Brain Facts:
Emotional Intelligence

Abilities Related to EI

Abilities related to Emotional Intelligence, or EI for short, include self-control, persistence, zeal, the ability to motivate oneself, impulse control, empathy, and compassion.

Acquire

Your emotional makeup is the product of your learning experiences. Emotional competencies, abilities and concepts are learned through role models, i.e., teachers, parents, celluloid heroes and so on. You learn emotional intelligence through the social learning process. At no point of time in your life does someone tell you how to understand yourself and others, or how to handle interpersonal relations. This is something every one of you is expected to learn on your own and use these concepts in personal and professional life.

Adolescent Impulsivity (low EQ)

Impulsive boys are 3-6 times as likely to be violent as adolescents. Impulsive girls are 3 times more likely to get pregnant in adolescence.

Alexithymia

The ability to recognize one’s wants, needs, joys, and sorrows. Some are good at recognizing when their feelings are at odds with cultural theories and standards, while others are less skilled at this type of self-awareness.

Being Nice

Emotional intelligence does not mean merely ‘being nice.’ At strategic moments such intelligence may in fact demand ‘not being nice’ and instead, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfortable but consequential truth they may have been avoiding.

Benefits

Emotional intelligence is a stronger predictor of college academic success than high school grade point average.

Brain Damage

Individuals with damage to the brain’s prefrontal-amygdala circuit show that their decision-making ability is terribly flawed (e.g., make disastrous choices in personal and business lives, obsess endlessly over a simple decision), although they show no deterioration in IQ or other cognitive abilities.

Business
—Promotion

In the corporate work, IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted or fired.

The persons who are most likely to get promoted are the persons whose emotional intelligence matches that of their employer as well as of their boss. Understanding and fulfilling the values and expectations of your organization and your boss is also a key emotional skill. This can be an important indicator whether you will move up or down in the hierarchical ladder of the organization.

Business Results

To excel, your business depends on results and relationships. The best product won’t sell if customers don’t feel valued. Key employees won’t stay when they don’t feel cared for. An elite team falls apart if they don’t feel trust in the leaders.

Common Themes

Common themes of EI include

• Emotional-Awareness
• Self-Regulation
• Responsiveness to Situational Cues
• Influence
• Decision-making Astuteness

These dimensions are skill based rather than being native aptitudes, which means they can be taught and learned.  

Competitive Edge

Emotional intelligence is what gives a person competitive edge. Even in certain renowned business establishments, where everyone is trained to be smart, the most valued and productive managers are those who have strong traits of emotional intelligence. Being endowed with great intellectual abilities, you may become a brilliant fiscal analyst or a legal scholar, but a highly developed emotional intelligence is what will make you a candidate for CEO, a brilliant trial lawyer, a successful politician or a powerful bureaucrat. Your EQ constitutes factors that are most likely to ensure success in your marriage or your love affair, or that you attain dizzy heights in your business. The lack of emotional intelligence explains why people who, despite having a high IQ, have been failures in their personal and professional lives.

Components

Emotional intelligence consists of three psychological dimensions-emotional sensitivity, emotional maturity, and emotional competency-which motivate individuals to maximize productivity, manage change, and resolve conflicts.

Day-to-Day Life

What do love, happiness, fear affection, hate, shame, disgust, surprise, sadness, elation and anger have in common? These are emotions that directly affect your day-to-day life.

Delay Gratification

The ability to delay gratification is a master skill; a triumph of the brain’s reasoning power over its impulsive one.

Distress

Distress erodes mental abilities and makes people less emotionally intelligent. People who are upset have trouble reading emotions accurately in other people, decreasing the most basic skill needed for empathy and, as a result, impairing their social skills.

EI Benefits

If EI were to exist, some argued, it could strengthen our current understanding of both emotions and intelligence (e.g., Sternberg 2001). It might enrich our sense of the functionality of human emotion and the breadth of human intelligence. EI also directs attention to the role of emotion at home, in schools, and at the workplace and how the effects of emotion may ripple through groups and society (Barsade 2002, Barsade et al. 2003, Ciarrochi et al. 2006, Elias et al. 1997, Izard 2002, Matthews et al. 2007).

