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2003 11: 153Journal of Career AssessmentRobert J. Emmerling and Cary Cherniss

Emotional Intelligence and the Career Choice Process

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Emotional Intelligence and the Career Choice Process

Robert J. EmmerlingCary ChernissRutgers University

Once seen as something avoided in making important life decisions, recentresearch and theories of emotional intelligence point to the interdependence ofemotion and cognition in the decision-making process. Emotional intelligence asconceptualized by Mayer and Salovey consists of four interrelated abilities: (a)perceiving emotions, (b) using emotions to facilitate thoughts, (c) understandingemotions, and (d) managing emotions to enhance personal growth. It is hypothe-sized that such abilities facilitate the career decision-making process and lead todecisions that more fully satisfy career-related interests, values, and aspirations.Emotions experienced during this process have implications for the perception ofrisk related to specific career options, amount and kind of self-exploration indi-viduals will engage in, and how information related to career choice will beprocessed. Also reviewed are issues of reliability and validity of the MultifactorEmotional Intelligence Scale and the implications of emotional intelligence forthe career counseling process.

Keywords: Emotional intelligence, career choice, career change, decisionmaking, emotion

The role that emotions play in our society and more specifically in the work-place has generated a great deal of interest within the scientific community aswell as the general public. Emotions play an important and often misunderstoodor unrecognized role in the career decision-making process. This article exploresthis influence by incorporating and synthesizing research and theory on the roleof emotion in the decision-making process. We will also explore the implicationsof the Mayer and Salovey (1997) emotional intelligence (EI) framework for help-ing us to better understand how emotions and a theory of EI can provide us witha 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 careerdecision making leaves researchers and practitioners with limited insight into thismajor facet of mental life. The relative absence of theory and research on emo-tional processes in the career decision-making literature and the more general lit-

JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT, Vol. 11 No. 2, May 2003 153–167DOI: 10.1177/1069072702250425© 2003 Sage Publications

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154 JOURNAL OF CAREER ASSESSMENT / May 2003

erature on judgment and decision making, until recently, is interesting given theprominent role of affective processes in other subdisciplines within psychology(Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson, 2000). This is likely, in part, due to animplicit desire to separate the practice of career counseling, with its focus oninterest testing, self-exploration strategies, and examination of career resourcematerials, from the practice of psychotherapy, in which the inclusion of emo-tional processes is seen as integral to the therapeutic process. Although tradition-al methods of career counseling may suffice for some clients, the great majorityof clients often struggle with more complex issues, such as locus of control, iden-tity formation, and autonomy, all of which require a more complex understand-ing of how emotions influence the career decision-making process. In this way,“personal” and “career” issues often correlate and interact in the career decision-making process.

Although emotion has historically been seen as something to be avoided whenmaking 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 cognitivesystems involved in decision making and may actually produce better, not worse,decisions. The growing research from the neuroscience of decision making iscomplemented by research in the judgment and decision-making literature thathas begun to systematically look at how affective processes influence decisionmaking.

Career choice is not a single decision made at one point in time but the cul-mination of a series of decisions. Decisions about what values are important,what tasks and activities an individual finds interesting, to what level one is will-ing to aspire, and how work roles will interact with nonwork roles, as well as whatinformation to seek and how to seek it, are all important aspects of the decision-al process that are likely influenced by overt and covert “emotional bias.”Emotions experienced during the career decision-making process may alsoinfluence the number of career options under consideration, tolerance for “risky”career decisions, the amount and kind of self-exploration individuals will engagein during the choice process, how much effort to invest in the process, and howinformation related to career choice is processed. In addition to these potentialinfluences, it has long been assumed that an individual’s dissatisfaction with one’scurrent career choice can often serve as the catalyst that initiates the search forother career options. For example, regret over one’s current career can motivateindividuals to engage in career planning and decision making with the goal offinding a more satisfying career. As we enter a period of increased career insta-bility and change, the ability to use emotions adaptively in service of the careerchoice process will become a critical skill necessary to deal with a rapidly chang-ing career landscape.



