The Truth About Emotional Intelligence

According to Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, emotional intelligence is the ability to navigate our own and others’ emotions to achieve meaningful goals. It involves the skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions, called the RULER skills.

RULER is the acronym that stands for:

• Recognizing emotions in oneself and others

• Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions

• Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary

• Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context

• Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

These skills have deep roots at Yale University. More than three decades ago, psychologist Peter Salovey, who later served as the university’s twenty-fourth president, collaborated with John D. Mayer of the University of New Hampshire to define emotional intelligence and show that it is a real, measurable ability. Today, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence builds on that foundation through research, training, and RULER, an evidence-based approach now used in thousands of preK-12 schools worldwide.

The science behind emotional intelligence points to four facts worth knowing.

1. It is a specific set of abilities.

Shortly after Salovey and Mayer introduced the term “emotional intelligence” in their 1990 publication, the concept sparked public interest. In various books and articles, emotional intelligence was portrayed as a catch-all for everything that IQ was not. However, Salovey and Mayer defined emotional intelligence as a cluster of specific abilities: accurately identifying feelings, using emotions to support thinking, understanding and naming them, and managing them well. This ability model they introduced laid the groundwork for the RULER skill framework researched and practiced today.

2. Emotions are the foundation, not an extra.

We bring our emotions wherever we go, and they shape how we learn, make decisions, and connect with others. Emotions belong at work or in school because they provide us with valuable information. Emotion skills are not extra. They are the foundation for how we engage with the world. As one RULER-trained educator put it, “Emotional intelligence is not one more thing on your plate. It is the plate.”

3. How we use it is up to us.

Reading emotions accurately is an ability, and like any ability, it can be used to help or to harm. Picture a manager who senses that an employee is discouraged. She might check in, offer support, and help that person feel valued and motivated. Another manager could read the very same signals and use them to pressure or blame. The skill is identical; what differs is the choice. That's part of what makes emotional intelligence so powerful: it gives us better information, and we decide what to do with it.

4. It can be developed at any age.

Emotional intelligence can be developed at any age. A five-year-old learns and practices it one way, a teenager another, and adults continue to grow their emotion skills throughout their lives, including well into their later years. The emotions we experience and the strategies we use to manage them are unique to the situations we encounter. So long as life keeps bringing us new circumstances and interactions, we’ll have ongoing opportunities to exercise and strengthen our emotional intelligence. It takes practice and courage, and it is never too late to start.

Emotions are part of being human, and learning to understand them helps us navigate life, work, and relationships more effectively. Over the past three decades, we have learned that building these skills helps us live, work, and connect better. Emotional intelligence is within reach for everyone and worth building at every stage of life.

This article was created in collaboration with Nikki Elbertson, director of training and implementation at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, who has spent more than 20 years researching, developing, and teaching the skills of emotional intelligence in schools from early childhood through high school.