Psychobabble

MYTH 3

Emotional intelligence is what really counts

Over the last 17 years Daniel Goleman has done a remarkable job of selling emotional intelligence to the world. Many of us are familiar with his claim that, ‘What really matters for success, character, happiness and life long achievements is a definite set of emotional skills – your EQ – not just purely cognitive abilities that are measured by conventional IQ tests.’ However, as the popularity of emotional intelligence has gathered pace, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer’s original concept has mutated into something scarcely recognisable. Emotional intelligence has since become a patchwork of many disparate parts, some of which don’t necessarily belong together and which are in ...