The article covers the process of the historical development of the emotional intelligence concept; as well as the classification of modern approach to this concept in the scientific literature has been created. The purpose of the article is to systemize the modern tendencies of the emotional intelligence research as a component of thinking. To achieve this goal several tasks needed to be solved: to clarify the psychological meaning of emotional intelligence; to systemize the main aspects used in the emotional intelligence research; to describe the psychological models of emotional intelligence. The complex of theoretical methods has been used to solve the given tasks: learning and analysis of scientific literature on the research topic, the systematization of data that characterizes the main aspects and the directions of the scientific process. The given article is the systematic study. The methodological basis of the research consists of the scientific works on psychology of J. D. Mayer, D. Halpern, W. Gray, A. Ortoni, J. Klor, A. Collins, L. S. Vygotskiy, S.L. Rubinstain, A. N. Leontiev, O. K. Tikhomirov, O. Ya. Chebykin etc. The following conclusions have been made during the study: despite the significant amount of types and components of intelligence, their final establishing is still hard to find out. As the result of the current research it was pointed out that the ability models more effectively reveal the emotional intelligence concept. Because they are characterized by the greater practical development and greater reliability of the diagnostic inventory.