Emmerling, Cherniss / EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 155

MODELS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

EI has become a powerful force within psychology as well as a popular topicamong the general public. Although multiple theoretical models currently exist(e.g., Bar-On, 2000; Goleman, 1995, 1998; Mayer & Salovey, 1997), they tend tosignificantly overlap with one another. All share a desire to better conceptualizeand understand how individuals perceive, assimilate, understand, and manageemotions. For our purposes here, we will focus attention on applying the four-branch model of EI as proposed by Mayer and Salovey (1997). Whereas the mod-els of Goleman and Bar-On define EI as a more diverse construct includingaspects traditionally associated with personality, affective dispositions, and moti-vation, as well as the aptitude for processing emotional information, the mentalability model of EI proposed by Mayer and Salovey focuses exclusively on abili-ties 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 abili-ties and move toward more complex abilities. The most basic level, emotionalperception, involves the ability to perceive, appraise, and express emotions—for example, being able to recognize when someone is happy versus when some-one is sad or being able to detect the emotional tone associated with objects or

EmotionalIntelligence

Perceiving and ExpressingEmotion

Assimilating Emotionin Thought

UnderstandingEmotions

Reflectively Regulating Emotions C

omplex

Basic

Figure 1. A four-branch model of the skills involved in emotional intelligence.

Source. After Mayer, Caruso, and Salovey (1999).




conveyed by music and art. EI cannot manifest without some level of emotionalperception.

The next level of complexity, assimilating emotion in thought, involves inte-grating perceived emotional experiences into mental life, including weighingemotions against one another and against other sensations and thoughts andallowing emotions to focus attention (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2000), forexample, when a particularly upsetting aspect of a problem serves to focus ourattention and problem-solving efforts on that aspect of the problem to find anacceptable resolution. The third branch, emotional understanding, encompass-es the ability to understand and reason with emotions. Individuals with a highlevel of emotional understanding comprehend the meaning behind emotions,understand how emotions blend together, and understand how emotional statestransition over time. Specific emotions tend to produce characteristic action ten-dencies, as well as typical transitions between emotions. For example, sadnesstends to isolate us from others and focus attention on the self, whereas the emo-tion of fear is usually followed by a feeling of relief when the feared object is nolonger present. The highest level in the Mayer and Salovey (1997) framework,emotional management, is the ability to effectively manage and regulate emo-tions. The ability to manage emotions effectively does not imply that one isalways able to keep distressing emotions from entering consciousness but morecorrectly implies an openness to emotional experience. As pointed out by Mayer,Salovey, and Caruso (2000), the optimal level of emotion management may bemoderate, 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 varyin the degree that they are able to use emotional information for adaptive pur-poses. A view of emotions as potentially intelligent also implies that such abilitiescan be measured and are predictive of meaningful outcomes. The integration ofconstructs and theory from the area of EI thus provides us with a theoreticallygrounded framework for looking at the interplay between emotion and cognitionin career decisions. Although there exist several ways to conceptualize what emo-tions are, we take as a starting point that emotions are organized psychologicalresponses to events that include physiological, experiential, and cognitiveaspects. Emotions typically occur in the context of relationships to people, per-sonal memories, or objects (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999). When these rela-tionships change, emotions, both positive and negative, often result. For exam-ple, recalling a significant work-related accomplishment can fill us with prideand joy, whereas anger often results when we feel that our coworkers have treat-




ed us unfairly. In this way, emotions can be an important source of informationabout our world and our relationship to it, information that can prove criticalwhen making career decisions.

As Mayer et al. (1999) pointed out, to qualify as an actual intelligence severalcriteria must be met. First, any intelligence must reflect actual mental perform-ance rather than preferred behavior patterns, self-esteem, or other constructsmore appropriately labeled traits. Second, the proposed intelligence shoulddescribe a set of related abilities that can be shown as conceptually distinct fromestablished intelligences. And third, an intelligence should develop with age.The framing of EI as an ability requires that the methods derived to measure itbe performance based (Mayer et al., 2000). Simply asking individuals to ratethemselves on such abilities would not seem to provide an adequate measure-ment of the construct of EI as conceived by the Mayer and Salovey (1997) frame-work because previous research has shown self-reported ability is only marginal-ly correlated in the area of intelligence research generally (Paulhus, Lysy, & Yik,1998). A similar pattern has begun to emerge in research specifically looking atself-report measures of EI (Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998). In an effort to crit-ically evaluate the construct of EI, Ciarrochi, Chan, and Caputi (2000) foundthat EI as measured by the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS), aperformance measure designed to measure the EI framework of Mayer andSalovey, was not related to IQ but was related, as expected, to specific personali-ty traits (e.g., empathy and extraversion) and to other criterion measures (e.g., lifesatisfaction and relationship quality). The failure of EI to significantly correlatewith IQ is in contrast to previous studies that have found EI moderately correlat-ed with verbal intelligence (Mayer et al., 1999; Mayer & Geher, 1996). This maybe due to the fact that the Ciarrochi et al. study used an IQ measure designed tomeasure Spearman’s g, the Raven progressive matrices. However, the Ciarrochiet al. study did find the relationship between life satisfaction and relationshipquality remained even after IQ and personality traits were controlled for, thusproviding support for the divergent validity of EI. EI was also found to be relatedto the ability to manage moods, as evidenced by the tendency of those higher inEI to retrieve more positive memories when in a positive mood (consistent witha theory of mood maintenance) as well as when in a negative mood (consistentwith 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 Mayer–Salovey-Caruso EmotionalIntelligence Test (MSCEIT), were designed to directly measure the abilities inthe Mayer and Salovey framework of EI. Although some researchers (e.g.,Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001) have questioned the reliability and validity