Emotion Literal Dictionary Sense

In the most literal dictionary sense, emotion is defined as ‘any agitation or disturbance of mind, passion; any vehement or excited mental state.’ Emotion refers to a response with its distinctive thoughts, psychological and biological states and ranges or propensities to act.

Emotion Origination

Emotions originate from exposure to specific situations. Emotions, when combined with the thinking process, result in the experience of feeling; they are human being’s warning system that alert then to what is really going on around them. Emotions are also like an internal gyroscope that helps keeps us on the right track by ensuring that we are guided more by EQ and less by IQ.

Emotional Blend

There are hundreds of emotions, along with their blends, variation, mutations and nuances. Cross-cultural studies have identified various quite distinct and universally felt emotions. Indeed, there are more subtleties in emotions than there are words to express them. For example, some of the main emotions, with their blends, have been categorized as follows:

Emotional Self

It is not possible to feel comfortable at the workplace if you are not comfortable in your own skin. Once you have learned to accept your emotional self, every facet of your work life will benefit.

Your IQ may help you in understanding and dealing with the world at one level, but you need emotions to understand and deal with yourself and, in turn, with others. It is not possible to get along well with others, and get ahead in the world regardless of how ‘academically smart’ you are, if you are unaware of your emotions and not able to recognize and value them, and act honestly with them.

Emotional Understanding

Emotional understanding may involve being able to describe one’s own and others’ feelings. For instance, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; Lane et al. 1990) presents 20 emotionally evocative situations involving the test taker and a fictional person. Participants write both about how they and the other person would feel in the situation. Responses are scored according to whether the test taker appropriately includes emotional responses and the degree of sophistication (complexity) of those responses, including, for example, the individual’s capacity to differentiate between his or her own and others’ responses.

Emotionally Stuck

When we are “stuck” emotionally, fixated on a version of reality that does not serve us well, there is always a biochemical potential for change and growth.

Emotions

Emotions are human being’s warning systems that alert them to what is really going on around them. They are a complex state of the human mind, involving physiological changes on the one hand and psychological changes on the other.

Emotions

Emotions are human being’s warning systems that alert them to what is really going on around them. They are a complex state of the human mind, involving physiological changes on the one hand and psychological changes on the other.

Emotional appraisal, Labeling, and Language

Another set of specific-ability models concerns emotional reasoning and understanding. For example, emotion-appraisal researchers have developed decision rules for matching a given emotion to the class of situation that has elicited it. If a person experiences fear, for example, it is likely that he is facing a situation that is threatening, raises thoughts of bad things happening, and elicits a need to escape (Roseman 1984, p. 210; Scherer et al. 2001). Related to such appraisals also are the accurate labeling and categorization of feelings (Clore et al. 1987, Innes-Ker & Niedenthal 2002). Theorists have argued that accurate appraisal may be a hallmark of emotionally intelligent responding (MacCann et al. 2004, p. 41; Parrott 2002, pp. 354–355). If a person’s appraisal process is awry, then he or she may misunderstand an event or its consequences and react inappropriately.

Emotional Blend
Embarrassment

Embarrassment: Shame, guilt, chagrin, remorse, humiliation, regret and mortification.

Emotional Blend Anger

Anger: Fury, outrage, charged resentment, wrath, exasperation, indignation, vexation, acrimony, animosity, annoyance, irritability, hostility and, at the extreme pathological hatred and violence.

Emotional Blend Anxiety

Anxiety: Fear, apprehension, nervousness, upset, misgiving, wariness, qualm, dread, fright, terror, as a psychopathology, phobia and panic.

Emotional Blend Depression

Depression: Grief, aloofness, sorrow, cheerlessness, gloom, melancholy, self-pity, loneliness, dejection, despair and sadness.

Emotional Blend Disgust

Disgust: Contempt, pity, disdain, scorn, abhorrence, aversion, distaste and revulsion.

Emotional Blend Happiness

Happiness: Enjoyment, cheerfulness, joy, relief, contentment, bliss, delight, amusement, pride, sensual pleasure, thrill, rapture, gratification, satisfaction, euphoria, ecstasy and, at the extreme, mania.

Emotional Blend Love

Love: Acceptance, mutual attraction, friendliness, trust, kindness, affinity, devotion, adoration and infatuation.

