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Emotional Intelligence and the Career Choice Process


Robert J. Emmerling and Cary Cherniss Journal of Career Assessment 2003 11: 153 DOI: 10.1177/1069072703011002003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jca.sagepub.com/content/11/2/153

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Emotional Intelligence and the Career Choice Process


Robert J. Emmerling Cary Cherniss Rutgers University
Once seen as something avoided in making important life decisions, recent research and theories of emotional intelligence point to the interdependence of emotion and cognition in the decision-making process. Emotional intelligence as conceptualized by Mayer and Salovey consists of four interrelated abilities: (a) perceiving emotions, (b) using emotions to facilitate thoughts, (c) understanding emotions, and (d) managing emotions to enhance personal growth. It is hypothesized that such abilities facilitate the career decision-making process and lead to decisions that more fully satisfy career-related interests, values, and aspirations. Emotions experienced during this process have implications for the perception of risk related to specific career options, amount and kind of self-exploration individuals will engage in, and how information related to career choice will be processed. Also reviewed are issues of reliability and validity of the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale and the implications of emotional intelligence for the career counseling process. Keywords: Emotional intelligence, career choice, career change, decision making, emotion

The role that emotions play in our society and more specifically in the workplace has generated a great deal of interest within the scientific community as well as the general public. Emotions play an important and often misunderstood or unrecognized role in the career decision-making process. This article explores this influence by incorporating and synthesizing research and theory on the role of emotion in the decision-making process. We will also explore the implications of the Mayer and Salovey (1997) emotional intelligence (EI) framework for helping us to better understand how emotions and a theory of EI can provide us with a richer view of how emotions influence the career decision-making process. The lack of a coherent theory that accounts for the role of emotions in career decision making leaves researchers and practitioners with limited insight into this major facet of mental life. The relative absence of theory and research on emotional processes in the career decision-making literature and the more general litJOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT, Vol. 11 No. 2, May 2003 DOI: 10.1177/1069072702250425 2003 Sage Publications 153167

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erature on judgment and decision making, until recently, is interesting given the prominent role of affective processes in other subdisciplines within psychology (Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson, 2000). This is likely, in part, due to an implicit desire to separate the practice of career counseling, with its focus on interest testing, self-exploration strategies, and examination of career resource materials, from the practice of psychotherapy, in which the inclusion of emotional processes is seen as integral to the therapeutic process. Although traditional methods of career counseling may suffice for some clients, the great majority of clients often struggle with more complex issues, such as locus of control, identity formation, and autonomy, all of which require a more complex understanding of how emotions influence the career decision-making process. In this way, personal and career issues often correlate and interact in the career decisionmaking process. Although emotion has historically been seen as something to be avoided when making important decisions, recent research findings (e.g., Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Lee, 1999; Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1997; LeDoux, 1996) and theories of EI (e.g., Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995, 1998; Mayer & Salovey, 1997) suggest that emotions are integrally linked with more cognitive systems involved in decision making and may actually produce better, not worse, decisions. The growing research from the neuroscience of decision making is complemented by research in the judgment and decision-making literature that has begun to systematically look at how affective processes influence decision making. Career choice is not a single decision made at one point in time but the culmination of a series of decisions. Decisions about what values are important, what tasks and activities an individual finds interesting, to what level one is willing to aspire, and how work roles will interact with nonwork roles, as well as what information to seek and how to seek it, are all important aspects of the decisional process that are likely influenced by overt and covert emotional bias. Emotions experienced during the career decision-making process may also influence the number of career options under consideration, tolerance for risky career decisions, the amount and kind of self-exploration individuals will engage in during the choice process, how much effort to invest in the process, and how information related to career choice is processed. In addition to these potential influences, it has long been assumed that an individuals dissatisfaction with ones current career choice can often serve as the catalyst that initiates the search for other career options. For example, regret over ones current career can motivate individuals to engage in career planning and decision making with the goal of finding a more satisfying career. As we enter a period of increased career instability and change, the ability to use emotions adaptively in service of the career choice process will become a critical skill necessary to deal with a rapidly changing career landscape.