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 andthe MSCEIT show excellent reliabilities at the full-scale level; all have split-halfreliabilities above r = .90. Branch and individual task alphas have continued toshow improvement in the MSCEIT (Mayer et al., 2001) with reliabilities at thebranch level ranging from r = .77 to r = .91. Reliabilities at the individual tasklevel have also improved in later versions of the MSCEIT, although some scalesat the individual task level still need further refinement to reach acceptable lev-els 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 studieshave found that either a three- or four-factor solution may, in fact, accuratelyreflect the psychometric properties of the MEIS (Ciarrochi et al., 2000; Mayer etal., 1999). In a study of 503 adults, Mayer et al. (1999) found four factors includ-ing General EI (gei) that represent a kind of emotional g that loads on all abilitieswithin the four-branch model as measured by the MEIS. The remaining threefactors included Branch 1 (Perception), which represents an individual’s abilityto perceive and identify emotions; Understanding, which combines Branch 2(Assimilation), the ability to harness emotional information to direct andenhance thinking; and Branch 3 (Understanding), the ability to understand andreason with emotions. Branch 4 (Managing Emotions), the ability to manageemotions 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 sub-scales of the MEIS loaded on general EI (gei); however, these researchers identi-fied only two additional factors that they labeled Emotional Perception andEmotional Understanding and Management. The reduction in factors in thisstudy may be related to the lower reliabilities observed on the subscales in theAustralian sample, which consisted of 120 undergraduate psychology students.The considerable overlap between the findings of both studies seems to pointstrongly toward the presence of general EI (gei) as well as the presence of a factorfor perceiving emotions. Further research will be needed to make more defini-tive statements about the actual structure of the remaining factors; however, theresearch at this point seems to point toward a factor solution that contains at aminimum three factors.

In addition to being operationalized as mental abilities that meet certain cor-relational criteria, an intelligence must also show a pattern of development overthe life span. In a study comparing young adults with adolescents, it was foundthat young adults scored significantly higher levels on ability scales of the MEIS




than did adolescents (Mayer et al., 1999). A child version of the MEIS, theEmotional Intelligence Scale for Children, also showed significant effects for agein a sample of 100 children (Sullivan, 1999). In sum, EI as conceptualized by theMayer 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 voca-tional psychology that rational models of career decision making are not capableof 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 careerindecision 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 asrecent findings from the literature on judgment and decision making, supportseveral additional relationships between affect and the career decision-makingprocess, many of which are consistent with a theory of EI.

Research from neuroscience has begun to illuminate the relationship betweenemotions and decision making. In an experiment that compared normal partici-pants with those with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, acondition associated with extremely low levels of emotional responding but oth-erwise normal cognitive function, it was found that participants with damage totheir ventromedial prefrontal cortices failed to notice and incorporate subtleemotional cues into their decision making in an experimental gambling task.The gambling task was intended to simulate real-life decision making in the wayit factors uncertainty, rewards, and penalties. The task required that participantspick cards from one of four decks. The “advantageous decks” produce more winsthan losses, whereas the opposite holds true for the “disadvantageous decks.” Thenormal participants in the experiment began to register subtle emotional reac-tions as measured by skin conductance responses when approaching the disad-vantageous decks and began to systematically avoid these decks. However, par-ticipants with damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortices failed to registersignificantly higher skin conductance responses when approaching the disad-vantageous decks and thus did not systematically avoid the disadvantageousdecks. The authors concluded that the skin conductance responses detected areevidence for a complex process of nonconscious signaling that allows access toprevious experience, specifically of records shaped by reward, punishment, andthe emotional state that attends them. In this light, damage to ventromedial cor-tices acts by precluding access to a particular kind of record of previous and relat-ed individual experience. As the authors concluded, “Without the help of suchbiases, overt knowledge may be insufficient to ensure advantageous behavior”




