Where Did Emotional Intelligence Come From?

Emotional intelligence did not begin with one researcher, one theory or one book.

Ideas about the relationship between emotion, judgement and effective social behaviour existed long before psychologists began using the term emotional intelligence.

Recent historical research has traced ideas resembling aspects of modern emotional intelligence through literature, philosophy and early psychology well before the twentieth century. These earlier ideas are better understood as precursors rather than as emotional intelligence in its modern scientific form.

The modern history becomes clearer during the twentieth century.

Research into social intelligence created an important foundation. The phrase emotional intelligence then appeared in published literature during the 1960s, was used explicitly in Wayne Payne’s doctoral work in the 1980s, developed into a formal psychological model through the work of Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 and reached a much wider audience through Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book.

Today, emotional intelligence is not one universally agreed model.

Different researchers have conceptualised and measured emotional intelligence in different ways, which is an important part of understanding its history.

Who Invented Emotional Intelligence?

There is no completely accurate single answer to the question, Published uses of the phrase predate the modern psychological model.

Michael Beldoch used the term in a 1964 chapter concerned with sensitivity to emotional meaning. Hanscarl Leuner subsequently used the German equivalent in a 1966 article titled Emotional Intelligence and Emancipation.

Wayne Payne then used the phrase prominently in his 1985 doctoral dissertation, A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence. His work explicitly explored the development of emotional intelligence.

However, it was Peter Salovey and John Mayer who established the concept as an influential modern area of psychological research through their 1990 paper Emotional Intelligence.

Daniel Goleman did not invent emotional intelligence.

His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was enormously influential in popularising the concept beyond academic psychology and introducing it to a much wider public and organisational audience.

So a useful distinction is:

The phrase existed earlier. Salovey and Mayer developed the influential modern academic model. Goleman popularised emotional intelligence internationally.

1920: Social Intelligence and an Important Precursor

One of the most frequently cited early foundations is Edward Thorndike’s work on social intelligence.

In 1920, Thorndike distinguished social intelligence from other forms of intellectual capability and discussed the ability to understand people and act effectively in human relationships.

Social intelligence is not the same construct as emotional intelligence. However, it helped establish the idea that effective human functioning involved capabilities beyond the abstract reasoning measured by conventional intelligence tests.

That idea would become increasingly important as researchers began paying greater attention to interpersonal judgement, emotion and behaviour.

The 1960s: Emotional Intelligence Appears in Published Literature

The phrase emotional intelligence was already appearing in scholarly literature decades before the concept became widely known.

Michael Beldoch used the term in 1964 when discussing sensitivity to emotional meaning in communication.

Hanscarl Leuner used the German term Emotionale Intelligenz in a published article in 1966.

These early appearances are important because they show why attributing the phrase to one person in the 1980s or 1990s is historically inaccurate. They did not yet constitute the fully developed psychological model that would emerge later, but they form part of the documented history of the term.

1983: Howard Gardner Broadens Thinking About Intelligence

Howard Gardner’s 1983 book Frames of Mind proposed his theory of multiple intelligences.

Two elements were particularly relevant to later discussions of emotional intelligence: interpersonal intelligence, concerned with understanding other people, and intrapersonal intelligence, concerned with understanding oneself.

Gardner did not develop the modern emotional intelligence construct. His work did, however, contribute to a broader intellectual movement questioning whether human capability could be adequately represented by one narrow conception of intelligence.

This provided useful conceptual context for the emotional intelligence research that followed.

1985: Wayne Payne and Developing Emotional Intelligence

In 1985, Wayne Payne completed a doctoral dissertation titled A Study of Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence.

The title is historically significant because it used emotional intelligence explicitly as a concept that could be examined and developed.

Payne’s work is therefore an important milestone in the history of the term. It is sometimes described as the first use of emotional intelligence, but surviving published sources from the 1960s mean that claim should be treated cautiously.

1990: Salovey and Mayer Establish the Modern Academic Model

The modern academic field of emotional intelligence is generally associated most strongly with Peter Salovey and John Mayer.

Their 1990 paper Emotional Intelligence presented a theoretical framework for understanding capabilities involved in recognising and expressing emotion, regulating emotion and using emotional information in thinking and action.

That publication helped move emotional intelligence from a loosely used idea into a defined psychological research programme.

Mayer, Salovey and colleagues subsequently continued developing and testing the ability model of emotional intelligence, including performance based approaches to its measurement.

For anyone asking who developed emotional intelligence as a modern psychological theory?, Salovey and Mayer are therefore central figures.

1995: Daniel Goleman Takes Emotional Intelligence Mainstream

Emotional intelligence moved dramatically beyond academic psychology following the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence in 1995.

The book became an international bestseller and introduced emotional intelligence to audiences in education, leadership, business and the general public.

Goleman presented a broader conception of emotional capability than the original ability model developed by Salovey and Mayer.

The enormous popularity of Goleman’s work meant that the phrase emotional intelligence increasingly came to describe a broad range of emotional, personal and social capabilities rather than one tightly defined psychological construct.

