PDF Summary:Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman

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Emotional intelligence has one major benefit over IQ: IQ is fixed—what we’re born with is what remains throughout our lives. But emotional intelligence can be taught and learned -- we have the ability to improve upon our emotional intelligence throughout our lives. This is the major factor that makes emotional intelligence potentially more important for success than IQ: it’s within our control.

Corporations report that emotional intelligence determines which employees will be better leadership material. Emotional intelligence programs in schools also show definite positive results:

• Children improve their achievement scores and grade-point averages.
• Disciplinary incidents decrease, as do necessary punishments.
• Attendance rates and positive behavior increase.

But research on emotions is sparse, so most people don’t have a good understanding of what’s going on when they have an emotional reaction, or how they can work to control their response to that emotional reaction.

In this summary, we’ll first explore emotions, what they are, and where they come from. Then we’ll delve into emotional intelligence and its benefits. Finally, we’ll look at using emotional...

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The Science Behind Emotions

The development of the human brain—both evolutionarily and in our biological development from conception to old age—reflects the hierarchy between our emotional mind and our rational mind.

The human brain essentially grew from the bottom up. We share the primitive part of our brain—the brainstem—with all species who have more than a simple nervous system, and this part of the brain controls our basic and necessary functions: breathing, the metabolism of our organs, preprogrammed reactions and movements such as shrinking from pain.

From the brainstem emerged the emotional center, our limbic system, which refined two important skills: the ability to learn and the ability to remember. This development allowed us to make conscious decisions in relation to our environment and smarter choices for survival.

From the emotional center emerged the rational mind, our neocortex. This part of the human brain is three times as large as the neocortex of our evolutionary next of kin, nonhuman primates. The neocortex also contributes to a more complex emotional life: it’s the reason we can have feelings about our feelings.

**This development...

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Once the amygdala has an emotional memory of a certain situation, any new situation that resembles the old one will trigger the amygdala’s stress response, whether the situations are ultimately similar or not. For instance, this is why many adults who got bit by a dog when they were kids still fear dogs: though it’s not the same dog and though the person might not be in any danger of getting bit, the amygdala triggers the same emotional response to the sight of any remotely similar dog.

The amygdala is already close to being fully formed at birth, while our neocortex is not. This means our rational mind has more time to change and develop, but our emotional mind is solidified at a very young age: many of our strongest emotional memories occur in the first few years of our lives when we have not developed language or logic to understand them or process them.

So our childhood experiences deeply influence our emotional wellbeing as adults. Though many people believe that infants or children won’t remember what happened, this is not true: though they might not be able to recall exactly what happened, they will always carry with them how their experiences made them feel. Our...

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• (Shortform note: Goleman touches on this very briefly, and does not address some basic questions about them, such as whether they’re genetic or can be influenced by early interactions, or whether people can be combinations of the four.)

Finally, chronic disorders occur when someone is trapped in a negative temperament or mood and most likely needs medication or therapy to help balance their emotions.

Physiological Symptoms

Different emotions cause different reactions in the body, usually in preparation for whatever the emotion might make us do:

• When we’re angry: blood flows to our hands so we can grab a weapon easier or hit someone; our heart rate increases in preparation for a fight; adrenaline courses through our body to pump us up.
• When we’re afraid: blood goes away from our face (thus the “white as a sheet” cliché) to our legs and arms so we can run or fight; our bodies freeze up to see if hiding will work, or to be able to hear better without the sound of our own movement; hormones flood our system that put us on red alert.
• When we’re happy: increased activity in our brain center inhibits negative feelings and increases our energy; our bodies...

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Trauma sticks on an unconscious level, so a great way to work through trauma is through art, which also deals with the unconscious. (Shortform note: Goleman does not go into detail as to how art can be used in therapy for this purpose, but there are plenty of good books out there on art and drama as therapeutic techniques.)

Children have an easier time relearning responses to traumatic events. Because their brains are still forming, they can use a wider variety of tools to relearn responses -- tools like games, dreams, fantasy, and play.

• In 1989, Patrick Purdy, a white supremacist with a criminal record, opened fire with an automatic weapon on Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA. He killed 5 children and wounded 30 others, then shot himself in the head. Children who had survived the attack began playing a recess game called “Purdy,” where one student would be Purdy and try to kill the other students. Sometimes “Purdy” would kill everybody; sometimes the others would kill “Purdy.”
• This game allowed the survivors to replay the event safely, repeating the traumatic event in a low-anxiety setting and desensitizing themselves to it. It also allowed them to change...

