Emotional
Intelligence In Everyday Life
A
Scientific Inquiry
Psychology Press, 2001
By Marissa Namihira
December 12, 2002
Brief Overview:
1. The Book’s Overall Content
2. The Book’s Importance
3. The Book’s Structure
4. Critique of the Book
5. Additional Observations
I have read the book and found eight topics that I have found to be of the most importance. The book actually addresses eleven chapters however I thought that the eight I chose were best suited for this class and what we have discussed through the semester. Although the other three are still good I believe that the most important and most fundamental ones are as follows:
MAJOR TOPIC #1: Chapter 1, a Field Guide to Emotional Intelligence, pages 3-24. This chapter introduces Emotional Intelligence and the way the study first originated. They clarify the type of Emotional Intelligence that will be covered in Psychology, which is, an interrelated intelligence that denotes the capacity to use and understand emotional information to better our everyday lives. The importance of EI is that emotions convey our information and therefore are helpful in understanding our processing of information.
MAJOR TOPIC #2: Chapter 2, Measuring Emotional Intelligence, pages 25-45. Being able to measure and assess EI is fundamental in realizing the level of EI. Although it seems to be quite sketchy on the results it is still the best that they have gotten so far. In class we argue the issue of whether or not it is even reliable due to the issue that the questions are very situational based. Couple examples of tests are the MEIS and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso EI test. The MSCEIT seems to have better reviews on its reliability yet it is still questioned on its reliability.
MAJOR TOPIC #3: Chapter 3, Affective Intelligence: The role of affect in social thinking and behavior, pages 46-66. Affective Intelligence is an emotion or subjectively experience feeling, such as happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. I think that affective intelligence is a branch of EI. Being able to perceive the way people feel is very crucial in being able to fully understand the way that they are. Affect is the feelings that we feel internally, these internal feelings guide the way we make decisions and run our lives. Being better aware of them and the power that it has over us will make us bettering our everyday decision-making.
MAJOR TOPIC #4: Chapter 5, Emotional Intelligence and Self-Actualization, pages 82-97. This chapter explains the relationship between EI and self-actualization. It primarily shows the former construct influences the latter. Self-actualization is to be able to achieve goals and actualize our full potential. Since this is a part of being emotionally intelligent we must work on this actualization to become as emotionally intelligent as possible. These components are connected to each other, however they are not equivocal. You need self-actualization before you can say that you are emotionally intelligent.
MAJOR TOPIC #5: Chapter 6, Emotional Intelligence and Intimate Relationships, pages 98-112. EI in intimate relationships have been shown to be a good quality to possess. The way they use EI in relationships is for understanding, reasoning, managing and regulating the emotions of yourself and the emotions of others. Here is a quote that I have taken out of a presentation outline that I feel best describes the previous sentence. “The success of a marriage comes not it finding the “right” person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they have married.” John Fisher.
MAJOR TOPIC #6: Chapter 7, Emotional Intelligence and Empathic Accuracy, pages 113-132. Empathic accuracy is the ability to infer other people’s thoughts and feelings accurately. Reading people’s thought s and feelings on a moment-to-moment basis, ability to accurately infer specific contents of successive thoughts and feelings. Being able to do this may be quite difficult to do especially if they are hard to read. That is why I think that this is not such a good thing to do. Body language is a good indicator of how people feel, however it is not always accurate. But as a whole, in intimate relationships it can be a good thing once you get the hang of reading the person.
MAJOR TOPIC #7: Chapter 8, Emotional Intelligence and Education, pages 133-149. The primary principle of EI in education is that caring relationships form the foundation of all genuine and enduring learning. The difference between learning for performance test and learning for the purpose of living one’s everyday life is social and emotional factors that are paramount. Having EI in schools makes for better relationships between teachers, parents, students, and administrators. It betters the environment for learning and promoting mental health.
MAJOR TOPIC #8: Chapter 9, Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, pages 150-167. EI in the workplace can provide better teamwork abilities; raise the morale of the office, and lower stress from competition. The way that it was discussed was that they teach EI to a group of people. There is a coach and he/she teaches the people taking the class and in turn they go back to their companies and they teach what they learned to whom they work with. It seems to be a hard way to learn, because of many factors, like the person who learned it could interpret it the wrong way. Or have a hard time teaching the material to others.