Emotional Blend Surprise

Surprise: Shock, astonishment, amazement, and wonder

Emotional Facilitation

Part of emotional facilitation is to know how to include emotions in, and exclude emotions from, thought. On the Emotional Stroop test (Richards et al. 1992), people first see neutral words printed in varying colors and must say the colors without being distracted by the words. In a second condition, negative/anxiety emotion words are employed; in a third condition, positive emotion words might be employed. It is common for people to be distracted and read the emotion word rather than say the color. Those with higher EI might exhibit less interference from the emotion words (e.g., Masia et al. 1999, Richards et al. 1992).

Emotional Sudden Death

George L. Engel, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, investigated 170 cases of “emotional sudden death,” a condition that has been reported from ancient times to the present. Engel found that the emotions immediately preceding collapse and death were heavily tinged with perceived meaning. The three major categories were “personal danger or threat of injury, whether real or symbolic” (27 percent); “the collapse of death of a close person” (21 percent); and “during the period of acute grief (within 16 days)” (20 percent).

Emotions
—Distressing

When people are in the grips of distressing emotion, Davidson has found the two brain areas most active are the amygdala and the right prefrontal cortex. When we’re feeling cheery, those areas are quiet, while part of the left prefrontal cortex lights up. Activity in the prefrontal area tracks our moods: the right side activates when we are upset, the left when we are in good spirits.

Emotions
—Eight Primary

Robert Plutchik, a professor at Hofstra University, proposes a theory of eight primary emotions—sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation, joy, acceptance, fear and surprise—which like most primary colors, could be mixed to get other, secondary emotions. For example, fear + surprise = alarm, joy + fear = guilt, etc

Emotions
—Limbic Brain Structure

Core limbic brain structure, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and limbic cortex, believed by neuroscientist to be involved in emotional behavior contained a whopping 85 to 95 percent of the various neuropeptide receptors we have studied!

Emotions
—Paul MacLean

It was NIMH Researcher Paul Mac Lean who popularized the concept of the limbic system as the seat of the emotions. The limbic system was one constituent of his triune brain theory, which held that there are three layers to the human brain, representing different stages of humanity’s evolution—the brain stem (hindbrain), or reptilian brain, which is responsible for breathing, excretion, blood flow, body temperature, and the automatic functions; the limbic system, which encircles the top of the brainstem and is the seat of the emotions; and the cerebral cortex, in the forebrain, which is the seat of reason.

Emotions
—Reality

Emotions are constantly regulating what we experience as "reality." The decision about what sensory information travels to our brain and what gets filtered out depends on what signals the receptors are receiving from the peptides. There are a plethora of elegant neurophysiological data suggesting that the nervous system is not capable of taking in everything, but can only scan the outer world for material that it is prepared to find by virtue of its wiring hookups, its own internal patterns, and its past experience. The superior colliculus in the midbrain, another nodal point of neuropeptide receptors, controls the muscles that direct the eyeball, and affects which images are permitted to fall on the retina and hence to be seen. For example, when the tall European ships first approached the early Native Americans, it was such an "impossible" vision in their reality that their highly filtered perceptions couldn’t register what was happening, and they literally failed to "see" the ships. Similarly, the cuckolded husband may fail to see what everyone else sees, because his emotional belief in his wife’s faithfulness is so strong that his eyeballs are directed to look away from the incriminating behavior obvious to everyone else.

Emotions
—Social

All emotions are social. You can’t separate the cause of an emotion from the world of relationships—our social interactions are what drive our emotions.

Emotionally Literate

I prefer to teach my child…to be emotionally literate. That is the skill the child will need in order to overcome stress, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, anger, hurt and despair. I would teach my child the difficult situations in life help to improve our self-esteem, courage and self-reliance, and enable us to handle life on our own terms.

Employability

EQ is considered as the prime factor which makes and keeps people employable.

EQ Definition

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been described as abilities in five domains:

1. Knowing one’s emotions
2. Managing emotions
3. Motivating oneself
4. Recognizing emotions in others
5. Handling relationships

EQ Definition

Emotional Intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves.

EQ Definition

Emotional Intelligences involves the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.

