Who created the term “emotional intelligence”?
The concept developed over the last 30 years, with contributions by many authors, researchers, and educators. In 1995, Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence, shared the work of many people and brought the concept mainstream. In the book, he talks about Peter Salovey and Jack Mayer (the people who “invented” the science of EQ), Antonio Damasio (a groundbreaking neuroscientist), and others — he even talks about our Self-Science curriculum. So while Dan did not invent EQ, he played an incredibly important role in bringing it to the public attention. Damasio’s Descartes Error, Mayer and Salovey’s Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence, Cooper and Sawaf’s Executive EQ, McCown’s Self-Science, Claude Steiner’s Emotional Literacy, Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion, Orioli and Cooper’s EQ Map, and Reuven Bar-On’s EQ-i are all seminal publications in the field.
