Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic.

Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. In their influential article "Emotional Intelligence," they defined emotional intelligence as, "the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions" (1990).

The Four Branches of Emotional Intelligence

Salovey and Mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence: the perception of emotion, the ability reason using emotions, the ability to understand emotion and the ability to manage emotions.

Reasoning With Emotions: The next step involves using emotions to develop thinking and cognitive activities. Emotions help prioritize what we pay attention and react to; we respond emotionally to things that catch our attention.

Understanding Emotions: The emotions that we perceive can carry a huge variety of meanings. If someone is expressing angry emotions, the observer must interpret the cause of their anger and what it might mean.

Managing Emotions: The ability to manage emotions effectively is a key part of emotional intelligence. Regulating emotions, responding appropriately and responding to the emotions of others are all important aspects of emotional management.

Sometimes there’s people who are rude to you, while you’re being nice. That dissapoints you, because you don’t understand their behavior. So, what should you do ?

-You can try to understand him or her, and feel a bit of compasion. In these cases you keep being kind to that person, because you know he/she is like that, or that he/she has some problems which make him/her act in that way.

-If you are one of those people who get upset inmediatly, you may not feel compasion and feel angry about it. In that case his/her answer could provoke a fight between you both, and start a really bad relationship. This reaction hasn’t got something positive and you may prompt your rage.

This situation often appears in our lives, and people usually don’t use their emotional inteligence. To use it in this example would mean the first answer; to calw down yourself and to perceive the problem of the other person. If you don’t use it you’ll deteriorate the relationship between you two, and your soul, as in contact with the armony of the happiness.