Emotional intelligence is more than just a buzzword. True, we see it in popular culture more and more frequently these days. Still, the concept and implications are real and can affect everything from personal relationships to professional interactions and careers.
First defined by John Mayer and Peter Salovey in 1990, emotional intelligence entered our mainstream consciousness when Daniel Goleman, a psychologist, published his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Dr. Goleman illuminated the concept, naming five important qualities and aspects central to emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Social skills
- Empathy
- Motivation
In a nutshell, emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, regulate, and express one’s own emotions, as well as recognize and understand the emotions of other people. It is also known as emotional quotient or EQ.
We have all encountered people with a high EQ — these individuals seem to be empathetic and easy to be around. They respond to our feelings, and rapport is natural. We’ve also encountered people with a low EQ, where the opposite is true — they don’t seem to understand where we’re coming from, and they have trouble controlling their emotions, often leading to conflict.
In the business world, this concept has become increasingly important. Research shows that when managers have a high EQ, their teams perform better, the business has stronger employee retention, and they generate more revenue.
This makes sense — after all, people with strong emotional intelligence are more capable of problem-solving, helping others through experiences, and developing a rapport with those around them, which are all important qualities in managing teams. Of course, this extends beyond the management realm. Individual contributors and all team members need a high EQ to relate to one another, collaborate, and communicate effectively.
Now that we exist in a world where technology and business have become so intertwined, a question arises: Can we harness the power of technology to improve emotional intelligence? This concept seems like a primarily human quality, so does tech have a role in something as personal as our very emotions?
Boosting Emotional Intelligence
It is possible to improve emotional intelligence. A wealth of information supports this idea and offers advice on boosting your EQ — without advanced technological measures. We have heard plenty of insights into what businesses and individuals can do to improve themselves and their behaviors.
Common tips include:
- Observing others’ nonverbal cues and body language
- Observing your own emotions and behaviors
- Identifying and labeling emotions in yourself and others
- Journaling and writing down thoughts and feelings
- Working on pausing before reacting or judging
- Taking responsibility for your actions and behaviors
- Questioning your preconceived notions and opinions
- Praising yourself and others
Those are the traits and behaviors we can leverage to improve our EQs. Can technology aid the process and take our emotional intelligence to new heights?
Measuring Emotional Intelligence
One way technology is helping in the emotional intelligence niche and in psychology, in general, is by measuring EQ and illuminating its effects and impact. AI algorithms, for example, are equipped to detect, assess, and otherwise evaluate qualities like facial expressions, nonverbal cues, voice, and additional qualities in interpersonal interactions. This allows businesses and individuals to detect behaviors indicating high or low EQ.
Psychology Today is quick to point out that while some organizations have put tests and metrics in place to attempt to evaluate and analyze emotional intelligence in their hiring processes, there is no evidence that they are actually useful. But technological tools could change that.
For example, Gong, a sales data analysis firm, uses machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to evaluate interactions between sales representatives and customers in exchanges like emails, video calls, and more. The tool manages to derive qualitative information and insights from the data it pulls, analyzing areas related to rapport and emotional intelligence.
This helps train current and future representatives in customer service and communication, enabling them to adjust their approach based on the data and have better customer interactions. Companies like PayPal, Slack, LinkedIn, Zillow, Hubspot, Shopify, and Accenture are already turning to Gong to improve customer interactions.
When we consider this example, at the very least, we see how technological tools can provide ample information and insight into a number of human qualities, including emotional intelligence. But, of course, there needs to be more research in this area to truly know whether they can evaluate emotional intelligence accurately and what fine-tuning is required.
Improving Emotional Intelligence with Technology
Now, onto the real question: can technology actually improve emotional intelligence?
Let’s start with AI. We know it is a powerful tool that is capable of performing tasks and making leaps beyond our wildest imagination. Already, it has helped us improve our skills, do our jobs better, and perform everyday responsibilities more efficiently and — in some cases — effectively.
In fact, there is also the fear that AI could become too powerful — too intelligent. While we know it is not capable of real emotion, there is a school of thought that it could reach intelligence that will enable it to displace humans.
But there may be ways to harness this power and use it for areas like soft skills and, yes, emotional intelligence.
Going back to the capabilities of AI and other technologies and measuring and evaluating emotional intelligence, let’s consider how that, in turn, can be used to improve an individual’s EQ. AI is capable of analyzing conversation patterns and offering assistance on how to improve interactions. In turn, an individual can self-evaluate, using the feedback from the technological tool to enhance their own soft skills and rapport with others.
Emotional Intelligence and Technology: Hand in Hand
Perhaps the question should not be, “Can technology improve emotional intelligence?” but rather, “How can technology and humans work together to improve and leverage emotional intelligence?”
With EQ so integral to business and personal success, many companies and individuals are eager to explore how they can leverage a variety of tools to improve this important quality. And there are many areas where it is certainly possible to use technology in conjunction with human skills, competencies, and capacities to leverage and ramp up certain characteristics and behaviors.
We have seen the perception and fear that technologies like AI could replace humans, but one of the main arguments against this is that humans possess emotions that AI cannot emulate. But we already see how this and other technologies uplift and support humans, giving them the space to use emotion and human thought where necessary.
Take chatbots, for example. We have seen how these tools are applied in marketing, customer service, and other areas to engage consumers, answer questions, and solve problems. Sophisticated forms of the model mirror humans so realistically that some people don’t even realize they are not speaking with actual humans. Of course, it’s important to remember that real people built them. By leveraging chatbots, professionals have more time to spend on tasks requiring human emotion, intelligence, and judgment.
We still need emotional skills to work and thrive. Technology cannot replace these skills, but perhaps it can augment them. When partnered together, technology and humans could bring emotional capabilities and intelligence to new heights.
