When we speak of a person’s intelligence, we usually think of his or her knowledge or capacity to acquire knowledge. However, there are many different facets of intelligence, including problem solving, artistic intelligence, reasoning ability and creative intelligence. Emotional intelligence is one form of intelligence that extends to and affects all human beings.

Emotions, as most of know, are a powerful tool in motivating actions. When someone does something that we don’t quite understand, they might tell us to ‘walk a mile in my shoes.’ This is because emotion very often overrides reason and causes outsiders to think that one is acting in irrational ways. A person with adequate emotional intelligence takes into account the existence and power of emotions and sees the necessity in situations that others may find unreasonable.

Emotional intelligence refers to the effectiveness of an individual’s response to his or her own feelings or emotions and to those of others. A person with high emotional intelligence is very adept at understanding and properly responding in an appropriate way to the nuances of social situations. An emotionally intelligent person can use his or her understanding of emotion in harmony with good reasoning skills to make reasonable decisions while maintaining good relationships.

One of the leading researchers in emotional intelligence theory, Daniel Goleman, cited an excerpt from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as an example of the implications of emotional intelligence in his popular 1995 book Emotional Intelligence. Aristotle said: “Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy.”

A person with low emotional intelligence will likely misinterpret, deny or disregard the impact of human emotion that is present in virtually every social situation. A person with alexithymia, a severe state of low emotional intelligence, lacks the verbal ability to express emotion or to describe emotions in others. Those who struggle with alexithymia report to psychologists feeling no emotion at all, as well as a lack of dreaming, fantasizing and creative imagining.

Emotional intelligence, like other aspects of intelligence, lies on a broad spectrum, with a large margin for normal levels of emotional intelligence. Similar to a test for a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ), the level or score of emotional intelligence can be determined and analyzed for individual people. These tests aim to show how a person responds to the feelings of others, as well as how he understands his own, how he deals with social situations and the appropriateness of his response through a series of questions that mimic real life circumstances.

Interestingly, unlike other forms of intelligence, some researchers believe that emotional intelligence can be taught or trained. They believe that with practice, a person can replace former low intelligent behaviors with more appropriate ones and thus improve her interactions with others as well as her own quality of life.