999)
We ask ourselves a fundamental question: Can ability EI be trained? The answer is likely a yes and the evidence for this has already been well-documented by previous meta-analytic studies
Perhaps a different question should be asked instead: What makes the training of ability EI possible? In our current review, we identified commonalities or prototypical features found in previous ability EI training studies
Summary
Emotional intelligence (EI) broadly refers to a set of competencies in the processing, understanding, and regulation of affective information whether toward oneself or others (Mayer et al, 1999). Several experimental and cross sectional studies have demonstrated that EI abilities significantly influenced performance on cognitively “hot” tasks as compared to cognitively “cold” tasks (e.g., working memory updating for happy faces as compared to neutral-to-balanced or nonemotional stimuli, such as faces with a neutral expression, letters, or shapes) (Gutiérrez-Cobo et al, 2017a,b; Lim and Birney, 2021). Such findings are intriguing, in that they highlight that EI consists. This article is written primarily for researchers in the ability EI domain and for those who are interested in the cognitive training of such abilities
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