Personality trait: a relatively consistent characteristic that a person exhibits in different situations. Examples of traits include: emotional intelligence, need for achievement, optimism.
Concepts Related to Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence can be compared and contrasted with a number of other parts of personality. These other parts are distinct from emotional intelligence both conceptually and empirically. That means that each part has a definition that is distinct from emotional intelligence. Moreover, although a person may be high in emotional intelligence, they may be high or low in many of these other characteristics.
Mixed models of emotional intelligence: these models describe a conception of emotional intelligence that includes not only mental abilities related to intelligence and emotion, but also other personality dispositions and traits such as motives, sociability and warmth.
Empathy: including a feeling for others, sympathetic reactions to their feelings, and imaginative involvement in how the other person might be feeling.
Emotional self-efficacy: a person's belief that he or she possesses empathy and assertiveness as well as elements of social intelligence, personal intelligence, and ability emotional intelligence.
Socio-emotional effectiveness: an individual's capacity to navigate the social world in an effective manner, accomplishing his or her goals as needed.
Socio-emotionally effective behavior: the observable acts of the individual the lead to emotional and social effectiveness of interactions with others.
Other Terms Connecting Emotion, Motivation, and Intelligence
Interest: a motivational urge to pursue learning about a topic.
Curiosity: a motivational and emotional urge to explore and understand ideas.
Intrinsic Intellectuality: one term (of several, e.g., need for cognition) that describes a person's generally intellectual orientation.
For a more in-depth discussion of these terms, please see:
Mayer, J. D., & Ciarrochi, J. (2006). Clarifying concepts related to emotional intelligence: A proposed glossary. In J. Ciarrochi, J. Forgas, & J. D. Mayer (Eds). Emotional intelligence in everyday life (2nd ed). New York: Psychological Press.