Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to a set of competencies to process, understand, and reason with affective information. Recent studies suggest ability measures of experiential and strategic EI differentially predict performance on non-emotional and emotionally laden tasks. To explore cognitive processes underlying these abilities further, we varied the affective context of a traditional letter-based n-back working-memory task. In study 1, participants completed 0-, 2-, and 3-back tasks with flanking distractors that were either emotional (fearful or happy faces) or non-emotional (shapes or letters stimuli). Strategic EI, but not experiential EI, significantly influenced participants’ accuracy across all n-back levels, irrespective of flanker type. In Study 2, participants completed 1-, 2-, and 3-back levels. Experiential EI was positively associated with response times for emotional flankers at the 1-back level but not other levels or flanker types, suggesting those higher in experiential EI reacted slower on low-load trials with affective context. In Study 3, flankers were asynchronously presented either 300 ms or 1000 ms before probes. Results mirrored Study 1 for accuracy rates and Study 2 for response times. Our findings (a) provide experimental evidence for the distinctness of experiential and strategic EI and (b) suggest that each are related to different aspects of cognitive processes underlying working memory.
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.
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