EQ Definition

Defines EQ as the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection, and influence.

EQ Definition

Emotional Intelligence (EI), often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), is a relatively new area of research. It involves an ability, capacity, skill or (in the case of the trait EI model) a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups.

EQ Definition

Robert Cooper (1996): Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power of and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, trust, creativity and influence.

Reuven Bar-On (1997): Emotional intelligence reflects one’s ability to deal with daily environment challenges and helps predict one’s success in life, including professional and personal pursuits (Bar-On had coined the term EQ, i.e., emotional quotients, in 1985)

J. Mayer and P. Salovey (1997): Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.

Daniel Goleman (1998): Emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognizing our own feels and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships. Emotional intelligence describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to academic intelligence or the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ.

J. Freedman (1998): Emotional intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding and choosing how we think, feel and act. It shapes our interaction with others and our understanding of ourselves. It defines how and what we learn, it allows us to set priorities, it determines the majority of our daily actions.

Dalip Singh (2003): Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to appropriately and successfully respond to a vast variety of emotional stimuli being elicited from the inner self and immediate environment. Emotional intelligence constitutes three psychological dimensions: emotional sensitivity, emotional maturity, and emotional competence, which motivate and individual to recognize truthfully, interpret honestly and handle tactfully the dynamics of human behaviors.

Jetendra Mohan (2003): Emotional intelligence is a positive combination of a deep insight into one’s emotional and cognitive capacities and a charming flair of communication, empathy and motivation, leading to personal optimism, inter-personal confluence and organizational excellence.

Mala Kapadia (2004): Emotional intelligence from Vedic psychology perspective can be described as transformation of mind, body and spirit to realize our true potential for the universal well being and abundance of joy.

Vinod Sanwal (2004) Emotional intelligence is the awareness of use of emotions and their utilization within the parameters of individual cognitive styles to cope with situations and problems.

N.K. Chadha (2005: All intelligence has an emotional base. Using your emotions as a source of energy to accomplish the self-defined goal is what emotional intelligence consists of.

Parmananda Chabungbam (2205): EI [or EQ] is the ability of a person to control impulses and persist in the face of frustration.

Ravi Bangar (2005): Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to create optimal results in your relationships with yourself and others.

Samira Malekar (2005): Emotional intelligence is a set of factors which involve awareness of self and managing emotions, developing oneself through the power of empathy and motivation and building strong relationship with people.

Madhamati Singh (2006): Emotional intelligence is the ability and freedom to grow from mistrust to trust, self-doubt to self-empowerment, following to leading, incompetence to competence, isolation to synergy and despair to hope.

EQ Definition

Following such precedents, an initial working description of EI is as follows:
Emotional intelligence concerns the ability to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions and the ability to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thought.

EQ/IQ Differences

EQ is separate from IQ. Components of EQ include:

• Self-awareness
• Managing emotions, motivation oneself
• Recognizing emotions in others
• Handling relationships.

EQ versus IQ

Noted mathematician, logician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead compares intellect and emotion to the body and clothing. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies. We could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Employee Turnover

Delnor Community Hospital based near Chicago was able to reduce employee turnover from 28% to 21%, saving $800,000 in less than a year through using stress management and emotional intelligence techniques.

Failure to Teach

Many have low levels of EI because society has failed to teach essentials of handling anger, how to resolve conflicts positively, empathy, impulse control, and other components of emotional competence.

Focus

It is taken for granted that you have adequate IQ, that is, the intellectual ability and the technical know-how to do your job. The focus, instead, is on your EQ—personal qualities such as initiative, empathy, motivation and leadership.

EQ sets apart people with similar IQ’s.

Forgiveness

The ability to let go of angry feelings and turn the other cheek lowers stress levels and fosters a positive attitude. Dr. Neal Krause of the University of Michigan found that people who are readily able to forgive others experience enhanced psychological well-being and less depression than grudge-holders.

Feelings

Feelings are what one experiences as the result of having emotions.

Free Rein to Feelings

Emotional Intelligence does not mean giving free rein to feeling, ‘letting it all hang out.’ Rather, it involves managing feelings so that these are expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly towards common goals.

