A recent discussion about the origins of Emotional Intelligence got me thinking about this topic. Dr. Daniel Goleman has been one of the most well known faces/experts in emotional intelligence, thanks to his book. He actually got the idea from couple of other professors, John Mayer and Peter Salovey. Here are some notes from an interview.
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“According to Dr. Goleman, it all began with two psychology professors on a summer’s day: “John Mayer and Peter Salovey invented the whole field,” Goleman explains, “when they were chatting about politics while painting a house.” Salovey (President of Yale University) and Mayer (Professor at University of New Hampshire) were talking about their research on cognition and emotion. They wondered: How could someone so smart act so dumb?
Their conclusion: Smart decision-making requires more than the intellect as measured by traditional IQ.
…Goleman continues the story, “And because of that conversation, they published a wonderful seminal article — but in an obscure journal. The moment I saw their concept of emotional intelligence all kinds of bells went off. And I thought, ‘I have to write about this!’”

Goleman is quick to add, “I don’t see myself as particularly gifted in this domain. I am a psychologist, a researcher and a writer, but I am not a guru of emotional intelligence”. “I am a commentator…”
Goleman credits the researchers and innovators. “All I did was amplify someone else’s idea, and other people have run with it…”
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From another paper, that looks bit earlier:
“It was not until 1985 that the term ‘emotional intelligence’ was first used in a doctoral dissertation by Wayne Payne. In 1987, an article published by Keith Beasley in Mensa Magazine uses the term ‘emotional quotient.’ Reuven Bar-On, an Israeli psychologist proposed a quantitative approach to creating “an EQ comparable to an IQ score” in the first copy of his doctoral dissertation, which was submitted in 1985. In 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer published their landmark article, ‘Emotional Intelligence,’ in the journal ‘Imagination, Cognition, and Personality’. In 1995, the concept of emotional intelligence was popularised after the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book ‘Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ’. “
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Few other names/studies are referred to in the early development of emotional intelligence – Michael Beldoch(1964), B. Leuner(1966), Howard Gardner (1983), Wayne Payne(1985), Stanley Greenspan(1989).
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Would be happy to learn more or be corrected, if anyone has more to add.

Sources:
* Dr. Daniel Goleman Explains the History of Emotional Intelligence; Joshua Freedman; Feb 29, 2024; Six Seconds
* The origins of Emotional Intelligence theory; Impellus
* History of Emotional Intelligence: Origins, Evolution, and Background; Ashveen Sahni; August 17, 2024; Kapable