The concept of emotional strength was introduced by Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. The term "emotional intelligence" may have first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch and a 1966 paper by B. Leuner.

In 1983, Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences introduced the idea that traditional types of intelligence, such as IQ, fail to fully explain cognitive ability. He introduced the idea of multiple intelligences,