Importance of emotional intelligence (E.I.)
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"Gary C. Li" sul...@hgea.org
I only heard of this term once or twice, in college Sociology.
Unfortunately for me I think I'm deficient... -LG Emotional Intelligence matters -- but what is it?
Kyung M Song for the Seattle Times, Feb. 2004 Do you know when your spouse's angry tirade is masking fear? Or how to handle a colleague who takes credit for your work? Are you comfortable confiding in friends? Can you hold your tongue under stress?
If you answered no, you might want to sharpen you emotional intelligence, the ability to understand emotions and respond effectively.
More than 13 years after John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Peter Salovey of Yale University coined the term, "emotional intelligence" has gained credibility as being as important to determining success as cognitive intelligence - if not more so.
Even bean counters are getting the message. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has adopted a vision statement calling emotional intelligence an extremely important skill for the profession.
Good accountants must be perceptive, persuasive problem solvers - all of which relate to facets of emotional intelligence.
Researchers agree that high achievers often are highly emotionally intelligent, particularly in fields that demand insight into motivations and feelings - chief executives, salespeople, therapists and military leaders, for example. But there's disagreement over exactly what constitutes emotional intelligence, how to measure it and whether it matters more than IQ.
Emotional Insight According to psychologists Mayer and Salovey, emotional intelligence is the ability to identify emotions and apply the information to guide thought and action. They see it as a mental aptitude that can be measured.
Reuven Bar-On, an Israeli clinical psychologist who first attempted to measure what he called "emotional quotient," frames the concept as part of a personality theory. His BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory test (EQ-i) uses reaction to various statements to gauge skills such as adaptability and stress management.
Howard Gardner, a psychology and education professor at Harvard, prefers the term "personal intelligence." In 1983, he published his groundbreaking theory of multiple intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. The last two constitute personal intelligence, the ability to understand feelings and motivations.
Daniel Goleman, a former New York Times science reporter whose 1995 book "Emotional Intelligence" made the best-seller list, studied how three types of competencies determine who becomes a top performer. After comparing technical skills (such as programming), cognitive abilities (analytical reasoning) and emotional intelligence (conflict resolution, customer serv?ice), Goleman concluded, "in general, the higher a position in an organization, the more emotional intelligence mattered.
For individual in leadership positions, 85 percent of their competencies in the emotional-intelligence domain." Outstanding leaders tend to be self-aware (understand their needs and weaknesses); in control of their feelings and impulses; socially aware (empathic); and socially skillful, Goleman said.
It Pays To Sympathize Examples abound from the business world in which emotional intelligence makes a difference in the bottom line.
When cosmetic giant L'Oreal selected salespeople based on certain emotional skills, they outsold traditional hires by an average of $90,000 a year. The U.S. Air Force used the EQ-i test to screen recruiters, and found the most successful hires were the ones with the highest emotional?-intelligence scores.
But Gardner cautions that emotional intelligence isn't an universal advantage. Low emotional intelligence in a Boeing engineer, for instance, might not be nearly as much of a disadvantage as it would be for a basketball coach.
"If you want to predict a successful computer programmer or professor of Sanskrit, you will look at different intelligences than if you want to predict a successful salesman or politician," Gardner said.
Salovey, the Yale professor who originated the term, said the biggest misconception is that emotional intelligence matters more than intellectual quotient, "when in fact we really don't know." Salovey helped develop the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), the world's first ability-based test for emotional intelligence. It contains 141 questions in eight task areas, such as reading facial expressions, understanding how one emotion can morph into another and ascertaining which moods might be most useful for different problems.
Not Personality Related Salovey draws a distinction between emotional intelligence and personality or character traits such as optimism and empathy. The former is aptitude, the latter behavior.
For example, former Tacoma, Wash., Police Chief David Brame, who shot his wife and then committed suicide April 26 2003, reportedly failed a mental exam two decades ago. Such psychological tests would have measured Brame's character traits, such as whether he was angry or depressed. MSCEIT, on the other hand, measures how skillful Brame would have been in managing those traits, said David Caruso, a co-author of MSCEIT.