I do see a progression from chapter to chapter as it better demonstrates to power of EI and the benefits that it can bring to your life. When the book first begins it introduces you to the topic and then it gradually opens the field into a bigger and wider range of ideas that EI can bring forth in a person. It is so integrated into our lives yet not everyone gets educated about this. I have only started to get familiar with this topic last semester when I took Dr. James road rage class. This was not the major topic at hand but he integrated EI into driving and made us familiar with the benefits of what it can do. After getting more familiar with it this semester I really feel that others should also be aware of this coined concept.
These topics are very interesting because they can really relate to your everyday life. With good EI and the perception of it can bring you much benefits in you life such as, better relationships, easier time handling stress at work and in daily activities, and so on. I am positive that I think everyone should learn about EI. Even though it is not a curriculum in school, teachers should try and incorporate this into their lesson plans. They are very relevant to the way that people should relate to others and become more self-aware of the way they relate of others as well. Although it is easier to identify faults in others, EI will teach you to look inwards and fix that in yourself as well.
This book will be of interest to those in the social and psychology fields. There also can come in handy for those in business and even those in medicine. Actually this book would be useful to just about anyone. But most importantly I believe that it would be most beneficial to those that are parents or teachers. With EI parents and teachers can have a more patient and understanding approach in rearing children. It can also be beneficial if they teach their young ones about EI. They do not necessarily need to tell them what EI is, they just need to instill the characteristics of what EI is and how it can help them.
Everyone should read this book based on the information I provided previously. Although the reading level may not be suitable for young children it is a lesson that they can learn through their adult leaders. It amazes me that I had to wait 23 years until I first heard of EI. Now that I am aware of it, I wish that I had learned it from an earlier age. My parents did teach me a lot about morals and the right things to do. They just did not coin it as EI. I guess EI is all around us, it is something that you cannot fake, and is probably the most important concept to learn in becoming a divine human being.
In Chapter 2, the book deals with the testing of EI. Joseph Ciarrochi and associates discuss the overlap in the measurement of EI in several tests. The authors list the ideal characteristics that an EI test should have. The first is it should have adequate coverage of content domain. The second characteristic is the test has to be reliable. The third characteristic is usefulness. This is important in considering whether these tests are valid measures differing from one another or if previously designed tests have a larger predictive power.
EI tests should cover all aspects they should yield similar scores if a person were to take it a second time, it should measure realistic outcomes of having EI, how well people deal with stress, how they handle relationships, and how they interact with peers. If the tests don’t measure EI to useful information then there is no sense in making all these tests for nothing. A test is designed to test something accurately or they should al be thrown out.
The MEIS is the only test that has shown to satisfy all of the criteria considered necessary to consider EI as a legitimate measure of intelligence: 1) reflect performance rather than preferred ways of behaving, 2) correlate, but not too high, with currently existing measures, and 3) improve from childhood to middle adulthood. (Chap.2, pg. 44) Most of them can be grouped into two categories, performance tests and self-report. Performance tests are evaluated against objective scoring criteria and self-reports are skewed assessments of a person’s individual level of EI. According to the authors, the test yields a reliable measure of overall EI, emotional perception, and understanding and managing emotions. It has a small to medium overlap with other deep-rooted personality measures and verbal intelligence.
The authors believe that a person who is emotionally intelligent can cope better with obstacles and challenges that occur in life. Another problem discussed in the book is Alexithymia. Alexithymia is a mental disorder that can blur the ability to not be able to correctly understand emotions. The book defines Alexithymia as, “ difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal, difficulty describing feelings to others, a poor fantasy life, and a cognitive style that is literal and focuses on the minute details of external events (p.68).”
Low
EI and Alexithymia can cause major problems for a person, like maladaptive
coping. Research shows that people who are highly Alexithymic have a hard time
controlling their emotions, impulses, and do not cope positively in stressful
situations. Other studies in the book show that highly Alexithymic people tend
to use an immature defense style rather than an adaptive style in response to
stress. Highly Alexithymic people do not use adaptive coping strategies, such
as seeking support from family or friends, because they find it difficult to
become close to and share their feelings with other people.
