A
REVIEW OF
JOSEPH CIARROCHI, JOSEPH P. FORGAS, AND JOHN D. MAYER,
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN EVERYDAY LIFE,
TAYLOR & FRANCIS, 2001.
BY: BRIDGET ANTONIO
March 19, 2002
INSTRUCTIONS
FOR THIS REPORT
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Contents of
the BOOK itself
Content and Structural Critique
The BOOK and
Others
The BOOK and
Myself
CONTENTS OF THE BOOK ITSELF
Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life is the true title of our course text, but what we are not
seeing is the subtitle, A Scientific Inquiry.
That is probably why looking at the table of contents of the “BOOK” it
is set up as a scientific experiment, part and parcel with an explanation of
measurements and history and background—which they call the fundamental section
of the text. Then the authors, addressed
the application of Emotional Intelligence (EI) to everyday life, leaving a
final section, part III, for integration.
I have to agree with you Dr. James, whoever designed and edited this
text did not do that great a job.
It
in is my own understanding of this text that I would have divided it into three
parts also, but in a much different format, as such:
I. Introduction
and History of EI
II.
EI and the Self
III.
EI and Others
I actually do think that the content and structure of each chapter was well organized, just not the ordering of them. If I had to reorganize the various chapters, it would be as follows.
I.
Introduction and History of
EI
This of course should and would be the start of any book,
to explain the main concept at hand and provide origins and history of it. Since it is a scientific inquiry, the
experimental methods, research, and measurements carried out should also be
included. From the BOOK, in this
section I would have included chapters 1 and 2, that should be self-explanatory,
but I would have also included here chapter 11. I found it very odd, first that Part III which has only chapter
11 is entitled “Integration and Conclusion”, only because of the word
integration. How can you separate EI
and integration from everything that they had previously talked about, the
entire book, namely EI at work, school, and home? Secondly, the title of chapter 11 also was just screaming at me
to place it in the beginning rather than the end. How can you not include the discourse of relating how EI has
stemmed from intelligence study? I feel
that ‘measuring the intelligence of an idea’ should also be included in the
introduction and history of EI for further background information in order to
better understand how to ‘integrate’ EI throughout all aspects of our daily
lives. Chapter 11 should be part of the
fundamentals of EI. My ordering of
chapter for this section would include from the book, the introduction, chapter
1, then 11, and finally 2. I would then
also place chapter 4 in with this section.
I had a hard time placing chapter 4, and decided that understanding the
role of mental illness should fall under a broad and basic understanding of
what and how EI can function for various individuals. Or I would have just left
this chapter out.
II. EI and the Self
This
section would deal with what EI means to the individual and how to perceive and
apply it to oneself. I think that for
this section, chapter 3 would be a good start to understand how important
affect is for both our own behavior and in understanding the behaviors of
others in relation to ourselves. Next,
I would include chapter 7. I feel that
empathy is also one of the key ingredients to being EI. Although both of these chapters also deal
with our interpersonal interactions, they provide us framework to use for
ourselves to grow on and aid in our relations with ‘others’. You will never really have an EI and the
self because no one individual is without other human interactions. EI and the self, deal with how you
internalize your feelings when dealing with others. Next, would follow chapter 10, with applied EI and regulating
emotions which should naturally lead to chapter 5, through EI one could
possibly attain self-actualization.
III. EI and Others
This
section would include where most individuals face interactions with others,
namely, within intimate relationships, educational arenas, and the
workplace—chapters 6,8, and 9 respectively.
Our daily interactions with others influence our personal emotions and
states of mind. How we deal with others
affect EI and our selves. Like all the
chapters, these sections provide many useful examples to learn from and maybe
apply to our lives.
Emotional
intelligence encompasses every aspect of our lives and by looking at the
chapter titles; we cannot escape interactions within our societies. Although some might not think about it, our
personal lives will also impact our physical well-being. The topics within this book that relate
specifically with health and stress would be first, chapter 4 which deals
specifically with mental illnesses which can impair health, such as the various
psychiatric disorders of substance abuse, eating disorders, somatoform
disorders, and so on. Aside from that,
I feel that all of the remaining chapter, excluding chapter 2, are related to
stress. I firmly believe that in
understanding and incorporating an EI lifestyle, stress becomes greatly
reduced, due to knowing how to deal with and minimize conflict. In addition, being in and maintaining a
positive spin cycle reduces negativity and depression which often times are
precursors to stress. Living an EI
lifestyle will influence every aspect of your life, including your physical
health and well-being and stress levels.
