The term “emotional intelligence” was first used in 1990 by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, two psychologists interested in understanding people beyond the well-known metric of one's IQ, or “intelligence quotient”. Five years later, this concept was popularized in the book Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman. Goleman defined emotional intelligence as “abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification, to regulate one's moods, and keep distress from swamping the ability to think, to empathize, and to hope”. Simply put, emotional intelligence is the collection of emotional qualities that guide us in how we feel, think and take action in our lives. Emotional intelligence determines how we interact with people and our own self-awareness.
As IQ is to intelligence, as is “EQ” synonymous with emotional intelligence. The most important difference between IQ and EQ is that EQ is less genetically determined. For children, this means that their EQ can be influenced to a greater extent (and, therefore, increased) by their parents or other caregivers, particularly since a child's brain continues to grow, especially between the ages of three and eight. Research in brain physiology has shown that all individuals have components in their brain that comprise both the “emotional brain” and the “thinking brain”. Children can learn approaches that trigger the circuits between the emotional and thinking brains to work more effectively. The goal of emotional intelligence is to have these brain components partner together and interact well.
A national study of children compared their emotional well-being in the mid-1970s and at the end of the 1980s. The study found that at the end of the 1980s, children had more worries and were more unhappy, anxious, depressed and ill-tempered than their counterparts in the mid-1970s. This rise in the number of children with emotional problems, accompanied by a breakdown of the children's emotional skills, has been attributed to family instability and violence in both society and the media.