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Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ?

 

The beauty of working with our emotions is that we naturally reap the benefits of getting to know ourselves more intimately. When we have a clearer sense of who we are and who we are becoming, we can make wiser choices in life by strengthening our response ability to everything that happens “to” us.

——Melissa Karnaze

林明金导读：情商(EQ)一词，是1991年由美国耶鲁大学心理学家Peter Salovey和新罕布什尔大学的John Mayer首创的。在他们之前，1983年美国哈佛大学的心理学家Howard Gardner 在《精神状态》一书中提出，人有"多元智慧"，开启了情商学说的新智。把情商推向高潮的，依然是美国人，在心理学界并不知名的Daniel Goleman (《纽约时报》专栏作家)，1995年推出《情商》一书，一下子使"EQ"一词风行世界。情商概念的提出是人类智能的第二次革命，其主要观点包括：情商是个体的重要的生存能力，是一种发掘情感潜能、运用情感能力影响生活各个层面和人生未来的关键的品质因素。一个人在社会上要获得成功，起主要作用的不是智力因素，而是他们所说的情绪智能，前者占20%，后者占80%。 

 

The term emotional intelligence was coined by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990 and then popularised by Daniel Goleman in 1995 in his ground-breaking bestseller, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ?. According to Goleman, rational intelligence (or rather, intelligence quotient – IQ for short) only contributes about 20% to the factors that determine success in life. Some extraneous factors such as luck, and particularly the characteristics of emotional intelligence (or rather, emotional quotient – EQ for short), constitute the other 80%. These vital EQ characteristics are the abilities to motivate oneself and persist despite frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification（满足）; to regulate one’s mood and keep distress from overwhelming thought; and to empathise and to hope.

The study of emotion and its practical importance has interested people for many centuries. In the 1st century B.C., Publilius Syrus said: “Rule your feelings, lest your feelings rule you.” For David Packard, a guiding principle in developing and managing Hewlett-Packard has been the advice given by his football coach: “Given equally good players and good team-work in a championship, the team with the strongest will to win will prevail（获胜）.”

Yet, the developing of emotional strength was not explicitly regarded as a skill that can be learnt and mastered until Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence. Other authors have since further expanded the meaning, development and applications of emotional intelligence. The following are two simple definitions:

“EQ is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection and influence.”(Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf)

“EQ is the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” (Peter Salovey and John Mayer)

It is clear from these definitions that a person with high rational intelligence does not automatically possess high EQ.

EQ consists of five major qualities or characteristics: Self-awareness, Mood management, Self-motivation, Impulse control, and Interpersonal skills.

The first four can be broadly grouped under intrapersonal EQ. They each influence the development of one’s courage, perseverance, enthusiasm and passion. Such personal qualities are vital in competitive sports, breakthrough scientific research, inventions, entrepreneurship and extraordinary achievements. They also make the difference because creative solutions or radically new approaches are usually considered illogical based on conventional wisdom; they only become logical on hindsight（后见之明）.

The fifth quality can be called interpersonal EQ. It is the ability to understand other people: what motivates them, how they work, how to work co-operatively with them. It requires the fundamental skill of empathy – identifying oneself mentally with a person and understanding his/her feelings. Empathy makes other people feel safe enough to talk freely without fear of being judged. There is a great difference between listening and empathetic listening. In listening, we listen but may not hear what the speaker is saying; instead, we may be trying to interpret what they mean. In empathetic listening, we place ourselves in the speaker’s shoes, undergo what he/she is feeling and identify with his/her problems.

 

热词解析Hot Words

ground-breaking [ˈgraʊndbreɪkɪŋ] adj.  开创性的；创新的；革新的 You use groundbreaking to describe things which you think are significant because they provide new and positive ideas, and influence the way people think about things.

extraneous [ɪkˈstreɪniəs] adj.  外部的；无关的；不必要的 Extraneous things are not relevant or essential to the situation you are involved in or the subject you are talking about.

frustration [frʌ'streɪʃn]  n. 挫折；失败 A sense of frustration is the feeling of being annoyed, upset, or impatient, because you cannot control or change a situation, or achieve something.

empathise ['empəθaɪz] v. 有同感；产生共鸣；移情 If you empathize with someone, you understand their situation, problems, and feelings, because you have been in a similar situation.  

discriminate [dɪ'skrɪmɪneɪt] v. 区分；辨别 If you can discriminate between two things, you can recognize that they are different.

 

文化透视Cultural Notes

Peter Salovey    彼得·沙洛维于1985年获得耶鲁大学心理学博士学位，此后一直在耶鲁大学从事学术及管理工作近三十年。他先后担任过该校心理系主任、艺术与科学研究生院院长、耶鲁学院院长。2008年秋，被任命为教务长，是耶鲁历史上唯一一位有上述四个职位经历的校长。2013年11月他被任命为该校第23任校长。他的任命于2014年6月30日在Richard C. Levin卸任后生效。Peter Salovey (born 1958) is the Provost and the President-Elect of Yale University. He is also the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology. Salovey has authored or edited thirteen books translated into eleven languages and published more than 350 journal articles and essays, focused primarily on human emotion and health behavior. With John D. Mayer, he developed a broad framework called emotional intelligence, the theory that just as people have a wide range of intellectual abilities, they also have a wide range of emotional skills that profoundly affect their thinking and action.  In his research on health behavior, Salovey investigates the effectiveness of health promotion messages in persuading people to change risky behaviors relevant to cancer and HIV/AIDS.

 

IQ & EQ IQ系Intelligence Quotient的简称，即智力商数，具体是指数字、空间、逻辑、词汇、记忆等能力。是人们认识客观事物并运用知识解决实际问题的能力。智力的高低通常用智力商数来表示，用以标示智力发展水平。智商测验由法国的比奈（Alfred Binet，1857－1911） 和他的学生所发明，根据这套测验的结果，将一般人的平均智商定为100，而正常人的智商，根据这套测验，大多在85到115之间。While IQ (Intelligence Quotient) defines how smart you are, EQ (Emotional Quotient) defines how well you use what smarts you have. Peter Salovey, Yale psychologist and author of the term EQ, states that IQ gets you hired, EQ gets you promoted. He also suggests that it's important to redefine, in our complex world, what it means to be smart. In short, when it comes to "predicting future successes," brainpower, as measured by IQ and standardized achievement tests, may actually matter less than the character, or EQ of an individual.