A Review of
Joseph Ciarrochi, Joseph P. Forgas, and John D. Mayer, Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life: A Scientific Inquiry
by Deborah Stockman, UH; Dr. Leon James, instructor
Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life: A Scientific Inquiry defines emotional intelligence while explaining how it applies to life. What does it mean to be emotionally intelligent? According to Goleman, emotional intelligence deals with five main ideas: knowing one's emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships.
Knowing emotions
Being able to monitor your emotions can be hard. It's not only monitoring that is involved with knowing your emotions. When I think of monitoring emotions, thoughts of a set schedule of said events will happen given certain circumstances. Yet this is not what knowing one's emotions means to me. The ability to identify what you are feeling at any given moment without any set example of what you should be feeling is when you know your emotions. Because if you rely on past experience only, then that leaves no room to grow in your knowledge of the types of emotions that you go through. Identifying emotions plays a big role in how you are able to interact in the world. When you are at an amusement park you are able to identify the emotion of happiness, giddiness, joy, cheer, and a variety of pleasure stimulating emotions.
What about the individual who experiences alexithymia? Alexithymia is a set of cognitive-affective deficits characterized by (a) difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, (b) difficulty in distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations associated with emotional arousal, (c) restricted imaginative processes (few dreams or fantasies), and (d) thinking that is concrete and reality based (Hendryx, Haviland, & Shaw, 1991; Taylor, Bagby, Ryan, & Parker, 1990). Basically, alexithymia is the inability to recognize emotions in oneself and others. This inability of knowing emotions effects daily life functioning and in the long run the types of relationships one is able to have.
An interesting study was done by the University of Delaware dealing with emotion processing in emotional intelligence. They found that the alexithymics had similar scores for physiological measures, but the scores for perceived arousal was lower. This means that their bodies were responding but they could not correctly identify the feeling occurring in their bodies.
Of the threefold self the affect is involved in dealing with knowing emotion of yourself. Affect is what you are feeling. "Affect appears to play a key role in how our memory representations about the world are organized and activated, and it is this link that drives affect infusion into thinking and behavior." (Forgas, pp.50)
Emotion management
Managing emotions deals with having control of how you act out. In terms of the threefold self, managing emotions used cognition and sensory motor parts of the self. For instance, you are at the store and are already in a bad mood because of an argument with someone close to you. So you're cruising down the aisles getting what you came to the store for. The store is not crowded and there are no lines to wait in. You pull up to the only check out open and notice the cashier talking on the phone. You unload your cart and the cashier is still talking on the phone. You wait a couple more minutes at first thinking the call is business related, but soon realize that it is a personal call. How are you going to react?
There is the likelihood that you raise your voice with a hint of irritation especially since you are in a bad mood to begin with. Yet you could stand there waiting until the call is through (which could be quite a while and make you late for your appointments). Between the two which one is emotionally intelligent and how does the threefold self work? Neither are totally the right or wrong way to handle the situation.
Since you are the customer, you should say something about the situation. Yet the way you ask for the cashier to ring you up can cause him/her to react positively or negatively. If you are rude or snap at the cashier, the cashier can either see he/she is wrong for taking personal calls while working or be rude back to you. If you stand and wait for the call to be over, the cashier may never get off the phone, which makes you late and even more angered. It is not emotionally intelligent to not speak your mind, but you have to remember that you need to present yourself in a non-confrontational manner. This just means that you don't attack the cashier with unkind words and vulgarity that can make them become defensive and unable to see their error.
The way you approach the cashier to give you service is an example of a situation which needs you to manage your emotions. You have the feeling of irritation and anger (from before entering the situation) and your cognition could take that feeling either to rage or empathy. Being enraged is easy to understand and would lead to the behavior of lashing out and making the other person feel angry and upset (which then can lead to a cycle of both parties getting mad at one another without ever resolving the issue because you feed off each other to stay mad).
What does it mean to be empathetic? How can you go from feelings of anger to empathy? Being empathetic according to Allison Barnes and Paul Thagard is the ability to comprehend another's state without actually experiencing that state. That is how you can empathize with the cashier in this scenario. You put yourself in their shoes and look at the situation from their perspective. That is the basics for managing emotions is not reacting to the first instinct that comes into your mind, but taking all of the information and processing it to react in a way that is as pleasant for all as can be.
According to Salovey continually getting upset and agitated can be bad for your body. Your heart rate increases, strains the coronary system, and the use other methods to cope (i.e. drinking, overeating, smoking) that lead to other health problems. So it is important to "express negative feelings, but in a way that is neither mean spirited nor stifled" (pg. 170). When reading this in Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life: A Scientific Inquiry it agreed to what I think of how some situations need to be handled.
Getting Things Done Through Motivation
Motivation is essential to be able to get anything done. Motivation is a driving force that initiates tasks being accomplished. An emotionally intelligent person is motivated to get the job done. Motivation is not only finishing the job. Motivation includes taking the initiative to go beyond the set requirements to do a better job or be a better person.
In a way motivation coincides with self actualization. To become self actualized (which includes being emotionally intelligent) there is a force pushing to grow and become a better person to provide for self and others. This force is the motivational force. What does motivation have to do with emotional intelligence? People who are unmotivated tend to keep themselves in the slump they are in and do not make any effort to better their lives. They push others away due to their attitudes or people don't even want to be around them because they get nothing done. There is a difference between taking a break and being unmotivated. You go back to work or to finish the job when you take a break. A motivational person encourages themselves along with others around them. Many times a leader (who needs to be emotionally intelligent) motivates his/her workers and encourages them. Encouragement can sustain motivation in people (workers).
