Emotional intelligence develops continuously at a tender age. However, at adolescence, the social physiological, and cognitive changes experienced by teenagers lead to rapid development in emotional intelligence (Dahl, 2004). As outlined by Bailen. Lauren, Green, and Thompson (2019), at this stage, emotional intelligence develops as a need to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. It is at this age that teenagers start making independent and determinant decisions about their future and their careers. Similarly, they undergo biological changes that call for self-control, decision-making, and self-awareness. The environment at which a teenager grows greatly develops the level of emotional intelligence attained.
Emotional Intelligence, just like any other cognitive development relies heavily on socialization. To understand the facets that contribute to the development of emotional intelligence, it is vital to understand the five major pillars that construct emotional intelligence. These pillars include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Self-awareness is the most determinant pillar of EI and denotes an individual’s ability to understand their emotions, values, and social positions. Self-regulation denotes the ability to eliminate negative personality traits or emotions when dealing with other people. When engaging in social interactions, there are certain events or occurrences that trigger emotions. The ability to contain these emotions and use them carefully and relevantly is a vital measure of emotional intelligence.
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Motivation is the third pillar of emotional intelligence. Serrat (2017) defines motivation as an independent desire to achieve a milestone. This desire greatly determines an individual’s actions and reactions within a social setting. Despite the before adolescence children live together and mostly follow the social conventions, motivation dictates on an individual focus on personal goals. The four pillars are empathy, which means the ability to understand and tolerate other people’s feelings. This element is based on more than mere social interaction skills but requires an inherent ability to view situations from a third party’s perceptive. Finally, emotional intelligence dictates on social skills. Despite their personal aspirations, accomplishments, and skills, people largely operate as a group to achieve social and personal goals. For desirable emotional intelligence, as required for social and corporate leadership, an individual must possess a balance of all these pillars.
In adolescence, the development of each of these pillars is based on a number of factors including biological, cognitive, physical, and social environments. Berk (2004) highlights several perspectives explain cognitive and emotional intelligence development in adolescence. Firstly, there is a biological perspective that explains the deviant behavior and irritability depicted by adolescents. Due to their rapid physiological changes that lead to hormonal imbalances, adolescents are likely to be deviant and easily irritable. At this stage, they become aware of their own biological maturity, which can easily be confused with maturity in all other aspects. The emotional intelligence developed at this stage depends on the environments the teenagers engage in as they try to understand these changes. If a parent becomes non-supportive and hostile towards the adolescent, they are more likely to develop negative solitary and even become more deviant while a more open-minded approach that allows a room for self-expression might allow them to embrace change and understand other people’s perspectives.
The motor development and physical activity an adolescent engages in also determines their emotional intelligence. Berk (2004) indicates that physical exercise, especially school competition is a platform for students to have personal achievement. Unlike other facets of life, physical exercise requires personal efforts and motivation. Exercise allows the overall development of the mind and the body. Additionally, the personal efforts required for extensive or regular and deliberate physical exercise helps to build the self-esteem and positive self-identity that promoting the development of healthy emotional intelligence.
Other factors that determine emotional intelligence include sex maturation, puberty timing, relationships, early childhood development, mental stability, and social support (Berk 2004). When analyzed, these factors point to the argued summation that emotional intelligence develops through different forms of socialization and subjective predisposition of adolescents. Through structural approaches, parents, guardians, and teachers can come up with models to enhance the development of positive emotional intelligence.
If an adolescent fails to develop healthy emotional intelligence, he or she faces various personal and social challenges. Firstly, without healthy emotional intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to form and maintain a valuable relationship with family, friends, and colleagues. Following the need to have these social skills, people without health emotional intelligence tends to drag in life. Secondly, poor emotional intelligence eludes an individual’s social position triggering possible multiple characters. Petrides, Mikolajczak, Mavroveli, Sanchez-Ruiz, Furnham and Pérez-González (2016) observe that a character of poor emotional intelligence is unreliability where people tend to behave differently in the same social situations. This means that their perception of the world and other people changes without any external trigger. Such characters become socially awkward forcing people to avoid them. This could lead to solitude, anxiety, and depression.
Additionally, failure to develop self-regulation, which is a vital pillar of emotional intelligence, could lead to socially unacceptable reactions. Self-regulation allows an individual to act self-restraint even when the natural reasoning dictates on a different reaction (Berk, 2004). These selective responses create the expected reactions to social situations. Adolescents who fail to develop emotionally are likely to be aggressive, quick to anger, and quick to responses. People of these characters often regret their decisions afterward than they finally get back to rationality. Other risks associated with lower emotional intelligence include lack of empathy, lack of social interaction skills, failure to understand social settings, and lack of motivation in life.
Freud's psychosexual stage theory explains the sexual and personality development from birth to adulthood. The theory suggests that at puberty, adolescents engage in experimenting and later the resolve to settle with one person in their twenties, which is the early adulthood. The experiences gained by an adolescent at this stage, greatly determine their future personality, including their interactions with people. In this experimental stage, the decisions made by adolescents are based on their emotional intelligence and their cognitive developments. For instance, a teenager who feels the need to assert his position in his house due to neglect is likely to become an attention seeker in social circles. Despite the social, physiological, and biological changes shaping the adolescent’s perceptive of the world, they determine how other people see them.
Sigmund Freud also observed that the conflict of personal identity and social identity at puberty determines one’s identity. Again, the degree to discern between self-realization, actualization, and still remain a non-assertive member of the society depends on emotional intelligence. If an adolescent fails to consider the feelings of others he or she becomes assertive and arrogant a trend that can affect his social relationships. In a nutshell, emotional intelligence at adolescence is critical as it forms a personality that is often adapted to adulthood.
Through Emotional Intelligence tests, it is possible to distinguish between students who developed healthy emotional intelligence levels from those who did not. After identifying these, institutions and guardians should come up with creative methods to train adolescents about their own emotions and translate them in social settings. These interventions include self-awareness programs where adolescents are allowed to self-talk and explain themselves without repercussions. Other interventions include deliberate socialization to teach social skills and empathy. The intervention models should, however, focus on the less developed pillars of emotional intelligence.
In modern psychology, emotional intelligence is becoming an increasingly popular topic mostly due to its application in staffing. During adolescence, emotional intelligence becomes an increasing variable of development due to its ability to shape future personality. At this stage, teenagers undergo physiological, social, and cognitive changes that dictate the formation of a new character for self-actualization. If an adolescent fails to achieve a healthy level of emotional intelligence, they tend to develop a negative personality into adulthood. Therefore, emotional intelligence intervention should give priority to adolescents.
References
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Berk, L. (2004). Development through the lifespan . Pearson Education India.
Dahl, R. E. (2004). Adolescent brain development: a period of vulnerabilities and opportunities.
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Petrides, K. V., Mikolajczak, M., Mavroveli, S., Sanchez-Ruiz, M. J., Furnham, A., & Pérez-González, J. C. (2016). Developments in trait emotional intelligence research. Emotion
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Serrat, O. (2017). Understanding and developing emotional intelligence. In Knowledge
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