Why Emotional Intelligence Needs a Fluid Component

This chapter addresses the question of how to characterize the presupposed notion of 'emotion'. There is much disagreement among emotion theorists as to exactly what emotions are. This chapter suggests that differences in conceptions of EI ultimately come to rest in different conceptions of emotions. After addressing the question of what an emotion is, it reviews Mayer and Salovey's construct of EI and its measurement, suggesting that, at least in principle, both could be strengthened by introducing an additional, critical, ingredient.