Another aspect in motivation is organization. When people are motivated to do things they organize their lives to accomplish their goals. This organization allows them to be fulfilled in life and to be satisfied (never wondering 'what if'). All of the great leaders in history motivated their people, were encouraging, and organized. These are just some of the characteristics that make up an emotionally intelligent person.
Knowing the Thoughts of Others
The ability to gage what other people are thinking or feeling is recognizing their emotions. Many times when we are emotionally impaired we are unable to be insightful and tell what other people are thinking. When we overlook what others are feeling or thinking (as you can usually tell from their tone of voice, the look in their eyes, or their body language) we overlook an opportunity to be of help or that desperately needed friend.
An example of this is suicide. The suicide rate is higher than it should be. Why is that? There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain. Being able to see the signs (the signs may be very hard to find though) is part of knowing emotions of other people. This is due to the fact that you don't focus on your problems and life events, but are able to reach out to others and be interested in what they are going through.
In my experiences working with children I noticed that they want nothing more than you to love them and be active in their lives. Many times they don't always say what they want but as an adult or being in a position of responsibility of child-care, it is critical that you are emotionally intelligent in the sense of recognizing what is going on with the children. That is one of the reasons why teachers, employers, and any other leadership positions need to be emotionally intelligent and to promote emotional intelligence. This is important in society today. People are coming back to the concept of treating others with respect and being in tune with the environment around them. When I say environment I mean the people in contact with them at work, school, church, or any other situation where other people are involved and readily able to be an influence on you as you are to them.
Emotional Intelligence Influences Relationships
There are various relationships that people have within their lives. It spans from their family relationships to school relationships to coworkers to friendships to intimate relationships.
People are becoming more interested in emotional intelligence. Family.com: Emotional Intelligence: Iq Vs. Emotional Intelligence - This article discusses the values of intelligence and emotional intelligence. Both are of use but to different extent and in different settings. A person who is only book smart is not always able to gain trust in people as compared to someone who is emotionally intelligent and able to handle relationships on such an intimate level.
Different tests made for measuring a person's EQ-i (emotional quotient inventory) are the MEIS, the MSCEIT, the LEAS, and Bar-on EQ-i. There are no examples in the book of these tests, but they can be found online. The book only talks about how these tests came about and explaining the pros and cons with them. Putting examples of the tests could've helped the book because most people are not going to go look things up when reading and some of the tests could be difficult to find. So to show that these EQ tests are different than IQ tests and personality tests the book could have put in some sample tests. To me some of the tests they've invented to measure EQ are similar to personality psychological tests. That's one of the difficulties there have been with coming up with an EQ test that measures actual EQ and not perceived emotional intelligence or other personality traits.
Being emotional intelligence is a growing trend. One of the questions people ask dealing with emotional intelligence is whether it is a predictor of success in life. Some believe that EQ is more important and a better predictor for success. I think that people need to have an equal balance of both because the world we live in is geared toward being knowledgeable (being intelligent). If everyone were just emotionally intelligent of course we'd be able to know our emotions and others, and monitor them so that we can have healthy relationships, but we may not survive as a society.
People have different strengths and gifts. They excel in various areas and professions. Therefore people have different levels of intelligence that allow them to do the job they have and do it well. Everyone has the ability to master certain skills. It is what we do with these skills, that I think emotional intelligence comes in. It is how you conduct yourself in the business world and in family settings that emotional intelligence is prominent. You have to know how to deal with people and the treatment of people vary depending on the setting, age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. It doesn't mean that you treat one type of person better than another, but it means that you respect who people are (since we were all brought up differently) and you are able to interact with them peacefully.
As the concept of emotional intelligence grows in the business and school worlds, in the psychological field emotional intelligence is expanding with new research being done. Throughout history people have hinted the importance of emotional intelligence (but not really using the phrase emotional intelligence). The name 'emotional intelligence' was called such in 1990 by Mayer and Salovey. Their work along with other psychologists helped to put this book together. There is a definite scientific background in the way the book was written. For some people this can be a disadvantage because they don't understand the format. Yet for more scientific minded people this book is interesting in the arguments brought forth.
The book breaks up the concept of emotional intelligence to various topics but the main ideas were discussed earlier. This book has helped me learn more of how psychologist have to be precise when coming up testing new concepts. Things that come up in psychology are vague and ambiguous. It is hard to draw boundaries and say one thing is the cause of another since cognition and affect are a part of how people react. Mainly this book is geared for psychologist or college students preparing to become psychologist. If I weren't interested in psychology I don't think this book would have been interesting to me. I know the authors were trying to get this book to be understood by the layman but the way the chapters were written were aimed for people in higher education.
There were good examples they gave to explain some of the major points of the chapters - like the one dealing with alexithymia and empathic accuracy.
In doing this review and having to present one of the chapters, there is a lot of information in each chapter. This can be a good thing or a bad one. It's good because the authors give us the information dealing with the topic of the chapter. I learned more in each chapter and in a sense they started to be intertwined. It can be bad because you may misinterpret what the authors are saying. This then can lead to problems because your understanding of the aspects dealing with emotional intelligence will be wrong or not fully developed.
The index and bibliography are located at the end of the book and not at the end of each chapter. I think this helped the book to have it this way because when you are going through each chapter you don't have to turn through pages of references and you can go to the back of the book if you are interested in looking up an end note.
Interesting links:
trochim.human.cornell.edu/gallery/young/emotion.htm
www.cornerstonebh.com/alex.htm
www.angelfire.com/al2/queequeg/
UNH Magazine Fall 01 Emotional IQ Feature
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