Notes from book called 'Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman

I’ve typed up notes I made when reading this book and then organized the points under the following questions. This is a long post and really only for those who have an interest in this topic and want to read a summary of the whole book. 

The main points covered in the book fall under these questions:

- What is emotional intelligence?

- Why is emotional intelligence importance in the workplace?

- What is the link between emotional intelligence and children (parenting, schooling)?

- What is the psychology and science behind various psychological states? What are some of the key emotional difficulties people face?

- What is the science behind emotional intelligence (biologically and neuroscientifically)?

What is emotional intelligence?

·         Emotional intelligence = being able to motivate oneself; persist in face of frustration; control impulse; delay gratification; regulate mood; keep stress from swamping thinking; self awareness; managing emotions; recognizing emotions; handling relationships.

·         Emotional intelligence can be learned and improved

·         High IQ doesn’t = unhappiness or success.

·         Evolution has not caught up with the times we live in. Emotions can override rational judgement. The stronger the emotion, the more likely to make rational ineffectual. The two interact and affect each other.

·         Language – ‘emotion’ means ‘movere’ (to move) and the ‘e’ connotes move away. This suggests that to act is implicit in every emotion.

Why is emotional intelligence importance in the workplace?

·         Workplace are putting premium on ‘on the job’ success

·         Guide to effective feedback at work: Be specific; offer solution; be present; be kind. Guide to receiving – don’t take it as a personal attack; take responsibility where you can rather than getting defensive; ask to resume the meeting later if you need time to digest.

·         Prejudice or bias is not trivial and needs to challenged straight away so tacit consent is given. Diversity courses should include perspective taking – telling from the other side so people realize what damage it does.

·         By end of 2100 - 1/3 of workforce will be knowledge workers ie. Adding value to information.

·         Groups have a collective IQ and the group cannot be smarter than the sum but it can be dumber if talents not maximized. People too eager can be a drag on the group.  Too domineering.

·         Most important was groups internal harmony – more friction leads to not maximizing talents of particularly good people – when lots of social or emotional static – people cannot do their best.

·         Being able to work in formal networks helps determine on the job success

·         Rapport with key network of people; cultivating good relationships with those that might be needed; informal networking key for handling unexpected problems

·         Social ties strengthen when people communicate, then solidify into stable networks

·         Highly adaptive, informal networks work more diagonally and elliptically to get things done

·         3 varieties of informal networks: who you talk to; experts; and those you trust. Stars have thick networks in all three areas.

·         Stars co-ordinate team work; they are leaders in building consensus; seeing things from another perspective; persuasiveness; taking initiative; self management.

·         State of flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihaly- when emotions are contained and chanelled, energized and aligned on the task at hand. Being absorbed in the task,.  Unconscious of self. It might be slightly taxing but there is harmony between anxiety and demand of the task. Howard Gardner sees this important for children – its important for them to know what they like to learn and how they like to learn so that they can get into a flow.

What is the link between emotional intelligence and children (parenting, schooling)?

·         Childhood is key to setting emotional habits. Massive survey shows that trend is for kids to be more emotionally challenged than ever before. Emotional intelligence needs to be taught at school.

·         Howard Gardner done a lot of stuff on multiple intelligence theory – there is more than the standard intelligences tested on standard IQ tests and tested at school (reading, writing, arithmetic) and we should embrace all of the intelligences that children have.

·         The marshmallow test – 4 years old are offered a marshmallow but they get 2 if they wait 20 mins – they can have 2. Those that managed to got better SAT scores at 12. ‘goal orientated, self imposed delay of gratification’. This ability helps in later life to succeed.

·         We are born with temperament but these can be shaped by parenting etc.

·         The programme for kids on anger management has a lot of mindfulness in it.

·         Studies have shown that girls with eating disorders have less ability to tell the difference between feelings and control them.

·         Emotional learning was done 2^nd and 3^rd graders and they ended up being middle of their class socially instead of outcasts. They learnt how to make playing games more enjoyable.

·         Self science classes, or social development or social and emotional learning are growing in popularity in schools. This is not affective learning which uses emotion to help learning but it is actually affecting learning itself  - ie learning about the emotions and how they are dealt with

·         Emotional learning is done over time – it is about neural habits. It is better when done in school, community and at home.

·         SOCS stands for situation, options, consequences and solutions. It is something that is used with teenagers when trying to teach them to deal with things better.

·         Family life is first schooling for emotional learning. We learn how to feel about ourselves; how others will react to our learning; how to think about feelings and what choices we have; and how to read  and express our hopes and fears. They learning this by how parents are with them and they are with each other.

What is the psychology and science behind various psychological states? What are some of the key emotional difficulties people face?

·         We can’t control having emotion but we can control how long we have them

·         One of the challenges is dealing with everyday bad moods – not the ones you medicate or see the psychiatrist about but just bog standard daily mood shift

·         What matters is whether negative thoughts are followed by a cycle of others

·         Anger is seductive – energizing – can fuel self righteous thoughts – quick release catecholomines

·         Anger usually physical threat – threat to self esteem, dignity, being treated rudely

·         Second thing that happens is an amygdala driven release through adrenocortical branch of nervous system which create tonic background of readiness which can last for hours of days.

·         Anger builds on anger and every thought or event releases more catecholomines. The earlier the cycle stops the better. If already in a rage then attempts to mitigate fail as the person is cognitively incapacitated. It helps to cool off physiologically and take a break where anger wont be triggered – exercise, being alone, driving etc can help to shift to a low arousal state. Reading or teaching can stop the train of thoughts – but not eating. Self awareness can help us as long as we are not in rage.

