The role of meta-cognitive processes in emotional intelligence

Abstract

Emotional thoughts are often accompanied by a host of additional or second order thoughts relevant for perceiving and regulating emotion and emotion-management processes. These meta-cognitive thoughts can play an important role in understanding psychological processes relevant to Emotional Intelligence. In the present article, we first provide a general meta-cognitive framework useful for classifying secondary thoughts according to dimensions, such as target, origin, valence, number, confidence, and evaluation. Having described a framework for meta-cognition, we next review different lines of research concerning 1) how primary emotional thoughts are affected by meta-cognitive confidence, 2) how emotional thoughts at the second level of cognition (meta-cognition) can influence first level cognition, 3) how emotional thoughts at the primary and secondary levels can influence one another, and 4) how mood and emotional thoughts can play multiple roles in cognition and meta-cognition depending on the circumstances.