Focus

EI, its primary focus has to do with reasoning about emotions and the use of emotions to enhance thought.

Gender Differences in EQ

In adulthood, while women tend to be stronger in competencies based on empathy and social skills, males tend to be stronger in competencies based on self-regulation. Men and women are equal in their ability to increase EQ.

Guides

Emotions are designed to serve as guides, to help individuals when they face tasks or situations too important to leave to intellect alone. Each emotion offers a distinctive readiness to act and to point people in a direction that has worked well in the past in terms of handling challenges of human life.

Heart Connection

Emotional intelligence likely has its source in the heart. Intelligence and intuition are heightened by input from the neurons in the heart.

IQ versus EQ

IQ is a measure of intelligence quotient. EQ is a measure of emotional quotient.

Job Stress

Managers who use emotional intelligence can ameliorate stress related to job insecurity and also help to reframe the situation so that it positively impacts employee performance. In a complex and insecure business environment, available tools to successfully survive and to serve both employees and the companies for which they work include familiarity with and choice of appropriate responses to emotional as well as to cognitive concerns.

Knowledge

There is a crucial difference between declarative knowledge, that is, knowing a concept and its technical details, and practical knowledge, that is, being able to implement these concepts. Knowing does not equal doing, whether in playing a game, managing a team, or acting on essential advice at the right moment or doing a job.

Leadership

The leader in a group has power to sway everyone’s emotions. When leaders drive emotions positively they bring out everyone’s best (resonance). When they drive emotions negatively they spawn dissonance. The leader’s level of Emotional Intelligence is key.

Leadership Skills

Four learned skills are important to leadership, although no leader ever has equal strengths in all areas:

• Self awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management

Learned Skill

EQ can be cultivated and learned in childhood and at any stage of life. It matters immensely for one’s personal destiny (e.g., more crucial to happiness than intellectual intelligence), although it is routinely ignored in educational institutions in favor of academic abilities.

Learned Skill

Key ingredients of effective programs to teach EI include:

• Identify, label, and express
• Assessing intensity
• Impulse control
• Delay of gratification
• Difference between feelings and actions
• Appropriate self-talk
• Reading/interpreting social cues
• Understanding others’ perspective
• Positive mindset
• Self-awareness
• Verbal and nonverbal skills

Learned Skill

EQ is not fixed at birth. It is learned (or not learned). You can develop increased EQ through a step-by-step process which is not difficult and not simple, either. EQ can be honed throughout life.

Learning

Our education system gives stress on IQ and not on EQ. We are expected to learn EQ from our parents, peer group or other role models.

Male-Female Differences

Women are not necessarily ‘smarter’ than men when it comes to emotional intelligence, nor are men ‘superior’ to women. Each one has a personal profile of strengths and weakness in these capacities. For instance, some may be highly empathic but lack certain abilities to handle distress; some may be quite aware of the subtlest shift in another’s moods, yet be inept socially.  However, it is also true that men and women, as groups, tend to have a shared, gender-specific profile of strengths and weakness. An analysis of emotional intelligence in thousands of men and women revealed that women, on an average, were more aware of their emotions, showed more empathy and were more adept interpersonally. Men, on the other hand were more self-confident and optimistic, adapted more easily and handled stress better. In general, there are far more similarities than differences.

Male-Female Differences

It can be envisaged that men executives generally go for multiple frame of leadership in contrast to female executives who are more oriented towards structural and humanistic frame.

Managers Who Fail

Managers who fail are almost always high in expertise and IT. Their fatal weakness in each case is in their emotional intelligence that is arrogance, over-reliance on brainpower, inability to adapt to the occasionally disorienting shifts in their field and disdain for close collaboration or teamwork. An analysis of successful and failed managers reveals that those who failed lacked in emotional intelligence competencies and this, despite their strengths in technical and academic abilities.

Modernists

Modernists advocate that emotions play a positive role.

Myths and Facts

EQ doesn’t necessarily equate with “being nice.” EQ doesn’t mean letting emotions and feelings “all hang out.” Women are not “smarter” in EQ nor are males “superior” to women in EQ.

Observation of Behaviors

What most people typically see when observing behaviors of others can be thought of as the “tip of the iceberg.” High levels of Emotional Intelligence help one to see what is underneath or behind the behaviors.