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Emotional Intelligence

Reflectively Regulating Emotions Understanding Emotions Assimilating Emotion in Thought

Complex Basic

Perceiving and Expressing Emotion


Figure 1. A four-branch model of the skills involved in emotional intelligence. Source. After Mayer, Caruso, and Salovey (1999).

MODELS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE


EI has become a powerful force within psychology as well as a popular topic among the general public. Although multiple theoretical models currently exist (e.g., Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995, 1998; Mayer & Salovey, 1997), they tend to significantly overlap with one another. All share a desire to better conceptualize and understand how individuals perceive, assimilate, understand, and manage emotions. For our purposes here, we will focus attention on applying the fourbranch model of EI as proposed by Mayer and Salovey (1997). Whereas the models of Goleman and Bar-On define EI as a more diverse construct including aspects traditionally associated with personality, affective dispositions, and motivation, as well as the aptitude for processing emotional information, the mental ability model of EI proposed by Mayer and Salovey focuses exclusively on abilities related to processing emotional information and managing emotions. As seen in Figure 1, the four branches in the Mayer and Salovey (1997) framework are conceptualized as starting with more basic emotion-related abilities and move toward more complex abilities. The most basic level, emotional perception, involves the ability to perceive, appraise, and express emotions for example, being able to recognize when someone is happy versus when someone is sad or being able to detect the emotional tone associated with objects or

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conveyed by music and art. EI cannot manifest without some level of emotional perception. The next level of complexity, assimilating emotion in thought, involves integrating perceived emotional experiences into mental life, including weighing emotions against one another and against other sensations and thoughts and allowing emotions to focus attention (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000), for example, when a particularly upsetting aspect of a problem serves to focus our attention and problem-solving efforts on that aspect of the problem to find an acceptable resolution. The third branch, emotional understanding, encompasses the ability to understand and reason with emotions. Individuals with a high level of emotional understanding comprehend the meaning behind emotions, understand how emotions blend together, and understand how emotional states transition over time. Specific emotions tend to produce characteristic action tendencies, as well as typical transitions between emotions. For example, sadness tends to isolate us from others and focus attention on the self, whereas the emotion of fear is usually followed by a feeling of relief when the feared object is no longer present. The highest level in the Mayer and Salovey (1997) framework, emotional management, is the ability to effectively manage and regulate emotions. The ability to manage emotions effectively does not imply that one is always able to keep distressing emotions from entering consciousness but more correctly implies an openness to emotional experience. As pointed out by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000), the optimal level of emotion management may be moderate, as attempts to minimize or eliminate emotion may actually stifle EI.

CAN EMOTIONS BE INTELLIGENT? THE CONCEPTUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE


The pairing of the words emotion and intelligence implies that individuals vary in the degree that they are able to use emotional information for adaptive purposes. A view of emotions as potentially intelligent also implies that such abilities can be measured and are predictive of meaningful outcomes. The integration of constructs and theory from the area of EI thus provides us with a theoretically grounded framework for looking at the interplay between emotion and cognition in career decisions. Although there exist several ways to conceptualize what emotions are, we take as a starting point that emotions are organized psychological responses to events that include physiological, experiential, and cognitive aspects. Emotions typically occur in the context of relationships to people, personal memories, or objects (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999). When these relationships change, emotions, both positive and negative, often result. For example, recalling a significant work-related accomplishment can fill us with pride and joy, whereas anger often results when we feel that our coworkers have treat-

