Archive for the ‘Emotional intelligence’ Category
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
Po Bronson is a first-rate journalist, and I’m sure NurtureShock is a wonderful book (I haven’t had a chance to see it yet). But in his Newsweek blog Po has mis-stated several of my positions. So for the record, let me begin to set the record straight by quoting from my Forward to the 10th anniversary paperback edition of Emotional Intelligence, where I write about one myth “widely repeated: the fallacy that ‘EQ accounts for 80 percent of success.’ This claim is preposterous.”
In the Forward I go on to explain that the misinterpretation stems from estimates that IQ accounts for around 20 percent of success in careers. This leaves 80 percent unaccounted for. But this does not mean emotional intelligence explains the rest of career success. As I wrote in Emotional Intelligence, a wide range of elements, from family wealth and education, to simple luck – including emotional intelligence to some degree –and many more factors are at play. Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book Outliers argues for chance opportunity as one such.
“Another common misconception,” I wrote in the Forward, takes the form of recklessly applying the importance of emotional intelligence to domains where it matters far less than IQ – academic achievement being the most obvious. When it comes to career success, the picture is more nuanced. IQ scores are the best predictor of what career rung we can manage. That’s what they were designed to do; IQ tests were first widely applied in sorting into the right specialty and rank millions of American soldiers during World War I.
But when it comes to predicting who among a talented pool of candidates within an intellectually demanding profession will emerge as an effective leader, IQ loses is predictive power. This is partly due to the “floor effect,” where in order to enter the top echelons of a given profession or large organization everyone has already been sifted for IQ. At those levels a relatively high IQ becomes a threshold ability – what you need to enter and stay in the game.
In my 1998 book Working with Emotional Intelligence I proposed that EI-based abilities more often than IQ-type abilities or technical skills are the discriminating competencies that predict who among a group of very smart people will lead most ably. This is a key point for anyone running an organization who must decide what abilities to look for in potential leaders. One methodology used in industrial/organizational psychology to make this judgment is called “competence modeling,” which contrasts highly effective leaders with mediocre ones, and determines what specific abilities the stars display that the others lack.
Organizations around the world use the competence modeling method to make personnel decisions, performing independent analyses of their own employees. As I wrote in the Forward, if you scan these competency models, “you discover that IQ and technical skills drop toward the bottom of the list the higher the position” (though they remain stronger predictors of excellence in lower-rung jobs). Competence models for leadership typically consist of anywhere from 80 to 100 percent EI-based abilities.”
I inadvertently may have added to the confusion about EI as a factor in success when I summarized this competence data in ways that were misconstrued as claiming that EI (I generally don’t use the term “EQ”) is more powerful in predicting career success than IQ. Once I realized that people did not understand the limited context and correct basis of this statement, I gave more qualifying information. Still, some press accounts and other secondary sources continue to misrepresent my views, as Po Bronson has done here.
Another point relates to the contrast between executive function and emotional intelligence. Po Bronson seems to say that executive function and emotional intelligence are in some kind of competition as concepts. Actually I would argue they are partly overlapping constructs. My model of emotional intelligence elaborates four domains of ability: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and interpersonal skill. The first two – self-awareness and self-regulation — are themselves elements of executive function, all of which are based in the operations of zones of the prefrontal cortex. Indeed, in writing about self-regulation in my 1995 book Emotional Intelligence I cite the work of Walter Mischel and his now-famous marshmallow test with four-year-olds, which assessed their ability to manage impulsivity and delay gratification – two key indicators of executive function. I would expect executive function and emotional intelligence (at least as described in my model – perhaps not with Salovey and Mayer’s) to correlate strongly with EF. That’s a question for further research.
Po also misrepresents curricula in social/emotional learning as a waste of time. An article by University of Illinois psychologist Roger Weissberg and colleagues at the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning, now in press in the journal Child Development, reports on a meta-analysis of more than 200 studies comparing students who had the program with those who do not. The results, as presented in an earlier version of this paper: The programs reduce violence and other antisocial behavior by around 10% and enhance positive behaviors like paying attention in class by the same margin – and benefits are greatest in schools that need it the most. Most intriguing, academic achievement test scores go up around 11 percent. That sounds like a program anyone would want their children to benefit from.