Aside
from the physiological aspect of EI, some of the specific problems that this
book discusses are having low emotional intelligence, what might be called
alexithymia—“difficulty identifying and communicating emotion”. Biologically, males have always proved to be
less capable of these traits, somewhat possessing a little more alexithymia
than their female counterparts. Many
people, male and female, suffer from this condition and treatment is still
under progress. Two of the solutions
cited in the BOOK are drug therapy to control psychiatric conditions,
but not to deter them. The other
solution, or rather prevention, is to pay close attention to parenting style and
awareness to emotions. Talking out and
observing and role-playing scenarios prove to be extremely helpful in
developing awareness and cognitive realization, or ‘emotion script knowledge’
as cited in the BOOK.
Another
problem specifically addressed within the text is that of marital forgiveness
to offenses. They studied several
married couple for various offenses—forgivable and unforgivable and how they
cope and interact. I selected this
problem because my parents were recently divorced for an unforgivable marital
offense committed by my father and I can understand how the thought process
works. I saw my mother, whom I thought exhibited fairly good EI throughout the
entire situation, deal with the emotional issues, and the cognitive issues of
what to do with the family, and also have to consider what she wanted out of
life and would put up with. The forgivable/unforgivable
aspect is very close to me because even now, we are still faced with people not
knowing about the divorce and especially not the reason, they always seem to
react negatively which is the norm. But
I think that it is a good thing because I wouldn’t ever forgive the offense
that occurred and expect that of my mother also. I think that she used high emotion-clarity to assess the
situation, know what she had to do, aside from the emotional aspects and move
on. The BOOK’s solution is to first, ‘understand
and reason emotions’, and then to also be able to ‘manage and regulate them’. Being EI would be the key to ‘weathering
marital ups and downs’.
These
two are just a small example of the many, many examples given in this
text. An EI approach will better help
any individual to weather the ups and downs of life itself.
CONTENT AND
STRUCTURAL CRITIQUE
Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life has something to offer everybody. There are many strengths and also weaknesses
within the text, but overall, I feel that anyone who reads this text will have
something to gain than if they had not read the material at all. One of the BOOK’s strengths is the easy
format of each chapter and headings within each section. Within each chapter I really liked the
organization and I found the text easy to read and follow. There always was a topic sentence, overview,
content and then conclusion for each section.
Another strength of the text is the numerous examples and scenarios
given throughout. For example, chapter
3 on affective intelligence is broken down into eighteen easy to read small
sub-sections with an introduction, summary and conclusion, and even
acknowledgements. Of the remaining fifteen
sub-sections on affective intelligence they covered basically every aspect of
it including, the future, memory and judgement, thinking styles, eyewitness
memory, stress, behavior, persuasion, and so on.
Another
strength of the BOOK that I just mentioned earlier is the acknowledgements
section at the end of every chapter. This
text has an exceptional works cited resource list. There are literature reviews, a subject index, author index, and
references section as well as the acknowledgements section, that goes chapter
by chapter with a run down of all of the works used.
One
of the weaknesses of the BOOK is that it did not provide any exercises or tests
for which we could rate ourselves. They
went in-depth describing the tests and measures and ratings, like the EQ-I,
TMMS, SRRI, and so on, but no opportunity to test ourselves, to see how we are.
I think that this is a big oversight of the book, because it seems that the
main objective is to get people to understand and apply EI thinking and
reasoning, yet their readers should be able to know how and where they stand. They need start point, especially for us to
look back to with regards to our report 2 observations. Personally I am glad
that we had the opportunity to take one thanks to Ms. Sweet who provided our
class with a sample. Even though I didn’t
score well, at least I know where I stand with the issue. But after reading chapter 2 I can see how
hard it would have been to select a sample test to take. I have to agree with Dr. James, that none of
the tests described seem to be able to have any reliability and validity
criteria and the cultural differences and biases would be too great. But still, they could have provided several
or at least one to look at.
I
also think that one of the weaknesses of the BOOK is the terminology used. I loved the wording in the BOOK and many
times it really clarified things that I had learned in other psychology
classes, but to the average person, I can see how technical and wordy the text
can be. This was only pointed out to me
because one of my friends happened to come across my book, was intrigued by the
title, but soon put it back down and said that it didn’t make any sense to her,
and how could I understand it.