(Bechara et al., 1997, p. 1293). This phenomenon, labeled the somatic markerhypothesis (Damasio, 1994), supports the notion that our history of reward andpunishment, sadness and joy, as well as feelings of pleasure and pain all producephysiological changes in the body experienced as distinct emotions, emotionsthat are then encoded as emotional memories. In this way, options are marked withsomatic states (emotional signals) that become reactivated during the decision-making process, producing both covert and overt biases related to the decision-making process (Bechara, Tranel, & Damasio, 2000). It is this “emotional mem-ory bank” that allows us to quickly and efficiently assign values to the variousoptions presented to us based on our previous experience. The results of thisresearch further establish the constant and often unconscious influence of affecton the decision-making process. That such emotional memories, even subtleones, influence decision making points to the importance and potentially adap-tive 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 decision-making processes is greatly diminished. The career counseling process is oftenfacilitated if individuals are able to access and make use of emotional memorieswhen responding to assessment instruments or when responding to questionsfrom a counselor. It is likely that clients make use of such emotional memorieswhen making judgments on career-related values and interests. Paper-and-pencilassessment of interests and values takes for granted the fact that clients haveinsight into which values are important to them and what activities peak theirinterests. The speed at which such judgments are often made seems to imply thatclients are able to quickly access their feelings about specific activities and valuesand communicate them either through responses on interest and value invento-ries or in response to questions from a counselor. But if individuals vary in theirability to consciously and unconsciously tap into this “emotional memory bank,”then their ability to effectively anticipate how various aspects of a given vocationwill make them feel, as well as what values are important, would seem to beimpaired. Those lacking such skills would likely experience more difficulty withthe tasks commonly associated with the career counseling process, such as inter-est assessment and self-exploration. Although some may argue that the assess-ment of interests and values is more cognitive than affective, as Zajonc (1980)pointed out, affective reactions to stimuli are often our first reactions, tend tooccur automatically, and guide subsequent information processing and judg-ments. Such a position is consistent with a theory of EI.

Because the communication of interests and values is an essential aspect of thecareer counseling process, individuals who have difficulty communicating theirinterests and values due to lower levels of EI may need more intensive interven-tion than those higher in EI. If some individuals have difficulty in understandingand integrating overt and covert affective information into their career decisionmaking, then we would predict that self–assessment measures and standard self-exploration techniques will be of limited utility to such clients. If this is indeed




the case, then we would predict that those who possess greater insight into theiremotional lives would have greater insight into their career-related interests andvalues and be able to more effectively communicate these in the career counsel-ing relationship. Without the help of EI-related skills, clients may be more proneto biases such as social desirability or may have their judgments shaped more bythe 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 tunewith interests, values, and needs and less prone to such bias, which should pre-dict adaptive career decision making.

Although we hold that affect is an important factor to consider as individualsmake judgments related to specific interests and values, emotions also have thepotential to alter cognition in a way that facilitates or impairs judgment and deci-sion making in other ways. For example, emotions are adaptive when they prior-itize thinking in a way that ensures that we attend to the most important or dis-tressing aspects of a decision. On the other hand, the anxiety that is often associ-ated with chronic career indecision can be viewed as maladaptive. That anxietycould be capable of maintaining chronic career indecision has been hypothe-sized for some time (Crites, 1974). Thus, it seems plausible that those higher in EIwould be able to better manage their emotional responses to the career decision-making process, whereas the opposite may hold true for those lower in EI. Thosehigher in EI may also be more able to cope with the emotional demands thatdeeper self-exploration often entails and may benefit from insight-oriented tech-niques to a greater degree than those lower in EI.