Another odd notion put forward by Po is that Peter Salovey represents the academic side of emotional intelligence and I represent the commercial side. I do not sell any product or service related to EI. The sole exception: like Peter Salovey I have co-authored an assessment tool for EI (this is standard practice among psychologists; the various IQ tests embody differing theories of intelligence and how to measure it and are designed by the theorist). Our assessment tools are available only to professionals. Salovey’s is recognized as the flagship general measure of EI; mine is the ESCI, designed specifically for leadership development. Both Peter (I consider him a friend) and I are members of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based at Rutgers. Our hope for the field is that rigorous research will more sharply define the EI construct, its correlates and its practical applications, all based on empirical data. That’s the way science grows and evolves. But good science takes time. Give it a decade, Po, and let’s revisit these issues.
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Saturday, July 18th, 2009 |
I recently spent an evening with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who has been dubbed “the happiest man in the world.” True, that title has been bestowed upon at least a few extremely upbeat individuals in recent times. But it is no exaggeration to say that Rinpoche is a master of the art of well-being.
So how did he get that way? Apparently, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Rinpoche a bit over the years, and always found him in good cheer. This meeting was no different. When I called him at his Manhattan hotel to arrange to get together before we were to discuss his new book, “Joyful Wisdom” at the 92nd St. Y, he told me he was in the middle of a shower – but not in the usual sense. The shower, he told me, had run out of hot water midway. When he called the front desk, he was told to wait several minutes and there would be more hot water. In this situation, I probably would have been peeved. But as Rinpoche told me this, he was laughing and laughing.
The only momentary glitch I’ve witnessed — a few years back — was slapstick: he sat down in an office chair with a faulty seat that suddenly plunged several inches with a thump. Once when this chair had done the same to me I cursed and groused about it for a while. But Rinpoche just frowned for a second — and the next moment he was his upbeat self again. Quickness of recovery time from upsets is one way science takes the measure of a happy temperament.
While annoyances like these are hardly life’s greatest tests, handling them gracefully takes a composure that few of us seem to have at our disposal.
Mingyur Rinpoche was not born into wealth and comfort. He spent his earliest years in a remote Himalayan village lacking even the most basic amenities. Nor was he a lucky winner in the genetic lottery for moods. In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how he cured himself of this chronic anxiety by making his fears the focus of his meditation. He has had to earn his good cheer.
Rinpoche seems eclectic in studying paths to well-being, including Western recipes. A few years ago, he attended a five-day meeting at the Mind & Life Institute that brought together a group of neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama to discuss ways to overcome destructive emotions. He found that the Western scientific findings on emotions had much in common with his own approach to cultivating well-being.
But when it comes to his own pursuit of happiness, Buddhist theory and practice are Rinpoche’s chosen tools. He has done several years-long meditation retreats, under the tutelage of some of the most renowned Tibetan masters. Of course, what we mean by “happiness” can be elusive, what with the myriad varieties of good feeling running from ecstasy to equanimity. One flavor of happiness at which Rinpoche seems to excel has been well-studied by scientists specializing in how emotions operate in our brains.
Richard Davidson, who heads the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, has found one distinct brain profile for happiness. As Davidson’s laboratory has reported, when we are in distress, the brain shows high activation levels in the right prefrontal area and the amygdala. But when we are in an upbeat mood, the right side quiets and the left prefrontal area stirs. When showing this brain pattern, people report feeling, as Davidson put it to me, “positively engaged, goal-directed, enthusiastic, and energetic.”
Mingyur Rinpoche came to Davidson’s lab as one of a dozen or so meditation adepts, each of whom had put in anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 lifetime hours of meditation. Research on expertise in any skill shows that world-class champs have put in at least 10,000 hours of practice; these were Olympic-level meditators.
One of the first findings from the research showed that when these adepts meditated on compassion, activity in key brain areas increased up to 100 percent, notably more than was the case in a control group who were taught the same meditation practice. The more lifetime hours of practice, the greater the increases tended to be. All this seems to confirm the idea that in the realm of positive moods, as in nearly every endeavor, worldly or spiritual, practice matters.
So can we all get a taste of Rinpoche’s bliss?
Davidson worked with Jon Kabat-Zinn, a teacher of mindfulness meditation from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, to see how a group of novices might gain from these methods. Kabat-Zinn, who has pioneered this contemplative method with medical patients to ease their symptoms, taught mindfulness at a high-stress biotech company; these beginners meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks. Davidson’s measures showed that after the eight weeks they had begun to activate that left prefrontal zone more strongly — and were saying that instead of feeling overwhelmed and hassled, they were enjoying their work. So while the Calvinist strain in American culture may look askance at someone sitting quietly in meditation, this kind of “doing nothing” seems to do something remarkable after all.
