Recent developments in the assessment of emotional intelligence

Chair

Johnny FONTAINE (Ghent University, Belgium)

Symposium Abstract

Since its inception the construct of emotional intelligence (EI) has attracted a lot of attention from both practice and science. While being very popular in practice, the construct has been severely criticized in the scientific arena. The EI trait approach, which uses self-reports, is reproached to lack discriminant validity. The EI ability approach, which uses maximum performance tests, is criticized for the content of its items and for its scoring. In this symposium four recent developments that take these criticisms to heart are being presented. In the first contribution a set of four new assessment instruments is proposed. They form a multi-method approach in which EI is assessed by self-reports, other-reports, ability items that can be scored as correct or incorrect, and coding of interviews. The second contribution proposes a whole new approach to the assessment of emotional abilities by using multimedia applications that greatly enhance the ecological validity of the assessment procedures. In the third contribution a plea is made to embed the assessment of emotional intelligence in current emotion theory. Based on a componential emotion perspective theoretically-grounded and empirically-based scoring keys are proposed. Finally, very critical evidence is presented on the context-free assessment of emotional expression, which often forms a key part of emotional intelligence testing. As the four contributions differ with respect to their evaluation of the EI construct, the symposium will end with a discussion on how these recent developments overcome or just confirm earlier criticisms.