Research on the role of affect in the perception and avoidance of risky deci-sions also can help broaden our understanding of career decision making. Giventhat career decisions often involve at least some level of perceived risk, this liter-ature seems particularly relevant to any discussion of emotions and career deci-sion making. Perhaps one of the more consistent findings in the literature is thatan individual’s emotional state often interacts with his or her tolerance for oravoidance of subjectively risky decisions. Research by Isen and her colleagues(Isen & Geva, 1987; Isen, Nygren, & Ashby, 1988; Isen & Patrick, 1983) has con-sistently shown that individuals in a positive affective state are often more riskaverse than those in negative or neutral affective states. Motivated by what theseresearchers called mood maintenance, people in positive moods are motivated tomaintain their positive moods by avoiding risky situations or choices.

Although it might seem logical to assume that individuals in negative moodswould be risk seeking, negative affect has effects that are much more complexthan those of positive affect. For example, Leith and Baumeister (1996) foundthat negative affect only produced risky decisions when the negative affect waspaired with a high level of arousal (e.g., embarrassment or anger); neither sadnessnor neutral moods resulted in high levels of risk taking. Keinan (1987) found thatindividuals suffering through an aversive stress experience failed to systematical-ly weigh the options presented to them; instead, they tended to choose the firstchoice they encountered that was minimally acceptable.




It may be that distressed individuals tend to focus on the potential payoff ofrisky behavior as a possible “cure” to their negative mood while failing to ade-quately consider the possible negative consequences of such a risky choice.However, this would seem to be true only when negative emotional valence ispaired with high levels of arousal. This distinction helps to explain research thatfinds sad individuals (e.g., negative valence and low arousal) tend to employmore systematic processing strategies than individuals in happy moods (e.g., pos-itive valence and high arousal). The emotional state of sadness may be adaptivein that it signals a problem with one’s current state and may prime a more exten-sive and systematic processing of information related to examining one’s currentsituation.

The role that emotions play in the career decision-making process would like-ly be similar to the findings in the basic research on judgment and decision mak-ing. First, emotions predispose individuals to appraise the risk inherent in theircareer decisions in somewhat predictable ways. For instance, sadness would leadone to process information about career options in a more deliberate and sys-tematic fashion. Second, the “action tendencies” embodied in emotions experi-enced during the career decision making may prime specific thinking styles andproblem-solving approaches. For example, anger may increase the likelihood of“impulsive” career decision making, whereas fear serves to keep individuals inunsatisfying careers, and sadness may motivate us to more carefully examine thesource of our career dissatisfaction.

Although research has recently begun to amass data on the effect of actualemotions on the decision process, the emotions that we anticipate will follow ourdecisions can also have a powerful effect on our decision process. Subjectiveexpected pleasure theory (Mellers, Schwartz, & Ritov, 1999) posits that individ-uals anticipate the emotions that will result from the various options open tothem and then select the choice with greatest predicted pleasure associated withit. However, research in real-world settings has found that people often overesti-mate the displeasure that results from unfavorable outcomes. For example,Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, and Wheatley (1998) asked untenured profes-sors to anticipate how they would feel about receiving or not receiving tenure.Consistent with other real-world field studies, professors who were denied tenurewere actually much less distressed then they had anticipated.

People thus seem to be worse at predicting the emotional results of negativeexperiences. One hypothesis is that those higher in EI, especially emotionalunderstanding, would be less prone to such “errors.” Given the fact that manyvocational decisions often involve the pursuit of some values and interests at theexpense of others, it seems that being able to accurately judge both positive andnegative affective outcomes of each dimension of a career decision would be acritical decision-making skill.

If individuals do indeed vary in their abilities to understand and generate emo-tions to facilitate decision making, as the Mayer and Salovey EI framework pos-tulates, then people more adept at envisioning the emotional consequences, both




positive and negative, may also prove more likely to choose vocations that willlead to greater life and job satisfaction. For example, those higher in under-standing and managing their emotions would likely be more adept at predictinghow various aspects of a potential career choice will make them feel, thus poten-tially avoiding occupations that include duties and tasks that the individual dis-likes and seeking career options that will realistically lead to higher levels of joband life satisfaction. As individuals contemplate possible future careers for them-selves, the ability to accurately appraise how various aspects associated withpotential career choices will make them feel would seem to be a critical careerdecision-making skill.

Emotionally intelligent career decision makers may also be in a better positionto make use of the motivational qualities of emotions (Salovey, Bedell, Detweiler,& Mayer, 2000), such that focusing on specific emotions during the decision-making process motivates adaptive behavior by encouraging decision makers toweigh multiple affective components when making career decisions. Moreover,the ability to focus on more positive emotions during the career decision-makingprocess may serve to keep individuals focused on common decision-making taskssuch as information seeking and self-exploration, as well as tasks related to imple-menting career decisions such as continuing education and job-seeking behavior.