Kathy Kram, professor of organizational behavior at the Boston University School of Management, said "emotional competence," as she calls it, is ***umed necessary to succeed in business. While some younger students challenge that idea, she said, students with more work experience are less skeptical.
Kram points to former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani as a vivid example of how emotional intelligence can enhance leadership skills.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Giuliani had a reputation as combative and egotistical. But his sensitivity and empathy toward the victims more than rehabilitated his image and catapulted him into a national leadership role. "The crisis provided him an opportunity to demonstrate his emotional intelligence," Kram said.
Gardner said low emotional intelligence isn't necessarily permanent.
While mathematical and musical intelligence are difficult to enhance after adolescence, "the personal intelligences may well improve throughout life," he said.
Related Weblinks-----
www.eiconsortium.org The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations site has helpful links to research and information about emotional-intelligence tests.
www.emotionaliq.org Academic website maintained by the creators of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. (75 bucks for the test) www.emode.com A "self-discovery" website that offers free tests of emotional intelligence, personality and other qualities. Reports that explain raw test scores require fees. (registration req)
Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
There's no such thing as emotional intelligence. The concept was invented to console people who get IQ scores lower than they'd like to see, and it is often embraced most lovingly by precisely those who claim that traditional notions of intelligence are groundless.
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"Christina Peterson" tinapet...@yahoo.com
Bullshit, my friend. Even disabled with severe Depression the tests put me over 135, and tell me my math is outstanding, although I'm not even a linear thinker. Emotional intelligence is a skill involving making sense of emotional experiences, and does not rely on IQ.
Tina ...
Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
IQ tests do not test math skills.
It relies mostly on hype, actually.
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"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
I agree. It's main function is to give academics something new to put on grant applications, titles of publications, etc.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
So how much was the grant?
"Nom dePlume" <nomdeplume1000-at-yahoo.com> spewed forth most vilely
"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
"Nom dePlume" <nomdeplume1000-at-yahoo.com> spewed forth most vilely No such thing? It's a phrase, an abstraction, (see "semantics") that refers to a set of highly complex processes. My guess is what makes one phrase catchier than another can make or break a career, or at least writing a popular book which sells like hot cakes, because it tells people a bunch of stuff that is pretty omfg damn obvious.
Don't know why that formula works, but it does. 20 years from now instead of EQ some other equally asinine phrase will be prevalent, and people will think that by renaming a phenomena something mysterious has been explained. Sorry, a name, is ultimately just a name.
"Christina Peterson" tinapet...@yahoo.com
Dunno, but I bet you wish you were smart enough to get one.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" <a...@at.org> wrote in message ...
Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
I do think that emotional intelligence is the invention of people who resent real intelligence, either because it conflicts with their notion of political correctness (which often ***erts that everyone in the world must be exactly equal), or because they simply lack general intelligence themselves.
Done.
I'm making no such claim. However, that aptitude is an attribute of general intelligence, not a characteristic independent of it.
It's interesting that the same people who seem determined to prove that emotional intelligence exists and is measurable are generally those who insist that general intelligence doesn't exist and cannot be measured, despite many effective tests that demonstrate otherwise.
And what exactly does that mean?
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Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
There are several ways to get a grant. Being smart is only one of them.
Being dishonest is often much more efficient.
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nevilemo ...@yahoo.com (OB)
I'm not sure about "the invention of", but "exploited by", probably yes. In the same way that e.g. all that hyped-up crap about "***ertiveness training" was exploited by people who merely wanted an excuse to act more selfishly, or various dubious notions concerning "repressed memories" have been used by some as a means to acquire instant victimhood status. The fact that a theory is welcomed for whatever reason says nothing about how useful or how accurate it might be in responsible hands, of course.
I think that's a bit simplistic. As far as I am aware, the good old bog-standard IQ test (which e.g. Brits of my age and over were subjected to in the form of the eleven-plus, and which probably at least partially informs the standard SATs sat in the States (try saying that after a couple of pints) contains precisely nothing in the way of emotional response tests (e.g. the typical "guessing a person's mood from a series of facial expressions in photographs", or whatever). IOW, current evaluations of intelligence more or less /completely/ fail to take into account this aforementioned aptitude.