·         Venting doesn’t have prove helpful in tests unless it helps to change situation

·         Worry is the rehearsal of what might go wrong and how to deal with it (create positive solutions, anticipates dangers). In excess though it is uncontrollable, steady hum of anxiety, impervious to reason).

·         It can help to shift attention off thoughts but worriers often don’t want to as they feel attached to worrying as a way of solving problem but worrying is not effective so ends up being rumination in danger itself. The key is that worrying gets the credit for averting the danger (as usually about things that are unlikely to happen. To help chronic worry 1) awareness of thoughts and physical response; 2) relaxation; 3) healthy skepticism as early in the process as possible (practice relaxation everyday) – it helps if it is not chronic e.g. a phobia

·         In depression, people worry about being depressed which makes it worse

·         Behaviour therapy helps the brain to relearn – literally it changes the function of the brain over a period of time – e.g. people with OCT to keep doing action like going to the sink without washing their hands and talking about their fears.

·         Mood heavily affects thoughts – some thoughts are linked to mood and are heavily wired and harder to suppress.

·         Worrying reduces ability to learn or carry out tasks effectively. Worry takes up attention so it becomes self fulfilling to do less well.

·         Some anxiety at the right level helps to improve performance as it motivates the person to prepare (called hypomania – mildly elated state).

·         Laughter can help with creativity and problem solving.

·         Memory is state specific so when in a good mood we are more likely to remember good things.

·         Hope is significant in predicting success. Hope is believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals.

·         Optimists see failure as something that can be rectified next time. Pessimists see failure as something wrong with them. Optimists more likely to learn and try again.

·         Self-efficacy – believing one has mastery over their life and can meet challenges.

·         People’s beliefs about their abilities has a profound effect on them.

·         Emotions can be contagious – partly due to motormimicry where we copy the visual cues of the other. The transfer is from the one who is more forceful is showing their emotion. Politicians and evangelists work to entrain the feeling in the audience. Emotional entrainment is at the heart of influence.

·         Social chameleons can copy the emotions of others to be loved rather than be true to themselves.

·         Women are more emotional – they feel range more and with more intensity. Men learn to minimize emotions to do with guilt, fear, and vulnerability.

·         The way couples talk about their problems is more important than the problems themselves.

·         Flooding is when a person is highly susceptible to emotional distress and anything can trigger it. Men stonewall to avoid this. Women want to talk about it. One option in arguments is to call time and count heartbeats to check in with emotions. Doing something else for 20 mins helps to calm down. Helps to watch thoughts and not just take them as truth. Could look for evidence to refute them rather than getting carried away with thoughts.

·         To help people learn after PTSD they help people to  understand that the way they feel is part of the PTSD so they need to understand it better and understand how they feel inside which people often feel they have lost control of – they make them mindful of emotions and thoughts.

·         Second part of relearning is retelling what happened at a pace that they are ready to which needs to be bearable.

·         In psychotherapy where you learn to build a new relationship into an event they have shown that there is likely ot be still be a trigger but the response to the trigger is better, quicker , more helpful. The trigger often doesn’t go away. They did tests on babies to show that those that cried show more reactivity – right side of the  brain when mum left the room and those that didn’t more in the left. AS positive outlook is more associated with left prefrontal lobe.

What is the science behind emotional intelligence (biologically and neuroscientifically)?

·         Biology – the top of the spinal chord is oldest part of the brain – a rudimentary sense of smell came first. The limbic system is where emotion is stored. Limbic = limbus (ring shaped). Neo-cortex = thinking part. The neocortex associated with mothering young (reptiles have no neo cortext and young are left to fend for themselves)

·         Science – fear = blood to large muscles; anger = blood to hands; happiness = inhibit negative feeling – increase in energy – rest and readiness; surprise = raised eyebrows to take into more information; sadness = slower metabolism, energy (potentially keeps people nearer home where they can be safer)

·         We have two amygdale and they are important for the emotional memory, personal meaning, recognition of feeling. Tears are triggered by the amygdala. Being stoked, held soothes are tears. The amygdala can respond faster than neocortex. Triggers fight and flight hormones. Send commands across the brain. Neural pathways (what eyes, ears take in) – goes first to the thalamus then there is a circuit to the amygdala then to the neocortex. It doesn’t go direct to the neocortex so it means that we start preparing the response before we process life in the rational mind. We can also store a memory of this in the amygdala so we can react again like that in the future without thinking with the neocortex (only small part of the response goes to the amygdala but this is key). Other experiments show that along with receiving information unconsciously (something coming in to our attention before we realize it) – we also decide whether we like it or not ‘cognitive unconscious’.

·         Hippocampus is associated with providing context, significance, perceptual patterns,  and providing emotional meaning e.g. it recognizes differing significance of bear in the zoo than in the backyard. Hippocampus = dry fear. Amygdala = emotion.

·         Memory – we remember high emotion moments like death of Diana because of imprint on emotional memory which involves the amygdala.  The brain has two memories: facts and emotional . Triggered by similar experience – there are sloppy connections. And many are made early in life. The hippocampus is crucial for narrative memory, the amygdala for whether memory has emotional valence. But amygdala is formed quicker in early life than the hippocampus. We may not have words or stories for why we feel these emotions because some are laid down in early childhood.

·         Normally prefrontal lobes determine the emotional response. They make sense of things and are the seat of planning. A lobotomy on prefrontal lobes used to be done to stop people being in emotional distress but it cut off all emotion. Left prefrontal lobes – neural thermostat – it regulates negativity on right side.

·         Pre frontal lobes are responsible for working memory. Connections between limbic brain and pre-frontal cortex can affect ability to learn as ‘neural static’ can happen making you feel like you cant think straight. 

·         Emotional trigger is important so without it, we can trouble making decisions. It is balance between reason and emotion and working with this balance is emotional intelligence.