Editorial for “Assessing emotional intelligence: Updates and issues”

Abstract

The importance of being earnestly measured The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has attracted much interest in the scientific community, proving relevant for the organizational/business sector (e.g., Dong et al., 2022), the educational context (e.g., Mestre, 2020; Rivers & Brackett, 2020), and the field of mental health (e.g., Martins et al., 2010). This surge in attention has not come without considerable controversy, though, a large part of the debates around EI concerning its assessment. One need only look at the history of Digging into extant measures of EI Six papers in the present issue were written with the aim to resolve specific issues related to extant approaches and instruments for assessing EI, two of them dealing with performance tests based on the Mayer-Salovey model. In the first one, Mayer et al. address a pervasive issue in EI research–that of the number of narrower abilities assessed with their tests of EI (i.e., the MEIS and three versions of the MSCEIT): Both a four- and a three-factor solution have received support in previous New instruments to assess (new) aspects of EI Papers from the second group, comprising three contributions, propose new instruments to assess (certain aspects of) EI or cognate constructs. First, D'Amico et al. present preliminary evidence of the usefulness of the IE-ACCME-B, a performance test of EI and of the recently introduced construct of “meta-EI” (D'Amico & Geraci, 2021), intended for children aged 8 to 11 years. As a measure of meta-EI, this new instrument aims at promoting children's awareness of their own emotional abilities and New directions in constructing EI measures The remaining three articles in this issue offer new guidelines and practical ideas for furthering the assessment of EI. Drawing on the principles of evolutionary psychology, Eisenberg et al. analyse different models and dominant measures of EI, and review studies on EI in small-group settings, all in order to point out the adaptive nature and evolutionary purpose of EI, particularly its role in human cooperation. Building on this analysis, and the idea that any valid instrument should capture Summary and conclusions So, what is to be learned from the contributions included in this special issue? First, while the issue was primarily devoted to questions of assessing EI, it once more shows that these are inextricably connected with the very conceptualization of the construct. Thus, the latest insights into the factorial structure of certain EI measures discussed in this issue should enrich our understanding of the nature of both ability and trait EI and might redirect future efforts to measure them. Second,