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Don’t equate self-awareness with a “Stop that!” mentality. Balance is the goal for emotions, not suppression. All feelings have importance and value. We just want to make sure our emotions match the situation at hand, and that we can control them when they get in the way of what we want to achieve.

• When a child hits another child out of anger, yelling “Stop that!” at them might stop the action, but it won’t stop the feeling: the angry child will still be angry. Awareness would be a response more like: “You’re hitting them out of anger. It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hit people. Why are you angry, and what else can we do about it?”

There are 3 general styles for dealing with emotions:

• Self-aware. This is the preferable style of dealing with emotions. These people are aware of their moods as they happen but can be mindful about how they deal with them. They’re more sure of their boundaries since they know how they’ll feel. They tend towards a positive outlook on life since they know they can manage whatever moods are thrown at them. They don’t dwell on bad moods and can get out of ruts faster. They can be mindful of their emotions and manage...

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Say someone dangerously cuts you off while driving and you get angry. “What was that person thinking? They could have killed me. What would happen to my kids if I died? That person could have ruined my life and the lives of the people I care about! And for what? Probably for nothing. Where they’re going isn’t important enough to kill people for it. Jeez, no one pays attention to anyone but themselves anymore…”

Every subsequent angry thought after the initial one fans the flames, keeping you angry and sometimes even increasing how angry you are.

How to Manage Anger

The quickest way to undermine anger is to undermine the assumptions that are making you angry in the first place, usually by reframing the situation in a more positive light.

• For example, someone cuts you off in your car: the anger-inducing assumption might be that that person cares more about where they’re going than your safety, or that they chose you specifically to cut off, or even that they’re trying to anger you. You could try reframing your assumptions to curb your anger: maybe they didn’t see you, maybe there’s an emergency and they need to get somewhere.

**Another way to manage anger is to...

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On the other side, kids who ate the first marshmallow were:

• Shy in social situations, jealous, envious, and combative.
• Stubborn, indecisive, and easily frustrated.
• Self-critical, prone to overreacting, and still incapable of delaying gratification.
• Less successful academically, with lower SAT scores by an average of 210 points.

Hope as Motivation

Hope, in this context, is the belief that you have the will and the means to accomplish a goal, regardless of what it is. More hopeful people were found to have a variety of traits that made them more successful:

• They can self-motivate.
• They view themselves as resourceful and try different ways to accomplish their goals.
• When times are tough, they tell themselves it will get better.
• They’re flexible enough to try different approaches towards reaching the same goal or switch goals if one proves too difficult to achieve.
• They break down large, scary tasks into smaller, more manageable goals.

More hopeful people generally deal with less emotional distress throughout their lives, don’t give in to overwhelming anxiety, and suffer less from depression.

**Optimistic people see failure as...

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Attunement

More than the dramatic events we experience as children, our most basic emotional life lessons are influenced by small, repeated life exchanges between us and our parents. Parents can either be attuned to or misattuned to their infants’ emotional states.

Attunement is a state where our emotions are responded to by our parents with empathy, acceptance, and reciprocation. It’s more than just imitation. Imitating a baby’s emotions only shows that you see what she did, not that you understand how she felt. To give a baby the sense that their feelings have been understood, you have to play back their feelings to them in a different way.

• For example, if a baby is crying, making a sad face at the baby is just imitation. But making a sad face and then pulling the baby into your arms shows that you actually understood her feelings.

Misattunement, where our emotions are not responded to at all, or responded to with negativity and avoidance, is a deeply upsetting experience for an infant.

• When a parent repeatedly shows no empathy with a particular emotion or range of emotions in their child, the child begins to avoid expressing that...

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Interpersonal intelligence, or the ability to manage relationships, breaks down into 4 distinct and separate abilities:

• Organizing groups. An essential skill for leaders, this is the ability to initiate and coordinate the energy and efforts of a group of people. Theatre directors, producers, military officers, and heads of organizations must possess this skill to be successful.
• Negotiating solutions. This skill involves avoiding conflicts or resolving ones that arise—it’s the mediator skill. Successful diplomats, lawyers, middlemen, and management have this skill.
• Personal connection. Empathizing and connecting are the heart of this skill. People with this skill make excellent salespeople, managers, or teachers, and are usually good team players in both business and personal relationships.
• Social analysis. Slightly different from the last one, this skill involves easily detecting and intuiting the emotions, motivations, and concerns of other people. Therapists or counselors and even novelists and entertainment writers possess this skill.

People who possess these skills are usually natural leaders whom other people gravitate to and enjoy...

