Yesterday at the Ideas Cafe, Richard led the discussion on whether we should teach emotional intelligence in schools.
Well, we hardly got to the school part.
The discussion started off with definition of emotional intelligence, how it is different from just empathy, and whether any form of intelligence can be taught.
Richard quoted definitions which point emotional intelligence to not just feeling but recognizing one's own emotions, the emotions of others, how these emotions can be evoked, and how to handle emotional situations.
There is the differentiation of feelings as the first response to an outside stimulus to our body, whether we feel warmth, touch, see, hear, or smell something. That feeling plus our previous experience of these feelings and our knowledge base leads to judgement of the situation and elicit an emotional response from us.
Can we actually modify and manipulate our and others' emotions?
The concept of teaching emotional intelligence suggests that we can be taught to handle emotional situations as well as evoke emotions in others.
Since emotions are what motivates us, being able to influence an emotional situation confers influential powers and make emotional intelligent people good manipulators of others.
Manipulation is a controversial word and caused great discussion in the group. No one wants to endorse manipulation as an end product of acquiring emotional intelligence. However, we have to accept the fact that the very act of socializing with others results in influencing others. Whether it is persuading someone to your point of view, introducing them to a new concept, or just showing them something they have not seen before, they have been changed.
While saying that we have manipulated those who have been in contact with us is too strong a sense for the word, it is only the negative control aspect of the word that is the problem here. In a free society, it is up to each of us to accept or reject any kind of outside influence on us.
Shula offered the example of Hitler as someone who seem to have good emotional intelligence as he was able to raise the emotions of the crowd with his speeches. It is not the ability to emotionally connect with the crowd that is bad but more the purpose behind the use of emotional intelligence that is the problem.
The group went on to discuss other aspects of emotional engagement.
While some think that authentic and heart felt exchanges are the most emotionally connecting, Rafi warned that just because someone feels strongly about a concept does not make his ideas right.
There was also the comment about the difference between man and woman on emotional intelligence, how woman seems to "innately" be better at connecting with others emotionally. Bob warned that this may be the result of socialization in that various studies have shown that people react differently to babies of different gender(base on their clothing) and so right from when we were babies we received different expectations and socialization from society.
Ricki also pointed out that Victorian man was conditioned socially not to express any emotions and this must have some lasting effect on man.
All in all, a rousing meeting.
Emotional intelligence is something a person has to figure out for themselves. Perceptions are needed for a person to have the motivation to learn or curb an emotion, feeling, intent. Or to even be aware of what these are. The idea of cause and effect or action and reaction has created the idea that people can control their destinies by controlling their emotions, or reactions. Science used to be a philosophy, which may be wholistic and grounded in reality. But over the years its changed, and some of it is very wholistic once again. Trouble is people aren't taught to think like this, to be wholistic, What's useful and what's true to self knowledge often conflicts. There are many closet Utilitarians running around. They don't even know that's what their doing....or do they? Manipulators have their own sets of difficulties, and they make life difficult for a lot of people too. But survival is a strong human instinct, right? I digress...
ReplyDeleteMy take is that emotional intelligence is a good idea, and can be useful, if I can concieve of it this way, but there's a lot that goes into making a person; not just emotions, or memory, or intellect, or....I think you get the idea.
With motivation when working within a difficult situation its best to remember its only temporary, to not lose sight of the bigger picture, and, to be honest, mostly with myself. Sometimes I do things just for others, but in reality that's not often sustainable.
When working with people who have alterior motives (if you can detect them) its best to remain transparent, even when they are not. Although that doesn't always get a person a head, and isn't always easy. Nodding, smiling, with EI...what's that going to lead to? A good business deal!
Wishing everyone full enlightenment! And your personal contentment...
Have a good week end!
VTS
I think we are uncomfortable about affecting emotions as we generally consider emotions as a direct reaction to a situation. We lost the ability to know the situation if the other person can somehow mask, control, or fake his/her emotional reaction.
DeleteSimilarly, if someone can evoke an emotion from us that we normally do not have unless on rare occasions, we either feel cheated or are very surprised.
Good artists and musicians are masters at getting us emotional but we know it is not in response to a real life event so we can treat it differently. But if someone's emotional reaction is out of the ordinary to an event, we instantly go on the alert as to whether we can trust or predict this person's other behaviors.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Oliver....