Emotional Intelligence: A New Variable in Career Decision-Making

This chapter introduces emotional intelligence as an innovative variable in career decisionmaking processes. It also discusses recent empirical studies and outlines new research and intervention perspectives. In recent years, interest has grown in the significance of individual differences in career decision-making (Gati et al., 2010; Savickas, 2004). Awareness has also gradually increased that career decision-making is complex and multidimensional and that individual characteristics have to be taken into account in order to understand the way in which individuals deal with their career decisions (Gati et al., 2010). From this perspective, emotional intelligence appears to be a particularly promising variable in career decision-making processes (Di Fabio & Kenny, 2011).