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ed us unfairly. In this way, emotions can be an important source of information about our world and our relationship to it, information that can prove critical when making career decisions. As Mayer et al. (1999) pointed out, to qualify as an actual intelligence several criteria must be met. First, any intelligence must reflect actual mental performance rather than preferred behavior patterns, self-esteem, or other constructs more appropriately labeled traits. Second, the proposed intelligence should describe a set of related abilities that can be shown as conceptually distinct from established intelligences. And third, an intelligence should develop with age. The framing of EI as an ability requires that the methods derived to measure it be performance based (Mayer et al., 2000). Simply asking individuals to rate themselves on such abilities would not seem to provide an adequate measurement of the construct of EI as conceived by the Mayer and Salovey (1997) framework because previous research has shown self-reported ability is only marginally correlated in the area of intelligence research generally (Paulhus, Lysy, & Yik, 1998). A similar pattern has begun to emerge in research specifically looking at self-report measures of EI (Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998). In an effort to critically evaluate the construct of EI, Ciarrochi, Chan, and Caputi (2000) found that EI as measured by the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS), a performance measure designed to measure the EI framework of Mayer and Salovey, was not related to IQ but was related, as expected, to specific personality traits (e.g., empathy and extraversion) and to other criterion measures (e.g., life satisfaction and relationship quality). The failure of EI to significantly correlate with IQ is in contrast to previous studies that have found EI moderately correlated with verbal intelligence (Mayer et al., 1999; Mayer & Geher, 1996). This may be due to the fact that the Ciarrochi et al. study used an IQ measure designed to measure Spearmans g, the Raven progressive matrices. However, the Ciarrochi et al. study did find the relationship between life satisfaction and relationship quality remained even after IQ and personality traits were controlled for, thus providing support for the divergent validity of EI. EI was also found to be related to the ability to manage moods, as evidenced by the tendency of those higher in EI to retrieve more positive memories when in a positive mood (consistent with a theory of mood maintenance) as well as when in a negative mood (consistent with a theory of mood repair) than were individuals lower in EI.

RELIABILITY OF THE MEIS AND THE MAYER-SALOVEY-CARUSO EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TEST


The MEIS and its successor, the MayerSalovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), were designed to directly measure the abilities in the Mayer and Salovey framework of EI. Although some researchers (e.g., Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001) have questioned the reliability and validity

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of the MEIS, the majority of research on the MEIS (e.g., Ciarrochi et al., 2000; Mayer et al., 1999) and emerging research (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2001) on the MSCEIT point to improved reliabilities. The MEIS and the MSCEIT show excellent reliabilities at the full-scale level; all have split-half reliabilities above r = .90. Branch and individual task alphas have continued to show improvement in the MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2001) with reliabilities at the branch level ranging from r = .77 to r = .91. Reliabilities at the individual task level have also improved in later versions of the MSCEIT, although some scales at the individual task level still need further refinement to reach acceptable levels of reliability.

FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE MEIS


Although the original model posits a five-factor model representing general EI (gei), in addition to the four branches shown in Figure 1, factor analytic studies have found that either a three- or four-factor solution may, in fact, accurately reflect the psychometric properties of the MEIS (Ciarrochi et al., 2000; Mayer et al., 1999). In a study of 503 adults, Mayer et al. (1999) found four factors including General EI (gei) that represent a kind of emotional g that loads on all abilities within the four-branch model as measured by the MEIS. The remaining three factors included Branch 1 (Perception), which represents an individuals ability to perceive and identify emotions; Understanding, which combines Branch 2 (Assimilation), the ability to harness emotional information to direct and enhance thinking; and Branch 3 (Understanding), the ability to understand and reason with emotions. Branch 4 (Managing Emotions), the ability to manage emotions and emotional relationships for personal and interpersonal growth, made up the third factor. The more recent study by Ciarrochi et al. (2000) found that all of the subscales of the MEIS loaded on general EI (gei); however, these researchers identified only two additional factors that they labeled Emotional Perception and Emotional Understanding and Management. The reduction in factors in this study may be related to the lower reliabilities observed on the subscales in the Australian sample, which consisted of 120 undergraduate psychology students. The considerable overlap between the findings of both studies seems to point strongly toward the presence of general EI (gei) as well as the presence of a factor for perceiving emotions. Further research will be needed to make more definitive statements about the actual structure of the remaining factors; however, the research at this point seems to point toward a factor solution that contains at a minimum three factors. In addition to being operationalized as mental abilities that meet certain correlational criteria, an intelligence must also show a pattern of development over the life span. In a study comparing young adults with adolescents, it was found that young adults scored significantly higher levels on ability scales of the MEIS

