Emotional Intelligence

blueranger12 said:So parents are basically 95% responsible for who their kid turns out to be? That’s a terrifying thought.😢
That also implies all kids start life on roughly equal footing regarding social skills. I find that hard to believe.

It's difficult to pin down exact percentages, but they bear a massive amount of responsibility. Of course, parents aren't the only ones in the mix—thankfully. Once kids hit preschool age, peers, daycare, and eventually school enter the equation. These are the environments where we learn how to process emotions and recognize them in others.

We learn how to react to pain and pleasure, and we learn the consequences of our own responses.
One shouldn't forget that emotions aren't everything; cognition plays a massive role here too.

We’re all just products of pure chance and stardust. Just give me back the safety of genetics and determinism! 🙂

Since we are discussing EQ... that concept serves as a perfect example of a hypothetical construct.

Psychology is riddled with these kinds of constructs—things that old-school behaviorists used to dismiss—which exist solely to help us explain human behavior and mental processes.

EQ is one such example. EQ itself doesn't actually "exist." It isn't a physical thing found in the brain or out in the environment. What exists are specific behaviors and neurological processes. We simply take certain clusters of behavior and their underlying processes and give them a label. We do this to make sense of why people act the way they do, both ourselves and those around us.

There are certainly physiological processes linked to EQ, but that’s beside the point. The real question, at least in my view, is whether the concept actually makes explaining behavior easier.

Whether EQ is innate or learned is secondary. What matters is whether the concept, and the methods we use to measure it in others, helps me interpret the behavior of the people in my life. Ultimately, the value lies in knowing if I can influence myself, others, or even the children I am raising.

To Gerald Rivera60! I wanted to say that up there, but I wasn't sure how to put it. It’s like this construct sitting right between psychology and sociology, more of a virtual thing than anything else...

Actually, forget it. You hit the nail on the head perfectly 👍

I’ve always felt that intelligence is something we're born with, though I suppose it needs to be nurtured in a specific way if it's ever going to evolve into something deeper—like actual wisdom, or maybe just a sense of capability. But then again, as my colleague mentioned, since the authors basically defined EI as emotional intelligence anyway, I guess there isn't much point in trying to define a separate category for it.

And honestly, I'm on the same page as him here.
I think the real crux of the matter is how much influence we can actually exert over its development, you know? Like, how can we refine it or perhaps "leverage" it so that life feels a bit more seamless and pleasant? It's about moving past being just self-aware animals—though, let's be honest, some people aren't even fully aware of themselves, they're just hyper-focused on their own basic impulses or... well, physical urges 😉—and instead becoming truly aware of other people and their emotions. If we do that, we might actually improve the quality of life for everyone, since we're all social creatures after all.

Also, I tend to think that all this bickering, putting others down, and general insults are really just steps backward when it comes to developing EI. On the flip side, things like tolerance, truly listening, observing, and just spending quality time with the people we care about... those feel like real steps forward.

Emotional intelligence—which basically covers all those specific behaviors and mental frameworks people usually mean when they throw that term around—is something you actually CAN realize, learn, master, or sharpen up... however you want to look at it.
Daniel Goleman's book on the subject is exceptionally well-written, and honestly, it isn't one of those cheap, shallow self-help rags you'd pick up just to kill time on a beach somewhere...

I suppose my take on it is that nobody can really dictate how we go about improving our own EQ, though I guess people can certainly help us find a direction by opening up doors that might have felt locked before.

But at the end of the day, the path is entirely ours to walk, and the journey toward becoming better versions of ourselves stays rooted within us; it’s something we have to navigate on our own, using the only tool we truly possess—ourselves.

blueranger12 said:Can any experts out there—maybe a psychology or education major—recommend some reading? It can be pop psych, I don't mind. Just looking for more info on emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is just a fancy way of saying people have learned how to suck up to others. We used to call it conformity; now we call it "social intelligence." Honestly, I didn't realize Hitler was such a master of "social intelligence" either.😈 Apparently, according to Daniel Goleman.

ironcyclist78 said:I mean, I feel like emotional intelligence is basically just a fancy way of saying someone knows how to manipulate people. It seems like we used to just call it conformity, but now we’ve rebranded it as "social intelligence." Honestly, I didn't even realize that Hitler was considered so "socially intelligent" by those standards. 😈 Apparently, according to Daniel Goleman, he was.

Well, I suppose it makes sense that Hitler had high EI, because if you want to control massive crowds like that, you really have to understand what makes them tick...
and it isn't just about being emotionally intelligent; he was actually quite brilliant in his own way, though he was clearly a deeply disturbed individual... and his attempt to "purify" the world ended up being, well, catastrophic...

wiredbison92 said:Of course Hitler had high EI. To manipulate the masses like that, you have to understand them inside and out...
And he wasn't just emotionally intelligent; he was smart, too. He was just a deeply disturbed individual who tried to "purify" the world... in the worst way possible.

Damn, I was actually expecting someone to jump down my throat—maybe one of those Daniel Goleman disciples coming at me because I brought up Hitler. But this response? Surprisingly rational and level-headed. Is the New Age movement finally losing its grip?

Basically, you laid out the flip side of the coin with such surgical precision that it didn't even cross my mind when I wrote my initial comment. It felt too absurd, too far-fetched. But looking back... yeah. A whole book could be written about that paradox.