The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) is an answer to Alexithymia is a reliable and valid instrument to measure Alexithymia, which is the 26 item self-report. There is also a revised and improved edition called the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). The TAS-20 uses 3 factor scales to assess 3 of the 4 features of Alexithymia. It also teaches them how to be more attuned with their own feelings and develop ways to improve their creative imagination.
Low EI and Alexithymia can also cause anxiety and depressive disorders. People suffering from Alexithymia do not regulate emotions as well and are susceptible to high levels of negative emotion. As a result, when an Alexithymic person develops a depressive or anxiety disorder, they cannot use their emotions to activate psychological defenses to help modulate and contain the intense negative emotions. This lack of defense can also lead to panic attacks and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Conflicts in
marriages are another problem. The
incapability to articulate emotions and communicate
efficiently can cause many tribulations in a marriage. The solution presented is to have
self-control and emotion regulation.
This will guide the way to understanding the causes, uniqueness, and
outcomes of emotions. Also, know when
and how to say, “I am sorry” and don’t “rub” it in. In the end, contain a precise awareness and recognition of
emotions, an understandable expression of emotions, emotion knowledge and
understanding, and effectual emotion regulation. This can assist you attain marital contentment and strength.
These topics discussed in the book are related to public concern. EI discusses the main intelligence that everyone needs to survive. There is a big difference between book intelligence and EI. Although there is a strong correlation between Book smarts and EI, I believe that it is possible for a person to have high EI and not have a PhD following their name. Psychology today must pursue this issue more because intelligence like this is something that must be taught in elementary schools and to all children in the home. Once it becomes more established it should become part of curriculum in the classroom.
The society in general needs to be higher
in EI for things like compassion. The
world is such an angry place and full of impatient people now days. Just going Christmas shopping is emotional
exhausting. People need to be more
sensitive and realize that they are not the only individuals there for a reason
as well. I believe that with higher
levels of EI everywhere, our society will eventually become a more pleasant
place to live. EI can bring so much
into to the relationships that we endure.
This is important because levels of EI
are being measured for things like jobs.
EI can be a good determinant of how well a person will be cooperate with
a team and even the quality of morale the person can share with the team. Companies would go out of business if all
their employees were low in EI because they would not be able to work through
stress or even disputes they come across.
For me, I believe that high levels of EI
are a virtue in relationships. You need
to be responsible for your emotions and they way you affect your partners
emotions. Young or inexperienced
couples can go through a lot of heartache due to insensitivity or inability to
understand the emotions of the other person.
The book does address its concerns
adequately. They give good solutions
and they also explain the problems well.
They only issue that I have furthermore questions for is the testing of
EI. After all the research done on EI I
find it difficult to understand why there is not a better way of testing
EI. It seems as though testing
intelligence is a simple as taking a test, but why is it difficult to test the intelligence
of emotions. I can see that emotions
are something that is not consistent itself and maybe that is why it makes it
difficult to test. Although everyone
would lie to believe that they are very rational and can score high on an EI
test. I believe more often that people
do try t do the best they can in any given situation, yet there are those
situations that can make anyone irrational.
This book definitely belongs in
psychology. It requires a lot of
analyzing and rethinking what you have already believed to be true. I have taken a class last semester that
touched into EI. I thought then that I had grasped the concept but as I learned
more this semester I have realized that I need to rethink what I have
believed. Psychology is good at taking
things apart and trying to understand them a step at a time.
There
were no tests or quizzes that I could find in the book while reading. However there were a lot of evaluations of
tests in the book. In studying EI one
must go through reading several types of test.
In class alone, some students brought forth tests that we were to take
in class. Taking these tests is fast and very easy. Majority of the time it is just a simple question describing a
scenario and they ask how you will react to it. Like I mentioned before they are very situational and can be
difficult to answer if you ponder them too long. The best way I could of to make it easier to bare is to just
answer the question of how you rate yourself majority of the time.
Although there were no tests, there are
tables and diagram. There were a total
of seven tables and diagrams. There
were two in particular that I found interesting. One was on page 26 and the other was on page 128, however I was
only able to scan the one on page 26.
Major life events Adaptation Mental Health
Daily hassles __________________________________ Relationship Quality
Daily
uplifts B Work Success
Other emotion- School
Success
Eliciting
events Physical
Health
A Emotional Intelligence C
Perceiving
Expressing
Understanding
Managing