Of course, there’s no guarantee of greater happiness from meditation, but the East has given us a promising path for its pursuit.
Another fruit of these spiritual practices seems to be a healthy dose of humility. When Rinpoche told my wife that he was being billed as “the happiest man in the world,” he laughed as though that were the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
Originally posted at the New York Times Happy Days blog.
Posted in Emotional intelligence | 6 Comments »
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 |
When President Obama tells us he wants a compassionate Supreme Court justice with “empathy” for people’s struggles, he’s wandered into arguments within psychology of what we mean by the term.
There are at least three varieties of empathy, each with very different implications for spotting the right candidate. The first, cognitive empathy, means that we can understand how the other person thinks; we see his point of view. This makes for good debaters, sales people and negotiators. On the other hand, people who have strengths in cognitive empathy alone can lack compassion – they get how you see it, but don’t care about you. Psychologists speak of the “Dark Triad” – narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths, who can be slick with their arguments but have a heart of stone (think Dick Cheney).
The next variety, emotional empathy, refers to someone who feels within herself the emotions of the person she’s with. This creates a sense of rapport, and most probably entails the brain’s mirror neuron system, which activates our own circuits the emotions, movements and intentions we see in the other person. This lets us feel with the other person – but not necessarily feel for, the prerequisite for compassion.
That requires empathic concern, the third variety of empathy. Empathic concern means we not only understand how the person sees things and feels in the moment, but also want to help them if we sense the need. A study of empathic concern in seven-year-olds found that those who showed least concern when they saw their mother in distress were most likely to have a criminal record two decades later.
All three varieties of empathy should be at play in the compassionate nominee President Obama seeks.
Does that point to a woman as the likely best candidate? Maybe. Converging data confirms that women tend to be more empathetic on average than men, especially when it comes to emotional empathy. On the other hand, Ruth Jacobs, who coaches executives to boost leadership essentials like empathy, has found that among those who perform in the top ten percent on business outcomes, the men’s empathy is as strong as the women’s.
Empathy can be strengthened – at least some varieties. Paul Ekman, the psychologist who inspired the TV series “Lie To Me,” developed a web-based training tool that lets anyone (at least, me, when I tried it) up their ability to read another person’s emotions from their facial expressions. You can learn to detect super-fast facial tics that reveal a person’s true feelings – a way to sense when they might be lying, or denying that something upsets them, or that they are really attracted to so-and-so despite their protestations to the contrary.
Then there are the studies on “mindsight” of Dr. Daniel Siegel, a child psychiatrist at UCLA, that suggest these are essential human abilities we should be teaching every child. Since empathy is the basis of concern and compassion, should it be just for Supreme Court Justices?
Originally published at Huffingtonpost.com
Posted in Emotional intelligence | 12 Comments »
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 |
In his fascinating new book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong case that people owe their success to a lot more than IQ. He reviews data and offers convincing cases to show that above an IQ in the neighborhood of 110-115, IQ fails as a predictor of success in a career. In other words, you need to be smart enough to handle the cognitive complexity of the information you need for a given role or job, be it engineering, law, medicine, or business. That’s the IQ around 115. But after reaching that threshold of “smart enough,” your intellect makes little difference.
That explains why, when Harvard’s Howard Gardner reviewed longitudinal data that follows people from their early years into their career, he concluded that IQ alone predicts just 6 to 10 percent of career success. That leaves lots of room for other factors, like luck and circumstance. Gladwell makes the case for these very factors, arguing that one’s cultural and family background offer habits and outlooks that, given fortunate historical circumstances, can make some people highly successful.
But there’s more to the story.
Gladwell illustrates the case for circumstance and luck with fascinating tidbits about success, like the fact that Bill Gates and Bill Joy, two titans of the computing industry, just happened to be lucky in getting access to some of the earliest computers around in a day when almost no one had even seen one – and then were able to practice thousands of hours writing computer code starting in their teen years, and so get a jump on the fledgling software industry.
Or the fact that an entire generation of Jewish immigrants around the turn of the century was able to bring business and craftsmen’s skills they had mastered in Europe into entrepreneurial success in America. Their industrious and enterprising habits then became a model that benefited their children, some of who were to become lawyers. Those who happened to be born around 1930 and had easy access to good schooling because their generation had relatively few children; on entering a career in law, many were turned down by the most prestigious law firms of their day, but then went on to become enormously successful because they were the first to get involved in litigation for corporate takeovers – a business those other, more haughty law firms disdained.
