About 25 years ago emotional intelligence (EI) was first introduced to the scientific community.
In this chapter, we provide a general framework for understanding EI conceptualized as an ability. We
start by identifying the origins of the construct routed in the intelligence literature and the foundational
four-branch model of ability EI, then describe the most commonly employed measures of EI as ability,
and critically review predictive validity evidence. We further approach current challenges, including the
difficulties of scoring answers as “correct” in the emotional sphere, and open a discussion on how to
increase the incremental validity of ability EI. We finally suggest new directions by introducing a
distinction between a crystallized component of EI, based on knowledge of emotions, and a fluid
component, based on the processing of emotion information.