Emotion AI
It would be impossible to have a discussion about technology and emotional intelligence without touching on emotion AI, sometimes called artificial emotional intelligence. Dating back to the mid-1990s, emotion AI is a field within artificial intelligence that encompasses AI tools that can understand, simulate, analyze, interpret, and react to human emotions.
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it has become very real. Emotion AI can be applied to sources like video, text, and audio recordings to evaluate and interpret emotional feedback and signals from human beings. It is a tool that can assess tone, voice inflection, facial expressions, and more toward the goal of detecting psychological cues. There are many purposes, including helping individuals and organizations make better decisions.
Emotion AI is not strictly a technological field. As you might imagine, psychology also plays an enormous role in its creation and deployment. Cognitive science is also involved.
The technology is leveraged for many purposes:
- In marketing and market research, it is used to gauge consumer reactions, preferences, and opinions. It can also be used to improve products and services based on these evaluations.
- During the hiring process, recruiters and HR professionals deploy emotion AI tools to assess candidates’ dispositions and behaviors in interviews, evaluating factors like their body language and facial expressions.
- The tool is sometimes applied in mental health settings, such as to help diagnose patients for disorders or conditions.
- Emotion AI is even used for security purposes, such as to anticipate or detect threats based on the behaviors of individuals at airports, border checkpoints, and other high-risk institutions, facilities, and areas.
Proponents of emotion AI say it does a solid job — better than that of humans — of identifying emotions and emotional capacity in human beings, detecting qualities like conscientiousness, reliability, enthusiasm, willingness to learn, stability, boredom, and more. But the picture is not entirely rosy.
Others argue that the high-stakes scenarios in which emotion AI technology is applied make it particularly risky to use.
“The idea of using facial expressions to assess people in job interviews — it just doesn’t have the backing of science,” said Daniel McDuff, a researcher at Microsoft.
And emotion AI isn’t just used in the hiring process to evaluate job candidates. It is also being applied to security and other sensitive scenarios — where the consequences could be dire if something goes wrong.
Emotion, after all, is a bit of a gray area — that is, it can’t be precisely measured or quantified. A facial expression, tone of voice, imperceptible movement, and other qualities that emotion AI claims to be able to analyze can mean a lot of different things in reality, making the technology far from foolproof and potentially fraught with errors. There is a much bigger picture and story.
That’s what AI ethics scholar Kate Crawford argues. According to Crawford, there is no real evidence that facial expressions reveal someone’s feelings. That would make emotion AI impossible to rely on to accurately read emotions.
Even if the tool is deemed reliable, there are also privacy concerns. Some believe that emotion AI will be used for surveillance, acting as a kind of Thought Police for society.
If emotion AI is to be used, it clearly demands more research. Moreover, there must be actions to determine its efficacy and how it can be used responsibly.
So, Can Tech Improve Emotional Intelligence?
We have discussed many instances of technology being used to measure, evaluate, and otherwise aid emotional intelligence. Does this mean tech can improve this important quality — one we desperately need to succeed in work and life?
It depends on how you look at it. There are certainly ways humans and technology can collaborate and function together to strengthen a number of soft skills, including several of those necessary for emotional intelligence. So there is a strong argument that, yes, tech can, in fact, improve EQ. Still, it’s also evident that these solutions need to be used responsibly, and those who leverage them must consider their limitations along with their applications.
We must also consider the circumstances and conditions surrounding how we apply various technologies and solutions.
There Must Be a Foundation
If one thing is clear, it’s that no technology can completely fabricate emotional intelligence or any other human quality or characteristic from nothing. There must be some sort of basis for EQ to grow and thrive. Technology can assist with that growth, but it can’t create the capacity for growth out of thin air.
In other words, the individual must want to learn and improve their EQ. After all, we must remember that this is a primarily human quality, one that cannot be replicated in a lab — despite possible efforts to do so.
Tech and Humans Collaborate
We should be thinking of the effort to improve EQ as a collaborative effort between humans and technology. The tools are there to assist us, but the human beings themselves are responsible for doing the real work. We can’t just sit back and watch while the tech does the dirty work. Growing is not easy, and it takes significant effort on the part of the individual who wants it to happen.
We know how to collaborate with other human beings, and we should approach collaborations with technology in a similar way — thinking of the mutual effort we are both putting in to bring about success.
Emotional Intelligence Could Improve Tech Itself
One question we should also be asking ourselves is, What are some of the positive effects of boosting emotional intelligence? We know many of them: better teamwork, greater compassion for others, stronger connections, and a greater ability to understand our own emotions, as well as those of others.
There is another potential benefit to consider: we innovate more successfully and effectively. By improving our emotional intelligence, we may even be able to create better technology — the tools we understand that people want and need because of that empathetic quality and ability to see others’ behavior.
Emotional Intelligence Is Key
Technology could very well be a piece of the puzzle. And we are wise to explore its capabilities in an area as important as emotional intelligence. But if tech fails to produce the solutions we want in the area of EQ, we cannot simply dismiss EQ as unimportant — because it is tremendously important for developing authentic connections, managing, empathizing, coming up with creative ideas, and existing.
This is not just a “warm and fuzzy” idea. EQ makes individuals more sought after and sets businesses apart, giving them a competitive advantage. So, it’s not just about stronger mental health — it’s also about that strategic edge. It can help us solve problems and create better products and services, whatever they may be. No matter what, it is something to strive for and embrace.
And we must also bear in mind that tech is not always the answer. In a highly digital world like ours, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of that. But even when technology is so central to our lives, the human element and the human touch should come first and always be front and center, for the good of ourselves and for others.
