Emotional intelligence and its link to public relations education

The purpose of this study is to examine the ethics chapters in five introduction-topublic relations textbooks and the codes of ethics of four major public relations associations contained within those chapters to determine the prevalence of language that either uses the same terms Daniel Goleman employs for his 25 competencies of emotional intelligence or uses words that strongly suggest the terms Goleman employs. The methods used to establish a correlation between Goleman's emotional intelligence competencies and the ethical practice of public relations are twofold: (1) a content analysis of the ethics chapters of the five textbooks in which are contained the four codes of ethics and (2) interviews with five educators of intro-to-public relations courses and with four of the authors of the textbooks used in the content analysis. Results indicate that there is a correlation between Goleman's competencies, the language employed in introductory textbooks, and the teaching philosophy of educators of introductory public relations courses and of the textbook authors.