Emotional intelligence books worth your time

For a general introduction, Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (1995) is the book that started the conversation, though its biggest claims went further than later research supports. For a short practical program, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (Bradberry and Greaves, 2009) is the quickest read; for the science of feelings, try Marc Brackett’s Permission to Feel (2019) or Ethan Kross’s Chatter (2021); for relationships, Gottman and Silver’s Seven Principles (1999) or Difficult Conversations (1999). Below, each of the nine books gets who it suits, what it argues, and what the evidence behind it says. No affiliate links.

By EQTiger EditorialUpdated October 27, 2026Expert review pending

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Most lists of emotional intelligence books are lists of bestsellers. That’s a reasonable place to start, but it leaves out the question a careful reader actually has: is the thing this book tells me true? This guide covers nine real, widely available books, each with the kind of reader it suits and a plain note on the research behind it. We picked books that are easy to find in a library, and we don’t earn anything if you buy one.

All nine at a glance

Pick by what you want from the book
Book	Author and year	Best for	Evidence behind it
Emotional Intelligence	Daniel Goleman, 1995	The history and the big idea	Mixed: real research, overstated conclusions
Emotional Intelligence 2.0	Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, 2009	A quick self-help program	General support for EI training; the book’s program itself is untested
Permission to Feel	Marc Brackett, 2019	Parents, teachers, anyone who was taught to hide feelings	Grounded in ability-model research and school programs
Emotional Agility	Susan David, 2016	People stuck in rigid habits or self-criticism	Consistent with research on accepting feelings
How Emotions Are Made	Lisa Feldman Barrett, 2017	Readers who want the neuroscience	Serious science, one side of a live debate
Chatter	Ethan Kross, 2021	Overthinkers and worriers	Strong lab research, much of it the author’s
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work	John Gottman and Nan Silver, 1999	Couples	Decades of observation; prediction claims contested
Difficult Conversations	Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, 1999	Hard talks at work or at home	Practice-based, not tested in trials
Self-Compassion	Kristin Neff, 2011	Harsh inner critics	Built on the author’s own measure and research

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman (1995)

Goleman, a psychologist working as a science journalist, took a term from academic psychology and turned it into a bestseller. (Goleman, Bantam Books, 1995) The term itself came from a 1990 paper by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, who framed it as a set of skills for reading, using and managing emotions. (Salovey and Mayer, 1990) Goleman’s book widened it to include motivation, character and social skill.

Read it if you want to understand why everyone talks about EQ. Read it carefully on the subtitle’s promise that it can matter more than IQ. Salovey and Mayer later rejected the popular claim that emotional intelligence explains most of workplace success. (Mayer and colleagues, 2008) A meta-analysis put its correlation with job performance at about .24 to .30, which is meaningful but far from dominant. (O’Boyle and colleagues, 2011) The five-part version of Goleman’s framework is laid out on the components page.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (2009)

A short, practical book organized around four skills (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management), sold with a code for the authors’ online appraisal. (Bradberry and Greaves, TalentSmart, 2009) It suits someone who wants a list of strategies they can start on Monday and doesn’t want theory.

The evidence that emotional intelligence can be trained is reasonably good: across 58 studies, training raised EI scores by a moderate amount, though published studies showed bigger effects than unpublished ones. (Mattingly and Kraiger, 2019) That is about training programs in general. The specific strategies in this book haven’t been tested as a program, and the appraisal is the publisher’s own self-report tool, so treat the score as a prompt for reflection.

Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett (2019)

Brackett directs the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and developed RULER, an approach to emotional skills used in many schools. The book mixes his framework with the story of his own childhood, when, after years of bullying and abuse, an uncle gave him what the title calls permission to feel. (Brackett, Celadon Books, 2019) It is the warmest book on this list and the best fit for parents and teachers.

Brackett works in the ability-model tradition, so the science underneath is the more testable kind. We didn’t review RULER’s own trials for this page. The broader case for teaching these skills in school rests on a meta-analysis of 213 social and emotional learning programs, which found gains in skills, behavior and achievement. (Durlak and colleagues, 2011) Teachers reading it may also want emotional intelligence for teachers.

Emotional Agility, Susan David (2016)

David, a psychologist, argues that people get stuck when they either bottle up difficult thoughts and feelings or let those feelings dictate what they do, and that it works better to notice them, step back and act on your values. (David, Avery, 2016) It suits people who are hard on themselves or locked into habits that no longer fit.