There’s little doubt that the mix of such lucky circumstance and personal backgrounds matter for success. But there’s more to the story. A maxim of social science tells us that in some respects, every person is like every other person, like some other people, and like no other person. Gladwell has unpacked the middle range of factors, the ways certain groups or cohorts experience unique circumstances that can, with a bit of circumstantial luck, make them hugely successful.
But here’s where the rest of the story starts. Gladwell says nothing about individual differences within those groups or cohorts – why only some in that fortunate group go on to great success. He does not raise the next set of questions like: Why didn’t all the members of the school club that gave the young Bill Gates that early access to a computer become billionaires like him? Or why didn’t all the Jewish lawyers born in 1930 become huge successes like the handful of cases Gladwell focuses on?
Here a good part of the answer no doubt can be found in which individuals among those groups has a higher level of competencies like adaptability and initiative, the drive to continually improve performance, and empathy skills like sensing how another person thinks or feels. Such abilities give a person the drive to achieve, the initiative and the interpersonal effectiveness that success in a field like software (drive and initiative) and law (add in interpersonal effectiveness) require.
A massive amount of data collected by companies on their own people suggests that such personal abilities are the secret ingredient in success over and above those Gladwell describes so ably. The data I’m referring to derives from “competence modeling,” in which companies systematically analyze the abilities found in their stars (those in the top ten percent of performance by whatever metric makes sense for that specific job or role) but not found in counterparts who are mediocre. A goodly amount of these abilities – like initiative, the drive to achieve, and empathy — are in the emotional intelligence domain. Competence studies show that the higher a person goes up the organizational ladder, the more prominent the role these personal abilities play in performance. In other words, the more successful someone is, the greater the contribution of this skill set to his or her triumph.
This is good news for anyone who would like to see success in life shared widely, rather than given to a lucky few who happen to be born into a fortunate, charmed set of circumstances. One way to give every child a greater chance for career success – and a good life in general – would be to have curricula in social and emotional learning (see www.casel.org) a standard part of schooling. Data shows that children who are systematically taught social and emotional skills like how to manage their distressing emotions better, empathize and collaborate do better: have fewer problems like substance abuse and violence, like school more and pay more attention in class – and score significantly better (11%, on average) on academic achievement test scores.
The best news: the benefits are greatest in those schools where children need this boost the most, like those from the poorest families. That’s the rest of the story of success.
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social intelligence | 7 Comments »
Friday, November 21st, 2008 |
I found an intriguing answer to this question when I made a recent visit to the picturesque seaside city of San Sebastian, capital of Gipuskoako, one of three provinces that make up the Basque area of Spain. San Sebastian also happens to be a world-class center for the development of social and emotional intelligence, due to an ambitious initiative to upgrade these human aptitudes not just in schools, but also in families, communities, and businesses.
Thirty to forty percent of schools there have curricula in social/emotional learning, and more are being phased in. There are emotional intelligence programs for parents and families, even communities. And businesses in the region are incorporating emotional intelligence into their leadership training.
All this has come about largely through the efforts of a visionary leader, Jose Ramon Guridi Urrejola, the Minister for Technology and Innovation of the province. At his behest local scholars, educators, business people and community organizers are setting out to create a socially and emotionally intelligent society. I was impressed by the progress they are making.
The scope of this initiative can be seen in a series of publications issued by the Ministry:
- “Emociones y trabajo,” which focuses on emotional intelligence and work, and in organizations
- “Necesidades socio-emocionales en contextos socio-comunitarios,” which asseses the social and emotional needs of communities and society
- “Emociones y educacion,” fostering social/emotional learning for children in schools, and for family life.
(For those who read Spanish, the books are available at www.igipuzkoa.net.)
When I met Mr. Guridi, he told me that his inspiration had been a question I ask in my book Emotional Intelligence: If emotional literacy is so crucial for a child’s success in life, then why don’t we teach it to every child?
And so Mr. Guridi has followed this insight far beyond my own imagination.
I wonder if there are other parts of the world where similar efforts are underway – if you are aware of any, please let me know, at contact@danielgoleman.info.
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social and emotional learning | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 |
At last there’s a way to cool down before we flame online; those folks at Google have come up with a remedy for emotional hijacks at the keyboard.
A “flame” occurs when we’re a bit agitated – frustrated, anxious, jealous, emotionally desperate – and compose an email, hit “Send” … and regret having sent it.
This happens particularly often online, as I’ve explained in Social Intelligence, because the brain circuitry that kicks in to keep us from embarrassing ourselves while face-to-face on the phone with someone gets no signals online. The result has been called the “disinhibition” effect; what gets disinhibited is our emotional impulses.
The Google software helps by getting us to switch from the hot-tempered amygdala to our cool neocortex before we hit send. It’s a neat little device that requires you do about 45 seconds of math problems before the “send” button will operate. Called “Mail Goggles,” the software operates only late at night and on weekends, when we presumably are most predisposed to sending regrettable messages in the heat of the moment.
As Jon Perlow, the software engineer who developed Goggles explains: “Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
“When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?”
To check out this virtual emotional intelligence enhancer:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social intelligence | 8 Comments »
Sunday, August 24th, 2008 |
What’s the connection between our work and leading a good life?
Howard Gardner and I (we’ve known each other since our grad school days) had the chance to explore this question when we got together near Cambridge for a taped conversation (you can listen in on Good Work: Aligning Skills and Values, available from www.MoreThanSound.net). We explored the implications of Howard’s recent research, done with William Damon at Stanford and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, famous for his studies of “flow.” The team has been studying the ways in which people are able to combine excellence in their job with expressing their values – what they call “good work” (see their website, www.goodworkproject.org).
This concept has helped me think through the relationship between emotional/social intelligence and people’s values. As mounting research suggests, this aspect of intelligence can contribute greatly to making someone an outstanding performer at work – for leaders, social intelligence strengths are especially crucial to success. But that says nothing about the values a person brings to their job.
The research on good work makes clear that there are a sub-set of people (hopefully large), who combine excellence at work with positive values. When I asked Howard what he meant by “good” here, he said: “When we speak about ‘good’ work we speak about work that is excellent in quality, technically first rate; work that is engaging, personally meaningful, something that you really believe in and want to do; and work that is ethical, work that constantly thinks about its implications for others, for the broader community. We talk about it as being responsible or ethical. Think of them as an intertwined triple helix of three e’s: excellence, engagement, and ethics.”
A high level of emotional and social intelligence, it seems to me, would provide the excellence and engagement in this equation – and, hopefully, set the stage for the third ingredient in good work, ethics.
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social intelligence | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 |
Who among us has not gotten upset by an argument, an unsettling talk with our boss, or a bad grade?
And have you noticed that some of us get over these troubling encounters quickly, while others sulk or fume for a long time?
Just why people some people are better at recovery than others, and what that says about their brain function, was explained to me by Richard Davidson, the director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin. Richie, as I’ve known him for years, was a graduate student with me long ago, and I’ve often written about his groundbreaking neuroscience research in my books. This time I chatted with him for an audio CD, “Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills.”
To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with being upset by life’s setbacks or troubles; we’re wired for that. But some of us flip out at the smallest provocation, or hang on to the distress long after. And those differences, Davidson believes, represent underlying brain function.
When it comes to having a hair trigger or to staying preoccupied by an upset long afterward, the circuits around the amygdala, the brain’s alarm for threat, danger and fear, are at play. As Davidson told me, when his lab use brain imaging with such people, he finds a distinctive pattern in the mechanisms that release cortisol, a key stress hormone.
As I’ve described in Social Intelligence cortisol can be helpful at loswer levels; it’s crucial for mobilizing us to meet the demands of the day. But when cortisol surges through the body at high levels and stays there, we get stuck in emotional overdrive. This, Davidson tells me, impacts our health. David Spiegel at Stanford Medical School found that among women with metastatic breast cancer, those whose cortisol failed to go down at the end of the day ended up dying of cancer sooner.
People with phobias, Davidson finds, don’t have the problem of a prolonged stress response. Instead they have a super-quick amygdala response to what frightens them. That response trips with a wide range of innocuous things, too. It doesn’t take people phobic of spiders, say, any longer to recover than it does other people. But their initial surge of fear is so great that are apprehensive of that response itself – and go to great lengths to avoid whatever might trigger it (hence the phobia).
Then there are people who have very strong emotional responses, but who may or may not recover quickly or have a hair trigger. Davidson says that a strong response with a quick recovery may be quite adaptive emotionally.
Davidson’s intuition, he told me, is that people may gravitate to mates who have similar emotional styles – or perhaps drop partners whose style does not fit with their own. On the other hand, he conjectures, it would probably do well for someone prone to fits of anxiety to find an unflappable partner who might help them calm down.
And, he adds, whatever our emotional style, the very circuitry of the brain that determines it also happens to be the most plastic – that is, able to change with experience.
In our conversation he describes the good news: how mindfulness practice can help us modify these brain styles for the better.
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social intelligence | 17 Comments »
Friday, May 30th, 2008 |
The scene: a first-grade classroom in a Manhattan school. Not just any classroom, this one has lots of Special Ed students, who are very hyperactive. So the room is whirlpool of activity, some a bit frenzied. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to listen to a CD. The kids quiet down a bit. Then they get pretty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice tells them to listen to some sounds.
The voice asks them not to say the name of what they hear out loud, but just to themselves. But as they listen to the sounds, they don’t just lie there quietly, like other kids. These hyperactive kids listen with their whole body: when there’s the cry of a bird, they move their arms like a bird. But through it all they manage to calm down and stay focused through the entire six minutes.
The voice on the CD is mine, though the words are those of Linda Lantieri, an old friend and colleague. Linda has pioneered programs in social and emotional learning in the New York City public schools that have been adopted worldwide. Her newest program adds mindfulness for kids to the emotional intelligence tool kit, in one version to enhance focusing and attention, in another to help kids learn to calm themselves better. Linda’s book and CD Building Emotional Intelligence has instructions adapted to kids’ ages – one for five to seven, another eight to eleven, then 12 and up. And she explains how teachers or parents can best introduce these to kids.
Linda’s CD exemplifies the ways we can take advantage of neuroplasticity to help children master the abilities that are crucial for emotional intelligence. As Richard Davidson, founder of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin explained in a conversation we had, the kind of training Linda offers kids strengthens their neural circuitry for self-awareness, self-mastery, and empathy (to hear Davidson’s explanation, listen to the CD Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills).
(more…)
Posted in Emotional intelligence, Social and emotional learning | 6 Comments »
Sunday, April 20th, 2008 |
Those of us who struggle to resist junk foods or otherwise suffer a lack of will power will be heartened by some good and bad news from neuroscience.
First, the bad news. A slew of studies suggest that we each have a fixed neural reservoir of will power, and that if we use it on one thing, we have less for others. Tasks that demand some self-control make it harder for us to do the next thing that takes will power. In a typical experiment on this effect, people who first had to circle every ‘e’ in a long passage gave up sooner when they then had to watch a video of a fixed, boring, scene. The same loss of persistence has been found when people resist tempting foods, suppress emotional reactions, even make the effort to try to impress someone.
This all suggests we have a fixed will power budget, one we should be careful in spending. Some neuroscientists suspect that self-control consumes blood sugar, which takes a while to build up again, and so the depletion effect.
But the good news is that we can grow our will power; like a muscle, over time the more we use it, the more it gradually increases. But doing this takes, of all things, will power.
As the muscle of will grows, the larger our reservoir of self-discipline becomes. So people who are able to stick to a diet or exercise program for a few months, or who complete money-management classes, also reduce their impulse buying, how much junk food they eat and alcohol they drink. They watch less TV and do more housework. And this ability to delay grasping at gratification, much data shows, predicts greater career success.
This round-up of thinking on will power comes courtesy of Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, whose new book Welcome to Your Brain details the evidence about will power. But, writing in the New York Times, the duo pose a puzzle – while it’s clear that will power has limits, what brain mechanisms let us build it up?
That question brought to mind the conversation I had with Richard Davidson, an old friend and a brilliant neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin (the conversation is available from www.morethansound.net). Davidson’s research these days focuses on neuroplasticity: how our experience shapes the brain throughout life. One surprise: though most of us learned that we have a fixed number of brain cells when we are born, and that we lose them steadily until we die, brain science now tells us the brain makes about 10,000 new cells every day, and that they migrate to where they are needed. Once there, each cell makes around 10,000 connections to other brain cells over the successive four months.
One site that helps us build will power, Davidson’s research finds, is located in the left prefrontal cortex, the brain’s executive center located just behind the forehead. Our plans and goals hatch here, and impulses are executed via this zone. One neural circuit inhibits emotional impulse, and can be strengthened by a range of methods. As Davidson explained to me in our conversation, one kind of training that seems to do this is mindfulness training, a secular form of meditation widely used in settings from businesses to outpatient clinics.
There are ways, it seems, to make it easier to “just say no” when we need to
Posted in Emotional intelligence | 16 Comments »
Welcome to the website and blog of psychologist Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.