On-Off Switch

Emotions such as fear and aggression appear to surface in the right pre-frontal lobe. The brain’s left pre-frontal lobe seems to hold the “off” switch for keeping distressing emotions in check.

Opiate Receptor

The opiate receptors turn out more densely in the limbic system, the part of the brain classically known to contain the emotional circuitry.

Peptides

Peptides serve to weave the body’s organs and systems into a single web that reacts to both internal and external environmental changes with complex, subtle orchestrated responses. Peptides are the sheet music containing the notes, phrases, and rhythms that allow the orchestra—your body—to play as an integrated entity. The music that results is the tone or feeling that you experience subjectively as your emotions.

Candace B Pert PhD
Molecules of Emotions: Why You Feel The Way You Do.
p. 148

Perceptual-Organizational Intelligence

Perceptual-organizational intelligence concerns the ability to reason about visual patterns and the use of acquired knowledge about patterns to enhance the intelligence.

Personal Intelligences

Gardner had divided personal intelligences into two parts:

1. Interpersonal – the ability to understand other people and work cooperatively with them
2. Intrapersonal – the capacity to form an accurate, veridical model of oneself and use it to operate effectively in life

Activation of the left but not the right prefrontal cortex inhibits amygdala activity and thereby dampens negative attitudes and responses.

Present Reactions

Stanford University studies: The emotional mind reacts to the present as though it were the past. The system of psychological adaptations that comprises each individual meets the present only as a version of the past.

Physiological Dimension

Physiological Dimension: Emotion is a complex state of human mind, involving bodily changes of widespread nature such as breathing, pounding heart, flushed face, sweating palms, pulse rate, glandular secretions, etc.

Psychological Dimension

Psychological Dimension: Emotion is a state of excitement or perturbation marked by strong feeling. The ‘feelings,’ are what one experiences as the result of having emotions.

Self-Management

Another relevant ability area concerns emotional self-management. This area grew out of clinical findings that, for example, one’s emotionality could become more positive by reframing perceptions of situations (Beck et al. 1979), as well as from the idea that when at work, individuals often exert considerable emotional self-control (Hochschild 1983). A sizeable amount of research on emotional self-management and regulation has emerged in parallel with that on EI (Gross 1998, Lazarus 1994), including in the child development domain (Eisenberg 2000). Denham and colleagues (2003), for instance, have used behavioral observations of children in order to assess their frustration tolerance, asking observers to rate the children’s degree of distress, crying, and tantrums, among other indices.

Smart People

All organizations are living systems composed of people who think and feel. Smart people and smart organizations will recognize and seek to measure and balance thinking and feeling.

Source

Emotional intelligence likely has its source in the heart. Intelligence and intuition are heightened by input from the neurons in the heart.

Stress

Bologna, Italy study: People with higher levels of EQ tend to experience less stress. In increasingly complex jobs, EQ becomes increasingly important. Three important conclusions:

1. Emotional intelligence predicts high performance
2. Stress reduces performance
3. Emotional intelligence mitigates the effects of stress

Student Behaviors

University of Washington studies: Results of EI education to students grades 1-5. Results showed improved:

• Emotional recognition
• Thinking before acting
• Self-control
• Cognitive planning
• Social cognitive skills
• Conflict resolution
• Classroom atmosphere

Study Harvard Graduates

A study of Harvard graduates in the fields of law, medicine, teaching and business observed that scores on entrance exams, a surrogate for IQ, had zero or negative correlation with their eventual career success. Paradoxically, IQ was found to have limited power in predicting the success of people smart enough to handle the most demanding fields, and the value of emotional intelligence was found to be higher for entry into particular fields. In MBA programs, engineering, law, or medicine, where professional selection focused almost exclusively on IQ, EQ carried far more weight than IQ in determining who emerged successful.

Study of EI

To study EI means to focus on the ability itself. Some have made the case that characteristics such as assertiveness and self-regard should be considered part of EI because both involve emotion and intelligence to some degree. Virtually all mental activities, however, from color perception to self-insight, potentially involve emotion and intelligence, simply because emotion and intelligence are active throughout most of one’s mental processes; that is, mental functions are highly interconnected (Hilgard 1980, LeDoux 2000). EI is distinct from other mental processes in involving a primary focus on a specific area of problem solving.

