Customer Reviews

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ

5 star:		(96)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(37)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

There is a lot to admire here and I enjoyed returning to a genre (popular psychology) that I left many years ago. If my recollection is correct, Goleman's book is a step beyond such "classics" as I'm Okay, You're Okay..., etc., particularly in terms of scholarship. I liked the way he took the medical profession to task for its lack of empathy and its failure to provide emotional support for patients. He does not however address the cause, which is the desire of the AMA and its members to maintain the exclusivity and high economic status of the profession. I loved the affection Goleman showed for the children learning to be social.

However I don't think the book is about emotional so much as social intelligence, and perhaps that is entirely to the good since social intelligence is a fundamental human need, and certainly for most people it is easier to learn social skills than it is to discard negative emotions and achieve positive ones. Most of the book is about how to behave effectively in society, how to make adjustments in marriage, on the job, with peers, at school, etc. Some space is given to the experiences in childhood that mold us emotionally (or so it is believed).

This is all fine, but I don't think Goleman makes much of a case for changing emotions as he does for changing behavior. Of course, I'm all for that: if you don't feel empathy, at least fake it! On page 107 for example he talks about the "utter lack of empathy for their victims" by "child molesters and other such offenders." He describes "one of the most promising treatment programs" in which "the offenders read heart-wrenching accounts of crimes like their own, told from the victim's perspective." The psychologist who developed the program claims that the recidivism rate for those who complete the program is half that of those who did not receive the treatment. Even if true, it doesn't follow that these guys learned any empathy. Most likely they learned more clever behavior, and of course the people who entered and stayed with the program are preselected to not return for any number of reasons, mainly they're smarter.

I have a similar objection to the idea (for example) that depression leads to increased death and disease. Certainly the life expectancy of depressed people is less than that of optimistic people, but it is not clear whether depression is a cause or a symptom. And the well known connection between social isolation and morbidity reported by Goleman doesn't necessarily mean that social isolation kills, but could mean that people who want to die, first isolate themselves from society, which is the way in some cultures-or it could mean something else entirely.

I also object to the general idea that emotions, instruments of the evolutionary mechanism, can or should be much influenced by society except in self-defense. The purpose of many emotions is to drive the individual in a direction consistent with the needs of the species mechanism regardless of what society or the individual wants. The needs, concerns and prejudices of any given society are relatively ephemeral notions compared to the evolutionary imperative, and in many cases it's a good thing we have instincts that override what society wants.

Goleman's book is understandably written from the point of view of the society and as such puts social concerns first; however I am at that place in my life where I find the concerns of the individual to be more important. The (rather limited) psychological tradition that Goleman is an effective spokesman for, is not to me as important or as valuable or even as "true" as the psychological ideas found in the great religions of the world.

One last very important quibble: nowhere in the book is the most deleterious emotion mentioned or identified as such. That emotion is desire. Goleman, unaccountably, does not even identify sexual desire! He lists love in Appendix A but it is apparent that sexual desire is not part of that classification (p. 289). He allows that there are "hundreds of emotions." The fact that he does not recognize desire would be amazing except we know that his readers would not like to hear about any problems with desire, and this book is pristinely PC with a clear eye to the marketplace. Desire is what keeps the economic machine of the society that he represents going! As the economists say, goods are limited, but human desires are infinite. Additionally the secret to avoiding the inevitable pain caused by desire is not any attempt to fulfill those desires, but to lose the desires. That formula would not sit well with his readers nor with his publishers.

Goleman is accomplished and clever. He went to the best schools and he has made quite a success of his education. He is politically astute, and he may be an expert on emotion, but he should know that the splashy idea of emotional intelligence is as vague, subjective and limiting as that of IQ, perhaps more so.

I must admit I'm torn between a thumbs up and a thumbs down for this book (hence, 3 stars). Author Daniel Goleman does a fine job of employing a vast library of behavioral research in support of the premise that emotional conditioning plays a dominant role in what we perceive as "intelligence." Even though one can learn lots from Goleman's work, the overriding theme here seems to me to be ridiculously simple: good nurturing (rather than aptitude) is more likely to produce exceptional humans; bad nurturing creates people with a bunch of problems.

The book starts off great, with a look at what happens in the brain at the molecular level under all sorts of emotional experiences. That's Part One (Goleman recommends skipping this if you're not into neurological details), which turned out to be the most interesting for me, as I had never before learned much about the emotional "architecture" of the brain.

