Beware of misinformation on EI

As I work to provide the world outside of science with the most up-to-date information, I realize how much misinformation has already been spread. Here's today's example:

I couldn't figure out why people kept calling, or writing, that Emotional Intelligence is EQ. Let's start with grammar. An acronym is based on the words it is replacing. It's called Emotional Intelligence not Emotional Quotient. So just using correct grammar it should be EI, and not EQ.

As a always curious social scientist, I wondered why people were using the incorrect acronym of EQ. The first reason seems to be because they are equating it to IQ. The problem with that is IQ is an acronym for Intelligence Quotient, and grammatically correct. It's called a quotient because it's the number you get by dividing your score by your age.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is not a quotient, it's not even a number. There are EI assessments that give a number but it's usually a single number and again, not a quotient. So I realized that people who use EQ are just trying to sound like they know what they are talking about. I see this as a red flag and would avoid those calling it, incorrectly, EQ.

Today, I ran across people talking about "social intelligence" and again, using for its acronym, SQ. There's no word that begins with a Q here, same as with emotional intelligence. But same reasoning, they want to relate it to IQ so they think, even if it makes no sense, they should use SQ. Again, this would be a red flag for me.

Besides, social intelligence is an OLD, outdated concept from the 80's. Science evolves as we learn. In the 90's, when scientists began studying and writing about emotional intelligence, that new concept replaced the old concept. See the blog on "What is Social Intelligence and why it is unnecessary for people to receive training for it."