As we have seen, the ability to manage emotions should not be viewed as thestifling of emotional experience but is better thought of as a capacity for opennessto both positive and negative emotions. Experiences in the workplace often evokestrong emotions among individuals. Work-related achievements offer us a sourceof pride, whereas failures may evoke a sense of guilt and shame. Positive rela-tionships with coworkers can provide us with a feeling of happiness and belong-ing, whereas a poor relationship with a boss can leave an individual angry andfrustrated. Our experiences in the workplace offer us a rich source of emotionalinformation about our likes, dislikes, strengths, and areas for potential develop-ment. How open individuals are to these emotional experiences as well as howhighly weighted such experiences will be in career decisions are also expected tovary. Individuals who close themselves to their emotional experiences at workmay 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 inter-ests, values, and motives.

COUNSELING APPLICATIONS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The effort to deal in a systematic fashion with the specific issue of careerchoice 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. Althoughmany theorists have argued that personal counseling and career counseling are




intimately enmeshed, the common perception that career choice is, or shouldbe, a predominately rational process still remains among many practitioners andthe general public. Although standard techniques, such as interest and valueassessment, information seeking, and self-exploration techniques, may suffice tohelp some clients, we posit that a deeper exploration of the emotions associatedwith career choice will provide many clients with a more useful and meaningfulintervention. Clients often struggle with issues such as dependency, locus of con-trol, identity formation, and chronic indecision that may be linked to maladap-tive emotional schemas unlikely to be identified using standard career assess-ment techniques. Introducing a framework of EI into the counseling relationshipcan be useful as it can help identify clients who may have difficulty perceivingand working with emotions. At a general level, the counselor’s role can be viewedas helping clients to understand the interrelatedness of their personal and careerissues. In relation to emotions and career choice, the role can be framed as help-ing clients better understand how their emotional reactions influence theircareer choices and how understanding and working with their emotional reac-tions can facilitate various aspects of the career decision process that can leadthem to better career decisions.

Having a framework for screening clients on EI-related constructs helps coun-selors identify clients who may need a more focused intervention to increase spe-cific aspects of EI. For those higher in EI, such interventions may be unneces-sary, whereas those lower in EI may benefit from techniques that encouragethem to evoke and work with specific emotions related to the career choiceprocess, as well as more deeply explore the meaning of their emotional reactions.Techniques such as keeping a “feeling journal,” examining the rationality of theappraisals they make in relation to their emotional reactions, identifying theirpatterns for dealing with negative emotions such as anxiety, as well as providingclients with tools for more systematically reflecting on their current and pastemotional experiences may all be helpful in raising the emotional self-awarenessthat we feel is key to effective career decision making. Techniques that serve tofocus the client on the physiological manifestations of various emotions (e.g., rac-ing heart) may also help clients to recognize and label their emotional experi-ences. Incorporating others’ perspectives (e.g., through the use of 360-degree-feedback techniques) may also help those with limited emotional self-awarenessto gain insight into their emotional lives.

Because research on the correlation between client psychological distress andpresentation for career counseling has been virtually nonexistent, most careercounselors do not typically assess affect-related variables beyond job/life satisfac-tion. A recent study (Multon, Heppner, Gysbers, Zook, & Ellis-Kalton, 2001)found that 60% of adult clients (mean age = 33 years) presenting for career coun-seling were labeled “psychologically distressed.” This finding highlights the needfor counselors to be trained not only in career assessment skills but also in thediagnosis of psychological distress and psychopathology, as well as EI. Althoughassessment of EI and related constructs such as alexithymia may be a part of such




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

CONCLUSION

EI continues to stimulate a great deal of interest among psychologists, as wellas the general public. This interest has translated into rigorous tests of the relia-bility and validity of this emerging construct. To date, that research points to EIas a construct that varies among individuals, can be measured, and predictsmeaningful outcomes. In this article, we have suggested some of the potentialeffects of emotions on the career decision-making process, as well as explored theimplications for a theory of EI for better understanding the complex dynamicsinherent in the career decision-making process. It is our hope that the recentenergy directed to the scientific exploration of EI in a wide range of domains canbe expanded to help better understand the interplay between emotion and cog-nition in the career choice process.

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