Stress Mitigation

A reasonable inference emerges that one of the primary benefits of high EQ is the increased ability to function well even under stress. It appears that one way EQ helps improve performance is by mitigating the negative effects of stress.

Success

Research shows that IQ accounts for only about 20 percent of a person’s success in life. The balance can be attributed to EQ.

Success Indicator

Compilation of 50 cited statistics and benefits of high levels of EQ to the brain including:

• 95% drop in discipline referrals to the principals after EQ training
• EQ is a stronger predictor of college academic success than high school grade point average
• 85-95% of the difference between a "good leader" and an "excellent leader" is due to EQ
• Reasons for losing business customers and clients are 70% EQ-related

Success, Business

In the business world, factors that are really important to succeed in an ethical manner are largely dependent on EQ. These include the quality of leadership and communication, cooperation of employees, creativity and open-mindedness, understanding of another's point of view, and the ability to use empathy in negotiations.

Success, Business

Employers are looking for qualities of personal responsibility, quality, and caring in the people they hire. Given that, schools, colleges, and universities need to offer the basics of Emotional Intelligence in the skill sets they purport to offer.

Success Definition

When preparation meets opportunity equals success.

Success Determination

IQ, at best, probably contributes about 20% to the factors that help determine a person’s life success. EQ, on the other hand, can be much more powerful and contributory to success in life than IQ.

Success
—IQ vs EQ

There is a widespread belief in developing societies that intelligence has to do with thinking, analyzing remembering, comparing applying, appearing for exams, obtaining high marks, as so on. These qualities, it is argued, lead to top positions, lucrative pay packages, palatial houses, imported cars, security, success and holidays. Consequently, people work hard to develop their IQ and ignore their EQ.

Suppression

The very attempt at suppression spurs repetitive thoughts about the matter; such thoughts intrude when we are trying to focus on something else or merely relax. Despite our desire to exert voluntary control and veto our natural impulses, we can’t always do so 100 percent. If we intentionally suppress our heartfelt emotions, putting on a placid face when we actually feel troubled, our feelings leak nonetheless. Rapport grows stronger as we more openly show our feelings to others. By the same token, the more we try to suppress those feelings and the stronger those hiding familiar to anyone whose partner “hides” strongly felt emotions.

The Personality

To understand you EQ better, image that there are two parts to your personality: (a) a thinking part, and (b) a feeling part.

Thinking Part <-------> Feeling Part
IQ                     EQ
\                     /
\                /
\           /
\      /
EQ

Theoretical Approaches

Theoretical approaches to EI, in fact, can be divided according to whether they focus on specific abilities or on more global integrations of those capacities.

Traditionalists

Traditionalists feel that emotions play a negative role.

Two Dimensions

Generally, there are two dimensions of emotions: Physiological Dimension and Psychological Dimension.

Physiological Dimension: Emotion is a complex state of human mind, involving bodily changes of widespread nature such as breathing, pounding heart, flushed face, sweating palms, pulse rate, glandular secretions, etc.

Psychological Dimension: Emotion is a state of excitement or perturbation marked by strong feeling. The ‘feelings’, are what one experiences as the result of having emotions.

Two Views

EQ has two diverse viewpoints. There are ‘traditionalist’ who feels that emotions play a negative role and ‘modernist’ who advocate that emotions play a positive role.

Various Names

Although these ‘intelligent’ quality have for decades been referred to by various names—from ‘smartness’ and ‘personality’ to ‘soft skills’ and ‘competence’—it is only now that there is a precise understanding of these emotional abilities and a new name given to it: emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ)

Verbal Intelligence
—Comprehension

Verbal-comprehension intelligence describes the capacity to learn and reason about words and their meanings. The more words one understands, however, the more the verbal knowledge one already has gained promotes the intelligence. Thus, verbal intelligence is the ability to reason about words and the use of acquired verbal knowledge to promote such reasoning.

John D. Mayer, Richard D. Roberts, and Sigal G. Barsade, Human Abilities: Emotional Intelligence
Annual Review. Psychology 2008. 59:507–36