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than did adolescents (Mayer et al., 1999). A child version of the MEIS, the Emotional Intelligence Scale for Children, also showed significant effects for age in a sample of 100 children (Sullivan, 1999). In sum, EI as conceptualized by the Mayer and Salovey (1997) model meets traditional standards for an intelligence.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND CAREER DECISION MAKING


Over the past few decades, there has been growing realization within vocational psychology that rational models of career decision making are not capable of capturing the true complexity of the decision-making process (e.g., Gelatt, 1989; Heppner, 1989; Kidd, 1998; Krieshok, 1998; Krumboltz, Kinnier, Rude, Scherba, & Hamel, 1986). Although research on anxiety and chronic career indecision has consistently found the two constructs correlated (Brown & Strange, 1981; Fuqua, Seaworth, & Newman, 1987; Hawkins, Bradley, & White, 1977), several findings related to the neuroscience of decision making, as well as recent findings from the literature on judgment and decision making, support several additional relationships between affect and the career decision-making process, many of which are consistent with a theory of EI. Research from neuroscience has begun to illuminate the relationship between emotions and decision making. In an experiment that compared normal participants with those with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, a condition associated with extremely low levels of emotional responding but otherwise normal cognitive function, it was found that participants with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortices failed to notice and incorporate subtle emotional cues into their decision making in an experimental gambling task. The gambling task was intended to simulate real-life decision making in the way it factors uncertainty, rewards, and penalties. The task required that participants pick cards from one of four decks. The advantageous decks produce more wins than losses, whereas the opposite holds true for the disadvantageous decks. The normal participants in the experiment began to register subtle emotional reactions as measured by skin conductance responses when approaching the disadvantageous decks and began to systematically avoid these decks. However, participants with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortices failed to register significantly higher skin conductance responses when approaching the disadvantageous decks and thus did not systematically avoid the disadvantageous decks. The authors concluded that the skin conductance responses detected are evidence for a complex process of nonconscious signaling that allows access to previous experience, specifically of records shaped by reward, punishment, and the emotional state that attends them. In this light, damage to ventromedial cortices acts by precluding access to a particular kind of record of previous and related individual experience. As the authors concluded, Without the help of such biases, overt knowledge may be insufficient to ensure advantageous behavior