How Emotional Intelligence Developed Into Different Models

As emotional intelligence research expanded, different theoretical approaches emerged.

One approach treats emotional intelligence primarily as an ability involving reasoning about emotions and using emotional information effectively. This is most closely associated with Mayer, Salovey and Caruso.

Another approach conceptualises trait emotional intelligence as a constellation of emotional self perceptions and personality related characteristics. Petrides and Furnham developed this approach explicitly during the early 2000s.

Other approaches use broader collections of emotional, social and behavioural competencies. These are sometimes described as mixed or competency based models.

The result is that two assessments both labelled “emotional intelligence” may not necessarily be measuring the same thing. That is why discussions about emotional intelligence need to identify both the model being used and how the construct is being measured.

Emotional Intelligence Today

Emotional intelligence is now a substantial international field of research and application. It is also a field in which debate continues.

Researchers still disagree about the boundaries of the construct, whether emotional intelligence should primarily be understood as an ability, a trait or a broader collection of competencies, and how different forms of emotional intelligence should be measured.

Performance based assessments and self report measures, for example, should not automatically be treated as interchangeable measures of the same thing.

More recent research has also highlighted the importance of avoiding exaggerated claims.

A 2026 meta synthesis of emotional intelligence systematic reviews found substantial variation in methodological quality and criticised the tendency of some reviews to make claims that extended beyond the underlying evidence.

That does not mean emotional intelligence has no value. It means that definitions, measurement and evidence matter.

From Psychological Research to the Workplace

As emotional intelligence became more widely known, organisations became increasingly interested in its relevance to leadership, communication, relationships and workplace behaviour.

That application deserves careful interpretation.

Emotional intelligence should not be treated as a universal predictor of success, nor should one emotional intelligence score be assumed to explain leadership or organisational performance.

Different roles require different combinations of cognitive, technical, emotional and behavioural capability. For a fuller discussion of how emotional intelligence relates to behaviour at work, see:

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: How It Shapes Culture and Behaviour

The flowprofiler® Perspective

flowprofiler® is its own body of novel, validated research into workplace behaviour. Its emotional intelligence assessment, eqflow®, should not be interpreted as a direct implementation of any single external emotional intelligence model.

Instead, eqflow® measures five observable behavioural dimensions relevant to emotional and social intelligence at work: Emotional Awareness, Emotional Regulation, Self Confidence, Social Awareness and Regard for Others.

These behaviours are measured in two states, day to day and under pressure.

This allows individuals and organisations to explore not only how behaviour is normally expressed, but how those patterns may change when demands increase. The current eqflow® product describes these five dimensions explicitly and uses the two-state behavioural approach across the assessment.

External emotional intelligence research provides useful historical and theoretical context.

flowprofiler® itself represents its own validated research programme and workplace behavioural measurement framework.

That distinction is important because the history of emotional intelligence demonstrates that the label EI can refer to several different theoretical and measurement traditions.

Understanding exactly what an assessment measures is therefore more useful than relying on the label alone.

Why the History of Emotional Intelligence Matters

The history of emotional intelligence is not simply a story about who invented the term. It shows how ideas about emotion and intelligence evolved, how different psychological models emerged and how a research concept became part of mainstream organisational language.

It also explains why emotional intelligence remains difficult to define with one sentence. The field contains different theories, different measures and different assumptions. Understanding that history helps organisations and practitioners ask a better question:

What exactly are we measuring, and what evidence supports the interpretation we are making?

For flowprofiler®, that question sits at the heart of evidence led behavioural assessment. Explore our eqflow† assessment and the science behind flowprofiler®.

References:

  • Beldoch, M. (1964). Sensitivity to expression of emotional meaning in three modes of communication. In J. R. Davitz (Ed.), The communication of emotional meaning (pp. 31–42). McGraw Hill.
  • Davis, S. K., & Mahoney, B. (2026). A meta synthesis of emotional intelligence research: Methodological rigour and linguistic hype in systematic reviews and meta analyses. Quality & Quantity. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-026-02913-9
  • Dickason, R., Ashkanasy, N. M., & Hampton Musseau, D. (2026). The early Western history of the concept of emotional intelligence (1811–1990): From the era of proto emotional intelligence to the dawn of scholarly interest. Emotion Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739261444292
  • Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.
  • Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books.
  • Leuner, B. (1966). Emotionale Intelligenz und Emanzipation: Eine psychodynamische Studie über die Frau [Emotional intelligence and emancipation: A psychodynamic study on women]. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 15(6), 196–203.
  • Mayer, J. D., Roberts, R. D., & Barsade, S. G. (2008). Human abilities: Emotional intelligence. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 507–536. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093646
  • Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits? American Psychologist, 63(6), 503–517. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.503
  • Payne, W. L. (1985). A study of emotion: Developing emotional intelligence; self integration; relating to fear, pain and desire [Doctoral dissertation, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities].
  • Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2001). Trait emotional intelligence: Psychometric investigation with reference to established trait taxonomies. European Journal of Personality, 15(6), 425–448. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.416
  • Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211. https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG