Daniel Goleman - Author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence

One of my most basic assumptions about the relationship between mental effort and brain function has begun to crumble. Here’s why.

My earliest research interests as a psychologist were in the ways mental training can shape biological systems. My doctoral dissertation was a psychophysiological study of meditation as an intervention in stress reactivity; I found (as have many others since) that the practice of meditation seems to speed the rate of physiological recovery from a stressor.

My guiding assumptions included the standard premise that the mind-body relationship operates according to orderly, understandable principles. One such might be called the “dose-response” rule, that the more time put into a given method of training, the greater the result in the targeted biological system. This is a basic correlate of neuroplasticity, the mechanism through which repeated experience shapes the brain.

For example, a string of research has now established that more experienced meditators recover more quickly from stress-induced physiological arousal than do novices. Nothing remarkable there. The dose-response rule would predict this is so. Thus brain imaging studies show that the spatial areas of London taxi drivers become enhanced during the first six months they spend driving around that city’s winding streets; likewise, the area for thumb movement in the motor cortex becomes more robust in violinists as they continue to practice over many months.

George Lucas and Daniel Goleman discuss the many ways that social and emotional learning enhance the education process.  Read the interview at edutopia.org: http://www.edutopia.org/lucas-goleman-social-emotional-learning

In Social Intelligence I noted longterm trends that signal a gradual corrosion of opportunities for people to connect – networks of friendships shrinking, families spending less time together, a decline in social gatherings. Though many of us sense this trend toward a loss of connection, the data tracking it has been piecemeal.

Now that’s about to change. The National Conference on Citizenship, a group dedicated to promoting civic ties, is going to track how engaged with each other people are, as part of what it calls a “Civic Health Index.” The Index will track 40 key civic indicators measuring levels of political activity, civic knowledge, volunteering, trust, and charitable giving – in part, a measure of our collective social intelligence. The group sees the index as a way to track signs of weakness in the civic fabric, to more systematically measure the trends announced in Robert Putnam’s eloquently titled book, Bowling Alone. Well and good. But I’d like to see some efforts made to reverse the trend, rather than simply document it.

“How can people improve their emotional intelligence competencies?”

That’s a question I’m often asked, most recently by Bill George, former CEO of Medtronics, and now a professor at Harvard Business School. Bill co-authored True North, one of the best books I’ve seen on leadership. Bill’s question was pointed: he uses my articles and books on emotional intelligence and leadership in his class. These make the case for why leaders need these human skills. But when it comes to how people can strengthen them, Bill has been frustrated by the lack of materials that would help his students.

There are many views of how to enhance emotional intelligence abilities; the Consortium on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations lists the best practices, based on a survey of research studies. A workbook, due out in 2008 from Harvard Business School Press, puts these into practice; it’s written by my colleagues Annie McKee of the consulting firm Teleos, Richard Boyatzis who teaches in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and Frances Johnston, who works with Annie. Reuven Bar-On is lead editor on an excellent survey of approaches, Educating People to Be Emotionally Intelligent.

When I wrote about psychological insights into e-mail in the New York Times and on this blog, a tide of responses came washing through which have refined my own thinking. My appreciation goes to all those who wrote in.

First, let me confess to a fundamental flaw: while I made a sharp distinction between communication face-to-face or by phone, on the one hand, and e-mail on the other, I failed to compare e-mail and old-fashioned letters.

As one reader noted, “Writing is always better with review and revision.” That careful reconsideration was a far more common practice back in the more leisurely day when writing a letter could take several drafts before the sender was satisfied. Rare is the e-mail that gets re-written, polished and sanded – and only then, sent.

I suspect one culprit is the lure of the “Send” button; this may well prime the brain’s premotor cortex to be a bit hair-trigger, shooting the e-mail across the Internet well before second thoughts have time to alter the message. This impulsivity, when driven by the amygdala (that is, when we feel peeved and the like), has been called the “online disinhibition effect,” or, more commonly, flaming.

There was a revealing moment at the third annual “All Things Digital” conference, a gathering of super-techies, featuring digerati luminaries like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. As speakers took the stage, the dimness of the ballroom hall was illumined by the ghostly glow of laptop screens — attendees were using the building’s WiFi to check their e-mail and surf the Web even while presenters spoke.

Those glued to their screen were in what one called a state of “continuous partial attention,” a mental blurriness induced by an overload of information inputs from the speakers, the other people in the room, and the glow of their laptop screens. So the conference hosts unplugged the ballroom’s WiFi, that lifeblood of digital connectivity. Throughout the room there was an eerie electronic silence, as the screens blinked off.

But there was still WiFi out in the hall, where a knot of attendees decamped to post blogs announcing to the world what had just happened. Two camps emerged. One argued that people at the conference should be fully present, paying attention to what was going on in the room. The other side contended that they were being present, but to a wider social world, their virtual audience .