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(Bechara et al., 1997, p. 1293). This phenomenon, labeled the somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994), supports the notion that our history of reward and punishment, sadness and joy, as well as feelings of pleasure and pain all produce physiological changes in the body experienced as distinct emotions, emotions that are then encoded as emotional memories. In this way, options are marked with somatic states (emotional signals) that become reactivated during the decisionmaking process, producing both covert and overt biases related to the decisionmaking process (Bechara, Tranel, & Damasio, 2000). It is this emotional memory bank that allows us to quickly and efficiently assign values to the various options presented to us based on our previous experience. The results of this research further establish the constant and often unconscious influence of affect on the decision-making process. That such emotional memories, even subtle ones, influence decision making points to the importance and potentially adaptive function of affect in the decision-making process. If individuals have difficulty experiencing, perceiving, and identifying feelings, the likelihood that emotions would be able to facilitate their career decisionmaking processes is greatly diminished. The career counseling process is often facilitated if individuals are able to access and make use of emotional memories when responding to assessment instruments or when responding to questions from a counselor. It is likely that clients make use of such emotional memories when making judgments on career-related values and interests. Paper-and-pencil assessment of interests and values takes for granted the fact that clients have insight into which values are important to them and what activities peak their interests. The speed at which such judgments are often made seems to imply that clients are able to quickly access their feelings about specific activities and values and communicate them either through responses on interest and value inventories or in response to questions from a counselor. But if individuals vary in their ability to consciously and unconsciously tap into this emotional memory bank, then their ability to effectively anticipate how various aspects of a given vocation will make them feel, as well as what values are important, would seem to be impaired. Those lacking such skills would likely experience more difficulty with the tasks commonly associated with the career counseling process, such as interest assessment and self-exploration. Although some may argue that the assessment of interests and values is more cognitive than affective, as Zajonc (1980) pointed out, affective reactions to stimuli are often our first reactions, tend to occur automatically, and guide subsequent information processing and judgments. Such a position is consistent with a theory of EI. Because the communication of interests and values is an essential aspect of the career counseling process, individuals who have difficulty communicating their interests and values due to lower levels of EI may need more intensive intervention than those higher in EI. If some individuals have difficulty in understanding and integrating overt and covert affective information into their career decision making, then we would predict that selfassessment measures and standard selfexploration techniques will be of limited utility to such clients. If this is indeed

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the case, then we would predict that those who possess greater insight into their emotional lives would have greater insight into their career-related interests and values and be able to more effectively communicate these in the career counseling relationship. Without the help of EI-related skills, clients may be more prone to biases such as social desirability or may have their judgments shaped more by the counseling process itself than their own sense of personal agency. Conversely, individuals with a high level of emotional awareness are likely to be more in tune with interests, values, and needs and less prone to such bias, which should predict adaptive career decision making. Although we hold that affect is an important factor to consider as individuals make judgments related to specific interests and values, emotions also have the potential to alter cognition in a way that facilitates or impairs judgment and decision making in other ways. For example, emotions are adaptive when they prioritize thinking in a way that ensures that we attend to the most important or distressing aspects of a decision. On the other hand, the anxiety that is often associated with chronic career indecision can be viewed as maladaptive. That anxiety could be capable of maintaining chronic career indecision has been hypothesized for some time (Crites, 1974). Thus, it seems plausible that those higher in EI would be able to better manage their emotional responses to the career decisionmaking process, whereas the opposite may hold true for those lower in EI. Those higher in EI may also be more able to cope with the emotional demands that deeper self-exploration often entails and may benefit from insight-oriented techniques to a greater degree than those lower in EI. Research on the role of affect in the perception and avoidance of risky decisions also can help broaden our understanding of career decision making. Given that career decisions often involve at least some level of perceived risk, this literature seems particularly relevant to any discussion of emotions and career decision making. Perhaps one of the more consistent findings in the literature is that an individuals emotional state often interacts with his or her tolerance for or avoidance of subjectively risky decisions. Research by Isen and her colleagues (Isen & Geva, 1987; Isen, Nygren, & Ashby, 1988; Isen & Patrick, 1983) has consistently shown that individuals in a positive affective state are often more risk averse than those in negative or neutral affective states. Motivated by what these researchers called mood maintenance, people in positive moods are motivated to maintain their positive moods by avoiding risky situations or choices. Although it might seem logical to assume that individuals in negative moods would be risk seeking, negative affect has effects that are much more complex than those of positive affect. For example, Leith and Baumeister (1996) found that negative affect only produced risky decisions when the negative affect was paired with a high level of arousal (e.g., embarrassment or anger); neither sadness nor neutral moods resulted in high levels of risk taking. Keinan (1987) found that individuals suffering through an aversive stress experience failed to systematically weigh the options presented to them; instead, they tended to choose the first choice they encountered that was minimally acceptable.