In Parts Two through Five, the author expounds on feelings (e.g., anger, empathy, passion, depression), personality, upbringing, aptitude, and treatment, etc., citing study after study to show that today's children are most decidedly a product of how they were treated in their earliest years, but nevertheless are winding up far less able then their ancestors were to handle even the slightest emotional dilemma. In fact, the further on you read, the more you'll realize that "Emotional Intelligence" is a book about children. Why is their character deteriorating, and what can we do to mold them into more emotionally strong (intelligent) beings? That's okay: if you're a parent, educator, or child psychologist, definitely buy this book. It will help.

As for me, I appreciated Goleman's connection of personality with science in an unexpected, enlightening way. However, except for Part One, I got so bogged down in page after page of studies and stats, all concluding the same thing over and over again, that it became a chore to plow through to the end. Overall, this is a monumental work, but I can't recommended it to everyone.

This is not the book I thought it would be. It looks at several interesting subjects such as why children with high Emotional Intelligence are more likely to earn more. It also covers the development of depression and how rage affects our ability to make decisions.

Emotional Intelligence is really the ability to understand, control and react accoringly to our emotions. This topic could have been covered more in depth, but otherwise this is a great book for business people and psychologists alike.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I think Goleman has made a good case for broadening our view of "intelligence" to encompass more than what is measured by an IQ test. And I strongly agree with him that we need to educate children emotionally as well as intellectually.
On the other hand, both the author and the journalists who have written about his findings have used them to support a false dichotomy: EQ is the opposite of IQ, highly intelligent people are emotional idiots, and so forth. He quotes, ad nauseam, the story of a high school student who, when his teacher gave him a B instead of the A he thought he deserved, shot the teacher. This perpetuates the stereotype that gifted children are lacking in EQ, which other studies have shown is NOT the case -- in fact, they tend to be hyper-responsible, sensitive to the feelings and wishes of others, and prone to blame themselves rather than others when things go wrong in their lives (gifted teenagers commit suicide at a higher rate than average teenagers).
Gifted children have it hard enough already: they're considered "nerds" and "freaks" by their peers, and expected to be perfect at everything by their parents and teachers; but they're not supposed to have problems (in or out of school) because, after all, they're GIFTED. Labeling them (falsely) as emotionally deficient, and asserting that there's some fundamental conflict between IQ and EQ, just makes things even harder for them.

The importance of emotional intelligence was proven to me early on in this book, especially with the author's neurological explanations of the brain. Daniel Coleman used a variety of approaches to prove the value of emotional intelligence including: neuroscience, biology, and studies. Yet, some of the directions the author chose to take lost my interest. The studies could have been abbreviated and maybe the classification of emotions could have been expanded on. The book demonstrated the dire consequences of not learning emotional intelligence and sometimes used extreme examples, which seemed unnecessary. However, this pioneering book (albeit somewhat outdated) deserves attention.

For me the book started well with references to Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," making a connection between the wisdom that Aristotle exalted and emotional intelligence. The book went on to explain how the physical components of the brain affect emotional behavior; here the amygdala is explained, which is the control center for emotional behavior, and is referred to throughout the book. This biology and neuroscience clarified how rudimentary emotional behavior is in the human brain.

In part three, the author showed progressive thinking in his belief that the medical profession must consider emotional factors. Since the book's publication, medical schools have agreed with him. On June 10, 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported that graduates from all 126 medical schools in the U.S. will take a standardized test that will rate "bedside manner." According to the article, this test will "gauge what multiple-choice questions cannot: a graduate's ability to communicate with patients..."

In parts Four and Five my interest waned as the author discussed how emotional training can improve society. Although the author suggests key improvements to pedagogy, the studies and extreme examples of what can go wrong with the emotional brain belabored the topic for me. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is closely analyzed, as is trauma, abuse, and bullies--all valid areas for discussion but beyond what is needed for demonstrating what emotional intelligence is and why it is important. Violence, social aggression, and certain neuroses resulting from emotional problems could have been explained in a shorter section. But the author deserves credit for offering solutions, and has an interesting theory that modernity is the cause for a worldwide trend of melancholy.

I would have liked more of the book devoted to the challenge of defining emotions. Of interest to me was Appendix A because it revealed the classification attempts made for emotions. The section considers a handful of "core" emotions with all other emotions being a blend of these; there also might be families of emotions with many nuances affecting moods and temperament.

This book reveals a big-picture outlook of the human brain and the emotional activity that is an intrinsic part of it. The thesis that emotional intelligence can be more important than IQ is well supported, but the author is not saying that it is necessarily better! (Previous reviewers of the book have created an EQ-versus-IQ polemic.) Both are critical facets of intelligence that must work together and neither can be dismissed.