The central idea lines up with research on acceptance: in survey, lab and diary studies, people who tended to accept their emotions rather than judge them felt less negative emotion under stress and had better psychological health six months later. (Ford and colleagues, 2018) That is correlational evidence for the general idea, not a test of the book.

How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017)

The most scientific book here, and the most challenging. Barrett argues that the brain constructs emotions from body sensations, past experience and learned concepts, rather than triggering fixed circuits for anger, fear and the rest. (Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) It suits readers who want to know what an emotion is before they try to manage one.

Parts of her case are well supported: a major review she led found that facial movements alone cannot reliably reveal what someone feels. (Barrett and colleagues, 2019) Her broader theory is one side of a debate with researchers who hold that a few basic emotions are built in, so read it as a strong argument, not settled fact. The page on reading social cues puts the facial research to practical use.

Chatter, Ethan Kross (2021)

Kross runs an emotion lab and studies the voice in your head: when it helps, when it turns into rumination, and how to step back from it, for example by talking to yourself by name. (Kross, Crown, 2021) It is the right book for people who replay conversations at night.

The research behind the main technique is solid by the standards of psychology: in seven studies, people who used their own name or “you” while preparing for a stressful task felt less distressed and performed better. (Kross and colleagues, 2014) Those were mostly short lab tasks with students, and Kross is summarizing his own work, which is worth knowing. The practical version is on how to stop overthinking.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman and Nan Silver (1999)

Gottman spent decades filming couples in a lab, and this book turns that work into seven principles with questionnaires and exercises. (Gottman and Silver, Crown Publishers, 1999) It suits couples who want something to do together, not just something to read.

The observational research is extensive. The famous prediction figures are where to be careful: one newlywed study reported 83 percent accuracy in predicting divorce, but it estimated that accuracy in the same sample it used to build the model. (Gottman and colleagues, 1998) When divorce-prediction equations are tested on new data, their accuracy drops sharply. (Heyman and Slep, 2001) The advice on treating each other well holds up better than the precision of the predictions.

Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (1999)

Written by members of the Harvard Negotiation Project, it breaks every hard conversation into three: the argument about what happened, the feelings involved, and what the conversation seems to say about who each of you is. (Stone and colleagues, Viking, 1999) It suits anyone dreading a talk with a boss, a sibling or a partner, and it is the most useful book on this list for work.

It is built from teaching and practice rather than controlled studies, so there is no trial to point to. Its advice to get curious about the other person’s story before arguing your own fits with lab work on listening, where speakers who got attentive, nonjudgmental listening became less defensive and less extreme in their views. (Itzchakov and colleagues, 2017) Our conflict conversation planner uses a similar structure.

Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff (2011)

Neff explains how treating yourself with the kindness you would offer a friend differs from self-esteem, and includes exercises for practicing it. (Neff, HarperCollins, 2011) It suits people whose inner voice is harsher than anything they would say to someone else.

Neff developed the Self-Compassion Scale, and early work with it found that self-compassion went with less depression and anxiety and greater life satisfaction. (Neff, 2003) Those findings are correlational, and much of the field uses her own measure, so independent replication matters.

Reading one of these so it actually changes something

One book, four weeks

Choose by problem, not by fame5 minWrite one sentence on what you want to handle better, then pick the book from the table that matches it.
One idea per week10 minAfter each chapter or two, write down a single technique you will try in a real situation that week.
Try it on small moments firstdailyUse the technique on a minor irritation or an easy conversation before a big one.
Keep what worked10 minAt the end of the month, list the two techniques you still use. That is what the book was worth.

Mistakes readers make with these books

Collecting instead of practicing. Five books read in a month usually change less than one idea used for five weeks.
Treating a bestseller’s confidence as evidence. Popular books state conclusions more firmly than the studies behind them. Check the notes.
Assigning them to other people. These books are for working on yourself. Handing one to your partner with a chapter highlighted rarely goes well.

If you would rather start with a clear definition than a book, read what emotional intelligence is. To see which skill to read about first, the free EQ test shows your strongest area across six dimensions in about nine minutes.