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It may be that distressed individuals tend to focus on the potential payoff of risky behavior as a possible cure to their negative mood while failing to adequately consider the possible negative consequences of such a risky choice. However, this would seem to be true only when negative emotional valence is paired with high levels of arousal. This distinction helps to explain research that finds sad individuals (e.g., negative valence and low arousal) tend to employ more systematic processing strategies than individuals in happy moods (e.g., positive valence and high arousal). The emotional state of sadness may be adaptive in that it signals a problem with ones current state and may prime a more extensive and systematic processing of information related to examining ones current situation. The role that emotions play in the career decision-making process would likely be similar to the findings in the basic research on judgment and decision making. First, emotions predispose individuals to appraise the risk inherent in their career decisions in somewhat predictable ways. For instance, sadness would lead one to process information about career options in a more deliberate and systematic fashion. Second, the action tendencies embodied in emotions experienced during the career decision making may prime specific thinking styles and problem-solving approaches. For example, anger may increase the likelihood of impulsive career decision making, whereas fear serves to keep individuals in unsatisfying careers, and sadness may motivate us to more carefully examine the source of our career dissatisfaction. Although research has recently begun to amass data on the effect of actual emotions on the decision process, the emotions that we anticipate will follow our decisions can also have a powerful effect on our decision process. Subjective expected pleasure theory (Mellers, Schwartz, & Ritov, 1999) posits that individuals anticipate the emotions that will result from the various options open to them and then select the choice with greatest predicted pleasure associated with it. However, research in real-world settings has found that people often overestimate the displeasure that results from unfavorable outcomes. For example, Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, and Wheatley (1998) asked untenured professors to anticipate how they would feel about receiving or not receiving tenure. Consistent with other real-world field studies, professors who were denied tenure were actually much less distressed then they had anticipated. People thus seem to be worse at predicting the emotional results of negative experiences. One hypothesis is that those higher in EI, especially emotional understanding, would be less prone to such errors. Given the fact that many vocational decisions often involve the pursuit of some values and interests at the expense of others, it seems that being able to accurately judge both positive and negative affective outcomes of each dimension of a career decision would be a critical decision-making skill. If individuals do indeed vary in their abilities to understand and generate emotions to facilitate decision making, as the Mayer and Salovey EI framework postulates, then people more adept at envisioning the emotional consequences, both

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positive and negative, may also prove more likely to choose vocations that will lead to greater life and job satisfaction. For example, those higher in understanding and managing their emotions would likely be more adept at predicting how various aspects of a potential career choice will make them feel, thus potentially avoiding occupations that include duties and tasks that the individual dislikes and seeking career options that will realistically lead to higher levels of job and life satisfaction. As individuals contemplate possible future careers for themselves, the ability to accurately appraise how various aspects associated with potential career choices will make them feel would seem to be a critical career decision-making skill. Emotionally intelligent career decision makers may also be in a better position to make use of the motivational qualities of emotions (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 2000), such that focusing on specific emotions during the decisionmaking process motivates adaptive behavior by encouraging decision makers to weigh multiple affective components when making career decisions. Moreover, the ability to focus on more positive emotions during the career decision-making process may serve to keep individuals focused on common decision-making tasks such as information seeking and self-exploration, as well as tasks related to implementing career decisions such as continuing education and job-seeking behavior. As we have seen, the ability to manage emotions should not be viewed as the stifling of emotional experience but is better thought of as a capacity for openness to both positive and negative emotions. Experiences in the workplace often evoke strong emotions among individuals. Work-related achievements offer us a source of pride, whereas failures may evoke a sense of guilt and shame. Positive relationships with coworkers can provide us with a feeling of happiness and belonging, whereas a poor relationship with a boss can leave an individual angry and frustrated. Our experiences in the workplace offer us a rich source of emotional information about our likes, dislikes, strengths, and areas for potential development. How open individuals are to these emotional experiences as well as how highly weighted such experiences will be in career decisions are also expected to vary. Individuals who close themselves to their emotional experiences at work may be at a disadvantage compared to those more open to emotional experience, as they may not be in a position to learn valuable information about their interests, values, and motives.