Daniel Goleman makes an air-tight case as to why Emotional Intelligence is more a determiner of success than I.Q. His comments on page 80 perfectly encapsulates why this book should be required reading;

"To the degree that our emotions get in teh way of or enchance our ability to think and plan, to pursue training for a distant goal, to solveproblems and the like, they define the limits of our capacity to use our innate mental abilities, and so determine how we do in life. And to the degree to which we are motivated by feelings of enthusiasm and pleasure in what we do- or even by an optimal degree of anxiety-they propel us to accomplishment. It is in this sense that emotional intelligence is a master aptitude, a capacity that profoundly affects all other abilities, either facilitating or interfering with them."

Emotional Intelligence, or the lack thereof, is why we see so much violence in our society; road-rage, bullies in schools, broken marriages, spousal and child abuse...the list goes on. We, as humans, have no earthly idea how powerful our emotions are- how easily and powerfully they overwhelm our resoning capacities, and "common-sense," to our detriment, and to the detriment of those around us and the society at-large.

Who needs to read this book? Parents, spouses, (practice the principles of EI in your homes and watch the transformation) educators, counselors (teach EI principles to students and clients). After reading this book, you will never be able to look at the world in the same way, nor will you act toward others in the same way.

A truly life-changing book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and also found it really useful in helping me understand and improve my everyday interactions with the rest of the world. In some ways I was the ideal reader - strong in academic abilities, with a willingness to be convinced by reasonable argument, but less than successful in my relationships with other people.

I liked the way that Goleman approached the subject systematically rather than the "just do this and you'll be a superstar" con that is often seen in so-called self help books. Some of the points he makes about successful behaviour may seem obvious to some readers, but Goleman understands that millions of people have problems precisely because they have failed for years to grasp these very basic points.

The book also has substance. By that I mean that the subject and his analysis of it is worth the several hundred pages that he's written. Compare this with titles such as "Men are from Mars etc", the substance of which at best should have been confined to no more than a single magazine article.

I liked the writing style - covering the basics without being patronising, and being sufficiently rigorous without being boring - but most of all I judge the book as a success in educating me in a set of basic principles that may well enable me to lead a happier life. Now that's value for money at any price.

Anyone over the age of thirty soon comes to realize that what was taught in school is not necessarily all there is to know in life. Consequently, the smartest people, the ones who always got A's in school, don't always end up being the most successful. Ultimately, a high IQ is not the most important factor when one encounters the real world. In this respect, Goleman has hit upon a concept which deserves much more attention.

The brain is a mysterious entity. No one knows exactly how it works. Certain things are known however. The brain is divided into certain sections, each controlling various aspects of behavior. On the other hand, it is a single entity. Intelligence, or what we call IQ is only a small aspect of the total human being.

Emotions have long been labeled as inferior to intelligence. Over the past 2,000 years, a cultivated person has been defined as one who is logical, rational and thoughtful. Goleman dispels this notion however and insists that to a large extent, emotional intelligence determines how successful we become as human beings. Feelings, inner motivations and personal relationships are more important than the ability to spell or recite poetry.

This fact has major implications, especially for our educational system. Of course, the three R's are important, but the ability to deal with individuals and groups is just as important. We worry about intellectual illiteracy but don't pay much heed to emotional illiteracy. Schools can only do so much, however. In the end, it boils down to the family, and with the family in such disarray, one wonders if this, in itself, is not the underlying problem.

Emotional Intelligence is a monumental work.

Goleman's book successfully educates the reader on the importance of emotional intelligence and provides some insight into how our society has gone wrong in raising our children.

Everyone knows someone who is book smart but doesn't seem to possess common sense. Despite their intelligence they lack the skills needed to have successful relationships and a happy life. Goleman defines these skills in a succinct way so we can finally define what it means to be intelligent. Goleman proposes that we can instill this emotional intelligence in our children and provides the information needed to do so.

The violence that has erupted in our schools is top of mind in both educators and parents. This book is highly insightful for those searching for the answers. It explains why youth are more depressed, violent and aggressive than ever. Goleman spends a chapter explaining how emotional literacy can be integrated into our schools. He proposes that these programs will get to the root of our nation's problem and provide the long-term results that we so desperately need. I highly recommend this book to parents and educators and anyone else who thinks we as a society can do a better job raising our children.

This book started off with a wonderful detailed description of how the brain functions, spends the middle two-thirds explaining why we need to be able to identify and deal with our emotions when we are young, and then closes with real life examples where the principals have been used(schools) along some results. Makes a valid agruement for dealing with/becoming aware of our emotions during our youth but does not do much for the mature adult who wants to improve their own emotional intelligence. Ideal for a parent or any school administrator considering this type of course for their schools curriculum.