Research notes

Goleman, Bantam Books, 1995 (book): The bestseller that took the term to a general audience, arguing that emotional awareness and social skill can be learned and can shape success in life and work as much as intellect does.
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam Books. Limits: Written for general readers; it blends research with anecdote and is not a research report. openlibrary.org/works/OL1878267W
Salovey and Mayer, 1990: The paper that introduced the term framed emotional intelligence as a set of skills for appraising and expressing emotion in oneself and others, regulating emotion, and using feelings to motivate, plan and achieve.
Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211. Limits: Theory paper. doi:10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG
Mayer and colleagues, 2008: The originators of the ability model separated EI as a group of mental abilities from broad mixes of positive traits, reported that ability EI correlates about .35 with verbal intelligence, and rejected popular claims that EI explains most of workplace success.
Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits? American Psychologist, 63(6), 503–517. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.63.6.503
O’Boyle and colleagues, 2011: Across ability tests, four-branch self-report measures and mixed models, corrected correlations between EI and job performance ranged from 0.24 to 0.30, with the self-report and mixed streams adding the most prediction beyond cognitive ability and the Five Factor Model.
The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), 788–818. doi:10.1002/job.714
Bradberry and Greaves, TalentSmart, 2009 (book): A short self-help program built around four skills (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management), sold with access to the authors' online EQ appraisal.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0. TalentSmart. Limits: A practical workbook from a training company; the appraisal that comes with it is the publisher's own self-report tool. openlibrary.org/works/OL15189300W
Mattingly and Kraiger, 2019: Across 58 published and unpublished studies of EI training, scores rose by a moderate amount in both pre-post and treatment-control designs, with larger effects in published studies than in dissertations.
Can emotional intelligence be trained? A meta-analytical investigation. Human Resource Management Review, 29(2), 140–155. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2018.03.002
Brackett, Celadon Books, 2019 (book): The founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence sets out his framework for emotional skills and the RULER approach used in schools, framed by his own childhood experience of bullying and abuse.
Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive. Celadon Books. Limits: Written by the developer of the approach it describes. openlibrary.org/works/OL20128926W
Durlak and colleagues, 2011: Across 213 school-based social and emotional learning programs, students who took part gained more than control students in social and emotional skills, attitudes and behavior, with an achievement gain the authors equate to 11 places on a 100-place ranking, and school staff delivered the programs successfully.
The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. Sample: 270,034 students from kindergarten through high school. Limits: Programs varied widely and results depended on how well they were implemented; the analysis measures student programs, not teachers' own emotional skills. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
David, Avery, 2016 (book): A popular psychology book arguing that people do better when they notice hard thoughts and feelings, step back from them and act on their values, instead of either bottling them up or obeying them.
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Avery. Limits: A popular book that draws on research rather than reporting new studies. openlibrary.org/works/OL20250601W
Ford and colleagues, 2018: Across a survey (N = 1,003), a lab study (N = 156), and a diary study (N = 222), people who tended to accept rather than judge their emotions and thoughts felt less negative emotion under stress and had better psychological health 6 months later.
The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(6), 1075–1092. Limits: Mostly correlational; measures habitual acceptance rather than training it. doi:10.1037/pspp0000157
Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 (book): Explains for general readers the theory of constructed emotion: the brain builds emotions from body sensations, past experience and learned concepts rather than setting off fixed, universal emotion circuits.
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Limits: Argues for one side of a live scientific debate about what emotions are. openlibrary.org/works/OL19354287W
Barrett and colleagues, 2019: This review found that people do smile, frown or scowl with matching emotions more often than chance, but expressions vary so much across cultures, situations and individuals that a facial configuration alone cannot reliably reveal what someone feels.
Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(1), 1–68. doi:10.1177/1529100619832930
Kross, Crown, 2021 (book): A psychologist's account of research on inner talk and rumination, including distanced self-talk such as addressing yourself by name, much of it from his own lab.
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. Crown. Limits: Popular summary of research the author helped produce. openlibrary.org/works/OL24142301W
Kross and colleagues, 2014: In seven studies (total N = 585), people who reflected on a stressful social task using their own name or non-first-person pronouns showed less distress, performed better by outside ratings and saw upcoming stressors more as challenges than threats.
Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324. Sample: Seven studies with 585 participants in total, including first-impression and public-speaking tasks. Limits: Lab tasks about social stress rather than partners, mostly with student samples. doi:10.1037/a0035173
Gottman and Silver, Crown Publishers, 1999 (book): Turns decades of Gottman's observational research on married couples into seven principles, with questionnaires and exercises couples can do at home.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown Publishers. Limits: Advice derived from correlational research; the principles were not each tested as stand-alone interventions. openlibrary.org/works/OL1982054W
Gottman and colleagues, 1998: In newlyweds, a husband rejecting his wife's influence, negative start-up by the wife, poor de-escalation and a lack of the husband's physiological soothing predicted divorce, with models reported to predict divorce and stability with 83% accuracy and satisfaction with 80%, while the anger and active listening models were not supported.
Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(1), 5–22. Sample: 130 newlywed couples observed in conflict discussions and followed over time. Limits: Prediction accuracy was estimated in the same sample without reported cross-validation, and critics (Stanley and colleagues, 2000; Heyman and Smith Slep, 2001) flagged sampling and causal-inference problems. doi:10.2307/353438
Heyman and Slep, 2001: Using archival data, the authors show that divorce-prediction accuracy and predictive value drop sharply when equations are cross-validated, so uncross-validated results deserve extreme caution.
The hazards of predicting divorce without crossvalidation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(2), 473–479. Limits: The abstract does not describe the archival dataset, so how far the shrinkage generalizes to specific studies is unclear. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00473.x
Stone and colleagues, Viking, 1999 (book): From the Harvard Negotiation Project, a method for hard conversations that separates the argument about what happened, the feelings involved, and what the conversation seems to say about each person's identity.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Viking. Limits: Built from negotiation teaching and practice, not from controlled studies. openlibrary.org/works/OL13513526W
Itzchakov and colleagues, 2017: In four laboratory experiments, speakers who received attentive, nonjudgmental listening held less extreme attitudes and acknowledged more of the contradictions in their own views than speakers who received poorer listening, which the authors attribute to lower social anxiety and less defensiveness.
I Am Aware of My Inconsistencies but Can Tolerate Them: The Effect of High Quality Listening on Speakers’ Attitude Ambivalence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 105–120. Limits: Lab experiments on attitude topics, not conversations between romantic partners. doi:10.1177/0146167216675339
Neff, HarperCollins, 2011 (book): The researcher who developed the Self-Compassion Scale explains for general readers what self-compassion is, how it differs from self-esteem, and exercises for practicing it.
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. HarperCollins. Limits: A popular book by the originator of the concept. openlibrary.org/works/OL25328122W
Neff, 2003: Describes the development of the Self-Compassion Scale and reports that self-compassion correlates with less depression and anxiety and greater life satisfaction.
The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2(3), 223–250. Limits: Correlational; scale development. doi:10.1080/15298860309027

