Emotional Intelligence

Key Concepts

Salovey-Mayer emotional intelligence domains (pp. 43-6)

1. “Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence.”

2. “Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness.”

3. “Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity.”

4. “Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental ‘people skill.’”

5. “Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others.” 

The brain is an emotional system and an intellectual system working together to produce performance

“This means that, in effect, the brain has two memory systems, one for ordinary facts and one for emotionally charged ones.” (p. 21)

“In a sense we have two brains, two minds—and two different kinds of intelligence: rational and emotional. How we do in life is determined by both—it is not just IQ, but emotional intelligence that matters. Indeed, intellect cannot work at its best without emotional intelligence. Ordinarily the complementarity of limbic system and neocortex, amygdala and prefrontal lobes, means each is a full partner in mental life. When these partners interact well, emotional intelligence rises—as does intellectual ability.” (p. 32)

“People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought.” (p. 37)

“Studies of Olympic athletes, world-class musicians, and chess grand masters find their unifying trait is the ability to motivate themselves to pursue relentless training routines.” (p. 80)

“To the degree that our emotions get in the way of or enhance our ability to think and plan, to pursue training for a distant goal, to solve problems and the like, they define the limits of our capacity to use our innate mental abilities, and so determine how we do in life.” (p. 80)

Hatch-Gardner components of interpersonal intelligence (pp. 118-20)

“Organizing groups—the essential skill of the leader, this involves initiating and coordinating the efforts of a network of people.”

“Negotiating solutions—the talent of the mediator, preventing conflicts or resolving those that flare up.”

“Personal connection—Roger’s talent, that of empathy and connecting. This makes it easy to enter into an encounter or to recognize and respond fittingly to people’s feelings and concerns—the art of relationship.”

“Social analysis—being able to detect and have insights about people’s feelings, motives, and concerns.”

Fighting effectively in relationships requires emotional intelligence

“For example, couples in marriages that last tend to stick to one topic, and to give each partner the chance to state their point of view at the outset.24 But these couples go one important step further: they show each other that they are being listened to.” (p. 143)

Parents’ emotional intelligence and interactions with their children are important for the kids’ emotional development 

“This emotional schooling operates not just through the things that parents say and do directly to children, but also in the models they offer for handling their own feelings and those that pass between husband and wife.” (p. 190)

“In order for parents to be effective coaches in this way, they must have a fairly good grasp of the rudiments of emotional intelligence themselves.” (p. 191)

Quotables

“We have gone too far in emphasizing the value and import of the purely rational—of what IQ measures—in human life. For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when the emotions hold sway.” (p. 5)

“...that the interactions of life’s earliest years lay down a set of emotional lessons based on the attunement and upsets in the contacts between infant and caretakers.” (p. 24)

“The single most important contribution education can make to a child’s development is to help him toward a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent.” (p. 37)

“...emotional life is richer for those who notice more.” (p. 50)

“The key to sounder personal decision-making, in short: being attuned to our feelings.” (p. 56)

“Stress of all sorts creates adrenocortical arousal, lowering the threshold for what provokes anger.” (p. 61)

“Anger builds on anger; the emotional brain heats up. By then rage, unhampered by reason, easily erupts in violence.” (p. 62)

Children, they found, were more empathic when the discipline included calling strong attention to the distress their misbehavior caused someone else: “Look how sad you’ve made her feel” instead of “That was naughty.” (p. 100)

“The net effect of failing to follow these rules is to create waves, to make those around us uncomfortable. The function of these rules, of course, is to keep everyone involved in a social exchange at ease; awkwardness spawns anxiety. People who lack these skills are inept not just at social niceties, but at handling the emotions of those they encounter; they inevitably leave disturbance in their wake.” (p. 123)

“Meanwhile, boys and girls are taught very different lessons about handling emotions. Parents, in general, discuss emotions—with the exception of anger—more with their daughters than their sons.” (p. 131)

“This may partly reflect another key difference: women, on average, experience the entire range of emotions with greater intensity and more volatility than men—in this sense, women are more “emotional” than men.” (p. 133)

“An early warning signal that a marriage is in danger, Gottman finds, is harsh criticism. In a healthy marriage husband and wife feel free to voice a complaint. But too often in the heat of anger complaints are expressed in a destructive fashion, as an attack on the spouse’s character.” (p. 135)

“One powerful way to de-escalate a fight is to let your partner know that you can see things from the other perspective, and that this point of view may have validity, even if you do not agree with it yourself. Another is to take responsibility or even apologize if you see you are in the wrong.” (p. 147)

“The emotional vicissitudes at work in marriage also operate in the workplace, where they take similar forms. Criticisms are voiced as personal attacks rather than complaints that can be acted upon; there are ad hominem charges with dollops of disgust, sarcasm, and contempt; both give rise to defensiveness and dodging of responsibility and, finally, to stonewalling or the embittered passive resistance that comes from feeling unfairly treated.” (p. 152)

“Many managers are too willing to criticize, but frugal with praise, leaving their employees feeling that they only hear about how they’re doing when they make a mistake. This propensity to criticism is compounded by managers who delay giving any feedback at all for long periods.” (p. 153)

“This inattention to the emotional reality of illness neglects a growing body of evidence showing that people’s emotional states can play a sometimes significant role in their vulnerability to disease and in the course of their recovery. Modern medical care too often lacks emotional intelligence.” (p. 167)

“Cohen found that the more stress in their lives, the more likely people were to catch cold.” (p. 176)

“Helping people better manage their upsetting feelings—anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, and loneliness—is a form of disease prevention.” (p. 184)

“A report from the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs makes the point that school success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read so much as by emotional and social measures: being self-assured and interested; knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.” (p. 193)

“Whether or not a child arrives at school on the first day of kindergarten with these capabilities depends greatly on how much her parents—and preschool teachers—have given her the kind of care that amounts to a ‘Heart Start,’ the emotional equivalent of the Head Start programs.” (p. 195)

“Temperament can be defined in terms of the moods that typify our emotional life. To some degree we each have such a favored emotional range; temperament is a given at birth, part of the genetic lottery that has compelling force in the unfolding of life.” (p. 217)

“To be sure, the brain remains plastic throughout life, though not to the spectacular extent seen in childhood.” (p. 230)

“The most common cause of disability among teenagers is mental illness.” (p. 235)

“The bent of mind that aggressive children take with them through life is one that almost ensures they will end up in trouble. ...When they have difficulties with someone, they immediately see the other person in an antagonistic way, jumping to conclusions about the other person’s hostility toward them without seeking any further information or trying to think of a peaceful way to settle their differences. At the same time, the negative consequence of a violent solution—a fight, typically—never crosses their mind.” (p. 238)

“By contrast, children given more comprehensive training—including related emotional and social competences—were better able to protect themselves against the threat of being victimized: they were far more likely to demand to be left alone, to yell or fight back, to threaten to tell, and to actually tell if something bad did happen to them.” (p. 258)

“There is little or nothing in the standard education of teachers that prepares them for this kind of teaching.” (p. 280)

“If character development is a foundation of democratic societies, consider some of the ways emotional intelligence buttresses this foundation.” (p. 287)