Transcript An Intelligent Look at Emotional Intelligence

An Intelligent Look at
Emotional Intelligence
Guy Claxton
University of Bristol UK
EI is the height of fashion…
• ‘Emotional Intelligence…increases
individuals’ capacity to access emotional
states that will enable them to play a part
in the evolution of a more harmonious
and vibrant learning community.’
– The Emotional Literacy Handbook
Key factors in EI
•
•
•
•
•
Knowing one’s emotions
Managing one’s emotions
Motivating oneself
Recognising emotions in otehrs
Handling relationships skilfully
• Plus, in 1998,
• Self-confidence, trustworthiness, initiative,
optimism, political awareness, leadership
• (almost everything an employer might want…)
Developing EI?
• EI is learnable (unlike IQ)
• It’s quite easy…
for example
•
•
•
•
•
•
‘Circle time’
Teaching SEBS
Emotional ‘check-in’
Training conflict resolution skills
Quizzes for e.g. ‘optimism’
Methods for ‘calming’
But EI has its skeptics…
• ‘The positive side of the Emotional Intelligence
movement is that it helps broaden our concept
of intelligence… The negative side of the
movement is that it is often crass, profit-driven,
and socially and scientifically irresponsible’
– Prof Robert Sternberg, Yale University
• Strong words – what is he claiming?
• EI is too important to be done badly.
• Sloppy thinking and exaggerated claims don’t
ultimately help the cause…
Areas of concern
• Measurement (different measures don’t
correlate)
• Distinctiveness (overlap with
‘personality)
• Novelty (has ‘EI’ only just been
discovered?)
• Direct teaching / training?
• Unity (‘The jury is still out as to whether
there is a scientifically meaningful
concept of EI’ Prof Seymour Epstein)
• Success (is EI crucial for life?)
And some more…
• ‘Feel good, learn good’?
– Stress improves memory
– Happiness makes for sloppy learning
– ‘self-esteem is much more potent when it
is won through striving wholeheartedly for
worthwhile ends, rather than derived from
praise, especially praise that may be only
loosely related to achievement’ Prof Carol
Dweck, Columbia University
• Practical / realistic? (Or a grandiose wish-list?)
• Effective?
• ‘It’s good to talk’ – depends how you talk!
Some moral qualms…
• Is ‘the good life’ getting what you want?
• Can EI sometimes be more for teachers’
benefit than the students?
• Or for employers (‘McFeelings’?)
• Emotional fascism?
• Where did the richness of emotional life
go?
– Wistfulness, lovesickness, jealousy,
remorse, tenderness…
The cognitive science of emotions
•
•
•
•
•
An oxymoron? Recent developments
Emotions are a core part of intelligence
Readiness responses to trouble
Based on often preconscious appraisal
‘Set’ the parameters for physiology,
action, attention, memory, learning
• Communicate with others
• Resolution results in different kinds of
‘happiness’
How your brain responds to these…
A couple of examples
•
•
•
•
•
•
ALARM
Distress
Cry
‘Help!’
Comfort
Panic
•
•
•
•
•
•
NOVELTY
Interest
Investigate
‘Look at this!’
Mastery
recklessness
A conclusion
• ‘People sometimes forget their own lived
experience when they step into the world of
Emotional intelligence. All the puzzling minutiae
of our emotional lives – of anxious phone-calls,
frosty silences, sudden smiles, stabs of envy
and pangs of guilt – can get bleached out in the
bright light of cheerful nostrums and confident
advice. ‘How simple life would be if it was as
simple as we thing’, said novelist Michael
Dibdin. And nowhere does that wry comment
apply more strongly than to the business of
emotional education. Let us be optimistic by all
means. But let us not deceive young people, nor
their teachers, about the slipperiness and
inscrutability – the marvellous mystery – of their
emotional lives’
Further information
• Copies of An Intelligent Look at
Emotional Intelligence from
• [email protected]
• www.atl.org.uk
• and more about me at
• www.guyclaxton.com