5 questions

Frequently asked questions

What is the best book on emotional intelligence?

It depends on what you want. For the history and big picture, Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. For a quick practical program, Emotional Intelligence 2.0. For the science of emotions in everyday life, Permission to Feel or Chatter. For a relationship, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

Is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence still worth reading?

Yes, as the book that made the idea famous and as a readable tour of 1990s emotion research. Read it knowing that its strongest claims, such as emotional intelligence mattering more than IQ for success, have not held up in later research.

Is the test in Emotional Intelligence 2.0 accurate?

It is a self-report questionnaire from the publisher, useful for reflection. Like every self-report EQ measure, it reflects how you see yourself, which overlaps with personality and may not match how others see you.

What is a good emotional intelligence book for couples?

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver is the most widely read and comes with exercises to do together. Difficult Conversations is better if your main problem is how arguments go, at home or at work.

Do I need to read a book to improve my emotional intelligence?

No. Books give you ideas; practice changes habits. If you read one, pick one idea per chapter and try it for a week before moving on.

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Emotional intelligence books worth your time

All nine at a glance

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman (1995)

Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (2009)

Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett (2019)

Emotional Agility, Susan David (2016)

How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017)

Chatter, Ethan Kross (2021)

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman and Nan Silver (1999)

Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (1999)

Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff (2011)

Reading one of these so it actually changes something

Mistakes readers make with these books

Research notes

Frequently asked questions

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All nine at a glance

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman (1995)

Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (2009)

Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett (2019)

Emotional Agility, Susan David (2016)

How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017)

Chatter, Ethan Kross (2021)

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman and Nan Silver (1999)

Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (1999)

Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff (2011)

Reading one of these so it actually changes something

Mistakes readers make with these books

Research notes

Frequently asked questions

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