If you're saying they don't need to, because a person's ability to understand the emotions of others will correlate invariably and exactly with their ability to e.g. solve linguistic, arithmetical and logical problems, then I disagree. I think you'll find that some people who are highly intelligent when it comes to e.g. solving mathematical problems will be found to be retards when it comes to interpreting the facial expressions, gestures and verbal intonation of others. (And vice versa.) Thus far, I agree with the proponents of EI: such aptitudes are important, do deserve attention, and in an ideal world would be somehow included in overall evaluations of intelligence of the sort that help to determine one's early schooling, university entrance, career options usw. My problem is that I am sceptical with regard to (a) the "newness" of this particular notion (EI), and (b) its measurability. As I already pointed out, even current IQ testing is based on some quite arbitrary premises (e.g. that the mean scores of both sexes should be equal, regardless of how this parity is achieved). Measuring even such basic things as mastery of simple logic is not always easy, esp. when there are major political consequences riding on exactly how it's done. What it comes down to is this: EI is not a new concept, in fact it's actually, as Dr Lombardi points out, a slick jargon label pasted on top of the sempiternally bleeding obvious. (Most of us find the slightly less clinical term "social skills" quite adequate in everyday life). The only thing that's really new is the idea that there should be some objective, numerical scale of measurement for it, such that psychologists, careers advisers, employers, insurance companies, dating agencies, parole officers and the FBI can have another way of cl***ifying us (after that it'll be e.g. "olfactory intelligence" - wait and sniff).
My feeling is that the day this objective testing becomes possible, EI will lose a great deal of its popularity, since those who embrace it vociferously now will discover to their dismay that they're not quite as "emotionally intelligent" as they thought they were. Meanwhile, we can be content with unscientific Cosmo-type tests that tell everyone pretty much what they want to hear.
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john nash.
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michaelamackenzie05072 ...@yahoo.com (Michaela)
Mxsmanic wrote I would have thought you would understand the value of emotional intelligence.
- Michaela
Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
Perceiving these things is correlated with intelligence--but interpreting them is simply a matter of acquired knowledge through experience. So an inexperienced but intelligent person will see them all but may misinterpret them. A stupid but experienced person may not see them as easily but will consistently give them the correct interpretation.
So the interpretation is not "emotional intelligence," but simply experience. And since intelligent people are often marginalized by their high intelligence (if they are far enough above average), they tend to be socially inexperienced. But it's not a form of intelligence at all.
The error is in thinking that "emotional intelligence" is built in in the way that general intelligence is. In fact, it's just a form of experience and acquired knowledge, and it is neither built in nor does it have anything to do with intelligence.
As it happens, the mean scores are essentially equal for the two sexes.
The same is not true for different ethnic groups, though.
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Mxsmanic mxsma...@hotmail.com
Things that do not exist are not generally of any great value.
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"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
It seems as though many can't understand that fads are a part of medicine & psychology.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
"%" <surfs@uniserve> spewed forth most vilely Do we shake our hips?
"The Strange Case of Dr. Carlo Lombardi" a...@at.org
I think my "lame retort" warning sign is flashing.
nevilemo ...@yahoo.com (OB)
I sympathise with what you're saying, but I also think you're overplaying your hand a bit here. The definition of intelligence is not, and never was set in stone: there is likewise no universal consensus regarding what part of intelligence is genetically determined and what part is determined by conditioning ("experience").
In fact this whole area is still the subject of imp***ioned, frequently angry debate. If you're going to advance the view (as appears to be the case here) that anything deserving the name "intelligence" /must/ be 100% genetically predetermined, fine, but given the lack of consensus on this issue, some supporting evidence/argument would seem to be in order. Otherwise, the obvious response to the above would be "so what?" Let's say that an important part of the ability to read facial expressions is, as you say, learnt, just as one learns a mother tongue. This is not to say that there may not be genetic factors that determine /how well/ and /how quickly/ this learning may occur, in the one case as in the other, and that the term "intelligence" might not be deemed appropriate in both cases, where this learning proceeds fluidly and gives positive results. Some recent experiments have suggested a curious gender difference in responding to facial expression among, guess what, babies, whose stock of accumulated "experience" might be presumed to be fairly similar in all cases: at two or six or eighteen months one hasn't had time to become a reclusive intellectual. Could it be that some of the genes that determine how clever we are also determine how well we are able to distinguish a smile from a frown? And if so, who says that the two must necessarily coincide?.
