Does emotional intelligence predict real-world performance?

Do high Emotional Intelligence (EI) scores predict superior performers in academic or work environments, as Goleman (1995) and Cherniss (2000) assert? This chapter summarises three studies that examines this. Study one assessed 105 first-year students and found that EI explained significant incremental variance in first-year psychology results scores, even after controlling for IQ and personality. Studies two and three examined the predictive validity of EI within two companies. The first surveyed 75 industrial sales representatives from a power transmission company, and the second involved 110 insurance company employees in a major claims and renewals telephone call-centre. The participants in each organization were administered a diverse battery of EI scales, general intelligence markers, personality, and miscellaneous scales including motivation, empathy and impulse control. For an objective measurement of success, the managers in each organization rated the participants in terms of their relative performance on the job. Regression analysis indicated that the EI sub-factors explained significant incremental variance in the performance criterion in all studies. A noteworthy finding was that global EI scores explained very little of the variance in the performance criterion, in comparison with using the EI sub-factors as predictors.