Emotional intelligence: The convergent and discriminant validities of intra- and interpersonal emotional abilities

Despite the encouraging evidence for the convergent and discriminant validities of maximum-performance measures of emotional abilities, the present study draws the attention to a potential limitation of this measurement approach. Scales purporting to assess emotional management tend to measure the individual’s knowledge of how to behave, and not their actual emotional management ability per se. To reduce this limitation, we have taken efforts towards the development and validation of performance measures of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional abilities that assess the effectiveness or adequacy of an individual’s typical behaviour in emotional situations more directly. These measures have been administered in a study with 277 participants along with a self-developed questionnaire on self-assessed emotional abilities, various subscales of a multidimensional intelligence test, the I-S-T 2000 (Amthauer, Brocke, Liepmann, & Beauducel, 1999), and the German NEO-FFI (Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993). The findings yielded largely expected convergent and discriminant relations of performance measures of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional abilities to self-estimates of the respective abilities as well as to personality traits. However, no substantial associations were found with cognitive intelligence components.