Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence

An intelligence must meet several standard criteria before ii can be consid ered scientifically legitimate. First, it should be capable of being operat ionalized as a set of abilities. Second, it should meet certain correlation al criteria: the abilities defined by the intelligence should form a relate d set (i.e., be intercorrelated), and be related to pre-existing intelligen ces, while also showing some unique variance. Third, the abilities of the i ntelligence should develop with age and experience. In two studies, adults (N = 503) and adolescents (N = 229) took a new, 12-subscale ability test of emotional intelligence: the Multifactor Emotional intelligence Scale (MEIS ). The present studies show that emotional intelligence, as measured by the MEIS, meets the above three classical criteria of a standard intelligence.