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...Home > Research Units > Organisational Psychology > Emotional Intelligence
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Emotional intelligence
is a relatively new psychological construct that defines a set of abilities
to do with emotions and the cognitive appraisal of emotional information.
These include: the ability to perceive and understand emotions; the ability
to utilise (or reason with) emotions in thought; and the ability to regulate
and manage emotions. Over the last decade emotional intelligence has received wide spread interest and attention. Much of this interest stems from the face value of the construct that seemingly relates to many important human values. Emotional intelligence has been theoretically related to life satisfaction, the quality of interpersonal relationships, and success in occupations that involve considerable reasoning with emotions such as those involving creativity, leadership, sales and psychotherapy. Emotional intelligence in the work place Within the industrial
and organisational psychology literature emotional intelligence has been
described to underlie interpersonal effectiveness or "people skills"
at work. As such the construct has become extremely popular with human
resource consultants as a measure for identifying potential effective
job candidates and as a tool for developing work place skills. "In today's work-place,
where performance relies more than ever before on work-place relationships,
stress tolerance, adaptability, and working effectively in teams, emotional
intelligence is becoming integral to occupational success." In the work place,
emotional intelligence has been described to contribute to: OPRU
Emotional Intelligence Consulting The OPRU has established itself as the leading specialists on emotional intelligence and its application to various human resource issues. Through a variety of customised assessment and training programs, we can help your organisation start to develop emotional intelligence within and amongst employees. All of our programs centre on the use of the OPRU's Work-place emotional intelligence inventory. The work place SUEIT is used as an evaluation system to identify emotional intelligence levels within individuals, work teams, or an entire organisational workforce. It provides profiles of how individuals handle themselves and their relationships at work with clients and colleagues, serving as an awareness-raising tool for individuals or as an organisational diagnostic showing development opportunities that will lead to performance outcomes within organisations. OPRU
Research on Emotional Intelligence The OPRU has an extensive
research program on emotional intelligence. The main focus of this research
has been the utility of emotional intelligence in the work-place, the
development of an empirical model of emotional intelligence; and the development
of a work-place specific measure of emotional intelligence - the Swinburne
University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT; Palmer & Stough, 2001).
Concerning the utility of emotional intelligence in the work-place, the
OPRU is currently examining the relationship between emotional intelligence
and various aspects of individual, work-team and leadership performance.
The OPRU has also been the first to examine the measurement properties of a wide number of emotional intelligence tests with a large population sample that is representative of the socio-economic break down and cultural diversity of the Australian population. Measures we have examined and provide Australian norms for include: (1) the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 1999); (2) the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (Bar-On, 1997); (3) the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (Salovey et al., 1995); (4) the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale-II (TAS-20; Bagby, Taylor & Parker, 1994); (5) the scale by Schutte et al (1998); and finally, (6) the scale by Tett et al., (1997). We have gathered data on all these tests collectively and can provide comparative information on each. OPRU
Measure of Emotional Intelligence The work-place SUEITTM The work-place SUEIT
is a self-report inventory that indexes the way people typically think,
feel and act with emotions at work according to our empirically-based
five-factor model of emotional intelligence. It provides an overall score
that indicates individuals general work-place emotional intelligence and
five sub-scale scores that indicate individuals more specific capacities
according to the five dimensions of the model. There are a balanced number
of positively and negatively phrased items that help determine inconsistent
response patterns and illogical responding. Test takers respond
to the items of the test on a five-point scale that asks them to indicate
the extent to which the statements (items) are true of the way they typically
think, feel and act at work (1 = never, 2 = seldom, 3 = sometimes, 4 =
usually, 5 = always). At 123 items, the work-place SUEIT takes around
half an hour to complete. Scoring of the work-place
SUEIT is performed by the Organisational Psychology Research Unit at Swinburne
University. The work-place SUEIT response booklet is a scannable form.
Individual's results are scanned and entered directly into a data-base.
The Organisational Psychology Research Unit produces three types of different interpretative reports from responses to the work-place SUEIT: (1) Individual Profile, (2) Work-Team Profile and (3) Management Report. According to the requirements of the organisation these are mailed back accordingly once the responses have been scored. Members of the Organisational Psychology Research Unit liase with organisations providing oral presentations and summations of findings to management and individuals who responded on the work-place SUEIT according to the specific requirements of the organisation. Research
with the work-place SUEIT The OPRU is currently undertaking a number of validation studies with the work-place SUEIT. Such studies are examining the relationship between emotional intelligence and individual, work-team, and leadership performance across a large number of industries in both the public and the private sectors. Other criterion variables include in these studies include measures of personality, trust, performance indicators and leadership. These studies are being run in conjunction with a number of leading human resource firms including SACS Consulting Group, Waite Group, Coyne Didsbury Consulting Psychologists and Career Focus.
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