COUNSELING APPLICATIONS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE


The effort to deal in a systematic fashion with the specific issue of career choice has led to the development of distinct research paradigms (Kuhn, 1962) and attitudes within career counseling that, historically, have discounted clients emotional experiences in favor of rational models of career choice. Although many theorists have argued that personal counseling and career counseling are

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intimately enmeshed, the common perception that career choice is, or should be, a predominately rational process still remains among many practitioners and the general public. Although standard techniques, such as interest and value assessment, information seeking, and self-exploration techniques, may suffice to help some clients, we posit that a deeper exploration of the emotions associated with career choice will provide many clients with a more useful and meaningful intervention. Clients often struggle with issues such as dependency, locus of control, identity formation, and chronic indecision that may be linked to maladaptive emotional schemas unlikely to be identified using standard career assessment techniques. Introducing a framework of EI into the counseling relationship can be useful as it can help identify clients who may have difficulty perceiving and working with emotions. At a general level, the counselors role can be viewed as helping clients to understand the interrelatedness of their personal and career issues. In relation to emotions and career choice, the role can be framed as helping clients better understand how their emotional reactions influence their career choices and how understanding and working with their emotional reactions can facilitate various aspects of the career decision process that can lead them to better career decisions. Having a framework for screening clients on EI-related constructs helps counselors identify clients who may need a more focused intervention to increase specific aspects of EI. For those higher in EI, such interventions may be unnecessary, whereas those lower in EI may benefit from techniques that encourage them to evoke and work with specific emotions related to the career choice process, as well as more deeply explore the meaning of their emotional reactions. Techniques such as keeping a feeling journal, examining the rationality of the appraisals they make in relation to their emotional reactions, identifying their patterns for dealing with negative emotions such as anxiety, as well as providing clients with tools for more systematically reflecting on their current and past emotional experiences may all be helpful in raising the emotional self-awareness that we feel is key to effective career decision making. Techniques that serve to focus the client on the physiological manifestations of various emotions (e.g., racing heart) may also help clients to recognize and label their emotional experiences. Incorporating others perspectives (e.g., through the use of 360-degreefeedback techniques) may also help those with limited emotional self-awareness to gain insight into their emotional lives. Because research on the correlation between client psychological distress and presentation for career counseling has been virtually nonexistent, most career counselors do not typically assess affect-related variables beyond job/life satisfaction. A recent study (Multon, Heppner, Gysbers, Zook, & Ellis-Kalton, 2001) found that 60% of adult clients (mean age = 33 years) presenting for career counseling were labeled psychologically distressed. This finding highlights the need for counselors to be trained not only in career assessment skills but also in the diagnosis of psychological distress and psychopathology, as well as EI. Although assessment of EI and related constructs such as alexithymia may be a part of such

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an assessment, they by no means cover the full range of appropriate psychological assessments that could be used to gain a greater understanding of issues that may facilitate or inhibit effective career decision making. Research from the stress and coping literature has also consistently shown that positive affect promotes effective coping behaviors and reduces defensiveness, both of which we assume facilitate effective career decision making. We assume that helping clients better understand their emotional reactions to the career choice process, as well as providing them with tools and techniques for increasing their emotional self-awareness, will also facilitate the process of career choice.

CONCLUSION
EI continues to stimulate a great deal of interest among psychologists, as well as the general public. This interest has translated into rigorous tests of the reliability and validity of this emerging construct. To date, that research points to EI as a construct that varies among individuals, can be measured, and predicts meaningful outcomes. In this article, we have suggested some of the potential effects of emotions on the career decision-making process, as well as explored the implications for a theory of EI for better understanding the complex dynamics inherent in the career decision-making process. It is our hope that the recent energy directed to the scientific exploration of EI in a wide range of domains can be expanded to help better understand the interplay between emotion and cognition in the career choice process.

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