Ah, but that's just it: there is no consensus, still less experimental proof, that general intelligence is entirely "built in", (or that the emotional interpretation stuff is entirely "not built in"). When you look at what is actually being tested in standard IQ tests, this is hardly surprising, since we're dealing with a number of quite discrete abilities - arithmetical, linguistic, logical, spatial - chosen not in accord with any solid basis of cognitive theory but (if you look at the history) more in terms of what was in the past found useful with regard to diagnosing learning disabilities or predicting scholastic (or even military) aptitude. In short, "general intelligence" is only just barely a scientific, as opposed to merely pragmatic, concept. It still has quite a lot of explaining to do.
As it happens, they are only the same if you do what Binet did, and weight the results of the discrete elements of the test until the aggregate scores start coming out the same. You could probably apply the same sort of interpretative magic to get even scores for different ethnic groups, too, if you wanted.
"Christina Peterson" tinapet...@yahoo.com
OK. Responding to a lot of comments here.
First: HAVE ANY OF YOU READ THE BOOK, even???
IQ tests test math and verbal aptitude as well as general, left brain stuff.
It does not test right brained intelligence. I call left brained thinking logical. You know -- this, that, thus, therefore. And right brained thinking (sometimes called intuitive), I call reasoning, because you conclude something for good reasons, but they are not necessarily linear.
By the way, I mention my IQ results, but I don't think intelligence is the best measure of success potential.
Emotional Intelligence does require skills, but I think mostly it requires willingness and work. Most of that work involves paying attention to yourself honestly -- being self aware, controlling impulses, including rage and including the impulse to reject new information that changes your view of yourself and the world. It involves not berating people who believe differently from you. It involves social deftness, motivation, and empathy.
It also involves having sympathy and still doing what's needed.
There is no such thing as "EQ". We are talking about intelligence. I'd define it as knowing how to process inform, though the military would define Intelligence as just information. It is not a quotient that you measure and be done with, and can't change that much, though you can choose how to use it best. It's not like determining how much sun your skin can absorb without dire risk of skin cancer. I'm of Scandinavian stock and my quotient is used up. Darker skinned people could safely absorb more in a lifetime.
IQ can be measured too and doesn't change much, though Emotional Intellegence, or skill or maturity, will greatly change how effectively you can use your IQ to live well both internally and externally.
Most people can develope Emotional Intelligence, though some have to work harder to do it than others do, because they just have less aptitude for it.
Haven't we all met that type? The ones who not only have very little health y emotional developement, but don't even seem able to see it. That, from what I've seen, has more to do with how your persanality is hard wired, or from psychological trauma..
Regarding some of Mxs's comments.............Attributing Emotional Intelligence to general intelligence and experience doesn't work. You can have a lot of very useless or even erroneous experience. Think of all the Blacks in the South who all the Whites knew, from experience, were all stupid and sub-human. ..........Reading someone's expression is not it, either. People often "put on a face" very successfully. It's taking the next step, adding what you can learn or figure out about the situation, and being very sharp about inconsistancies between the the hidden signs and the normally visible things. And it takes a lot of self knowledge, and some humility to do that too.......... And I find it amusing that you are telling me that people without general intelligence or who don't believe it can be measure and that it matters are the ones who believe in Emotional Intelligence. LOL!
Tina ...
"Christina Peterson" tinapet...@yahoo.com
May I suggest that you restrict your responses to just one newsgroup, and if you want to reply to the other groups too you can add them in the copies line ("Cc:") in the address. Even better, write your response to just one group and send to the other group in seperate posts -- you can just cut and paste for the other posts.
Tina ...
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