Well,
this is just my understanding of the texts. In order to have a broader context
and assessment, here are some links to see how well others have taken to our
text:
http://www.uow.edu.au/admin/marketing/bytes/media/emotional.html
http://www.unhmagazine.unh.edu/f01/emotionaliq2f01.html
THE BOOK AND
OTHERS
I wholeheartedly believe that our BOOK’s topics are
relevant to our society in general. We do
not live in bubbles and looking at society today, I think that interpersonal
relationships are spiraling downwards toward more and more hostility,
animosity, and aggression. Road rage,
then air rage, then Internet rage, and sexual harassment. These terms are being coined because these
problems are arising faster and spreading to other forms of interpersonal
interactions. Everyone needs to be able
to understand each other’s emotions, cognition, and actions if we are going to
be dealing with them over long term associations. The media perpetuates aggression and violence to the point that
viewers are desensitized to feelings and emotions. Movies are getting more graphic, including the language content
and sexually provocative or even explicit materials are being shown. It seems that the limits and censorship are
constantly trying to break the barriers down more and more.
I
think that the message of living an EI life is a must for our society. We need to go back to the days of
politeness, etiquette, and formality. Within
my lifetime I have seen the transformations taking place. Growing up watching Leave
it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch is a far cry from MTV’s Real World and South
Park. Society is degenerating and we
need to reclaim it for the next generations’ sake. That is why I especially liked chapter 8 and including and using
the EI approach in the school systems.
Teaching parents how to live and teach by example an EI lifestyle, and
then further perpetuating and reinforcing it in school systems must be
seriously looked at and considered for implementation. EI teaches us how to get along with other
again, how to have patience and understanding, compassion and sensitivity to
other’s needs. If we can exhibit that,
then we could receive it in return also.
I
think that everyone should read this book, but like I said earlier, not
everyone might understand it. The message
is important, but I think that having majored in psychology as my background,
it really helped in my understanding and interpreting of the text. But I do think that this text would be better
than some self-help, pop psychology book that might be out there. Again, I don’t
know and haven’t looked at other available resources that cover the same
material in such a thorough manner and explain the history and measurements,
but I do think that in order to receive a comprehensive overview, these
components are necessary. It would definitely
help other scholars and researchers out there to look at as a start if someone
where to try to re-evaluate and assess the material.
THE BOOK AND
MYSELF
This section will have some overlapping in regards to where I see this text and myself. I have already addressed some of the issues above. I enjoyed the thoroughness of the text, and the easy to read format. I especially liked chapter 7 and ‘empathic accuracy’. To me, this is the key to EI. If your empathy isn’t accurate, and is instead misguided or misinterpreted, only more troubles and hardships will occur. Empathy to others feelings, their situations, and to how they interact with you is the key to avoiding aggression and destructive behavior, or options 1 and 3 on the emotional spin cycle.
I also enjoyed chapters 6, 8, and 9. I felt that those three aspects of life simply described me. I am still a student working part-time and having relationships. Chapter six really made me evaluate myself and see how I interact with significant others. I can see how and why things happened and turned out the way they did. I also saw how some actions on my behalf or my partners could have been avoided or altered to prevent situations from happening. Even though the book refuted the quote at the beginning of chapter six, “To keep your marriage brimming with love in the marriage cup whenever you’re wrong admit it whenever you’re right shut up” by Ogden Nash, 1962 as being simplistic, hearing it makes sense. Of course there is much more to it, but we all have instances when ‘I told you so’s’ have turned simple conversations into much bigger issues. And also personally, I have a hard time admitting my wrongs. That is something with which I need to learn from.
One of the reasons that I feel I have enjoyed this book so much is due to the fact that, yes, psychology is my major. I do believe that all of the prior courses that I have taken, such as cross-cultural, developmental, and personality have helped in my understanding of accepting and understanding more of where people are coming from. Also, especially from this class and our in-class discussions and presentations, the wording is more familiar to me than it might be to my friend. But then again, the whole reason why psychology is my major is because I love to watch and observe and predict how people interact. Reading this text expanded these interests beyond the cognitive, which was primarily my focus before, to the affect, which I admit I need help in interpreting and understanding.
I think that what I learned the most from this text is that I have a long way to go to attaining emotionally intelligent thinking. I had always thought that I was fairly intelligent and doing well for my self, now I see that I have to learn to be emotionally intelligent, and it shows within my personal interactions with significant others. There are issues that I have to deal with and learn to accept and understand to be a better person. I feel now as if I have a starting point, a plan, with which to follow and look forward to report 2 to see how well I do.
On one last note, the only aspect of my life missing from this is text is my interactions with my daughter. I would like to see how our authors would have addressed parent-child relationships with examples and solutions to various situations. If they could address such a broad and complex issue such as intimate relationships, then parenting should be addressed also. As chapter four said, a possible prevention to mental illnesses is close parent interaction and exploration of feelings with their child. This area really interests me; I could always use pointers and advice, and is something that I would like to research on.
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