In plain language
In the late 1990s, emotional intelligence (EI) was the subject of extraordinary hype — claims that it "may be the best predictor of success in life" and matters more than IQ — yet many EI measures had received surprisingly little scientific scrutiny. This widely cited study put the construct to a rigorous test. The researchers administered the Multi-factor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS), an objective, ability-based measure of the capacity to perceive, understand, and manage emotions, to 134 Australian undergraduates alongside a battery of IQ, personality, and criterion measures such as life satisfaction and relationship quality.
Crucially, the study went beyond questionnaires. The researchers experimentally induced moods in participants and then tested whether people high in EI were better at managing those moods and at preventing their moods from biasing social judgments. The results showed that EI was not related to IQ, but it was related — as theory predicts — to specific personality measures such as empathy, and to outcomes such as life satisfaction, even after statistically controlling for IQ and personality traits. EI also predicted more effective mood management behaviour after the mood induction. One surprise: EI did not predict who could keep an irrelevant mood from biasing their judgments, whereas traditional IQ was related to both mood processes.
The paper concluded that the EI construct, as measured by the MEIS, is distinctive and useful — some of the enthusiasm may indeed be justified — but that traditional intelligence also matters for understanding emotional processes. It became one of the foundational empirical evaluations of ability-based emotional intelligence.
Key findings
- Emotional intelligence, measured with the ability-based MEIS, was not related to IQ (Raven's matrices), supporting the claim that EI is distinct from traditional intelligence.
- EI correlated as predicted with theoretically relevant personality measures, such as empathy.
- EI predicted criterion outcomes, including life satisfaction and relationship quality, even after controlling for both IQ and personality traits.
- After an experimental mood induction, people higher in EI were better at managing their moods (effective mood-management behaviour).
- EI did not predict the ability to prevent moods from biasing social judgments — surprisingly, traditional IQ was related to both mood-management and mood-bias processes.
- Overall, the MEIS showed adequate reliability and validity with some limitations, and the EI construct showed genuine promise in predicting important life outcomes.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J. V., Chan, A. Y. C., & Caputi, P. (2000). A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence construct. Personality and Individual Differences, 28(3), 539–561. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00119-1
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2000critical,
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph V. and Chan, Amy Y. C. and Caputi, Peter},
title = {A critical evaluation of the emotional intelligence construct},
journal = {Personality and Individual Differences},
year = {2000},
volume = {28},
number = {3},
pages = {539--561},
doi = {10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00119-1}
}
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- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
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Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.