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• Girls are also typically faster to develop language skills than boys, which gives them more experience articulating their feelings and using words instead of physical methods of resolving conflicts or communicating feelings.
• Boys are not encouraged to verbalize their feelings, and they’re not usually taught how—this can cause them to develop a blindness to their own emotional states and others’.
• Sons are more likely to receive detailed stories and instructions on anger. This is perhaps because boys and girls drift into different ways of handling anger at the onset of puberty.
  • At 10, approximately the same percentage of boys and girls are described as overtly aggressive and prone to open confrontation. By 13, girls have learned to use different tactics to express anger, tactics like gossiping, ostracizing, and indirect confrontation. Boys at the same age still deal with anger through open confrontation.

And there are differences in how girls and boys form relationships with others, even in childhood.

• Girls typically play together in small groups, emphasizing minimal hostility and maximum cooperation. Boys generally play in larger...

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Very often, bullies come from households of abuse or neglect. Abused children are more likely to abuse their own children, creating whole family lineages of abuse passed down through the generations. Abuse shatters trust in people and the world around them, and often makes the victims feel as though something about themselves caused the abuse, or that they deserve it for some reason. On the opposite end are households where parents emotionally neglect their children—and neglect can be more detrimental than abuse, some studies find.

Anger doesn’t always result in bullying—sometimes angry children are social outcasts, withdrawn and overreactive to perceived insults. This is the common tendency among angry kids, whether they’re bullies or not: angry children perceive threats or slights where they’re not intended—someone bumping into them accidentally in the hall, for example—and then lash out at those perceived threats, furthering their isolation. Most of these kids see themselves as victims who are merely acting in self-defense.

Depression in Children

International data reflects a modern epidemic of depression in today’s young people. Each generation since the...

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One major thing that gets in the way of workplace harmony is prejudice.

Prejudice in the Workplace

Humans have prejudices: our brains, as we read in the first chapter, are designed to identify something and whether we like it or not in the first milliseconds of seeing it, and this means our responses to things are deeply ingrained in our psyche.

But the workplace is no place for prejudice, so even if managers are humans who will have biases, they need to make a conscious effort to make decisions as though they had none. Not only is this the more humane way to manage, but it’s a more practical way to manage too:

• Combating prejudice and embracing diversity in the workplace has become much more important in the last 30 years, as white men, who previously dominated the workplace, are at least now matched if not outnumbered by other races and genders. Workplaces need to function, and when there are employees from different backgrounds, prejudice will hinder day to day operations.
• Companies are also widely international these days, so understanding and accepting different cultures has become crucial for international success. Companies who have better...

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• Kindergarteners are entering their first real social world, and starting to feel the “comparison” emotions that come with it: insecurity, jealousy, pride, confidence, or humiliation.
• Late elementary school is when academic performance begins to solidify how a child thinks of herself -- as successful, or capable, or stupid, or wrong—and allowing negative self-image to creep in here almost guarantees a diminishment of prospects later in life.
• In middle school or junior high, all students experience a significant decrease in self-confidence and increase in self-consciousness. Self-esteem becomes a major issue.

Children who are angry, depressed, anxious, timid or shy, or socially awkward in particular are at risk of dropping out of school: social rejects will find it more difficult to complete schooling at any level.

• Social rejects essentially have no one to turn to at school, and yet they spend most of their time there. This is incredibly isolating, and reinforces most of their toxic thoughts and bad habits, which in turn negatively affect their academic performance.

Anxiety in the Classroom

**High anxiety is almost a guarantee that someone will perform...

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The nervous system is innately connected to our immune system, and, like the brain, our immune system can learn.

• In one study, rats were given medicine that lowered the count of their T cells, cells which are responsible for fighting diseases. Every time they were given the medicine, they took it along with sugar water. Eventually, giving rats the sugar water alone lowered their T cell count, and rats were getting sick and dying from just the water: the experiment had trained their immune systems to suppress T cells in relation to the sugar water.

The chemical messengers with the most extensive operation in the brain and the immune system are most densely found in the neural areas responsible for regulating emotion. So the nervous system not only communicates with the immune system, it is necessary for the immune system to function properly.

Stress can negatively affect immune resistance, though it is temporary—presumably directing energy away from the immune system to deal with the stressor. Of course, if the stress itself is continuous and intense, the resulting suppression of the immune system also continues.

Studies have shown that toxic emotions (stress,...

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No one realm can do it alone. The more all parts of our society work in tandem, the better the results will be. Imagine what the world would look like if every individual worked on their own emotional intelligence, and couples practice emotional intelligence between themselves, and parents raised their kids with emotional intelligence, and workplaces made it a priority, and schools taught it in their classrooms, and hospitals practiced it in their halls.