What is the power of emotions?
Understanding what the other person feels is perhaps as useful as having Jedi power — you can get ahead of others and get your own. But is the concept of emotional intelligence scientific, and what can it help us to understand about ourselves? See our issue about the power of emotions with Anna Ulanova about this . Or read the decryption of this video under the cat, the most adapted for reading.
Emotions influence how we think, how we perceive information and what decisions we make. We all happened to do rash impulsive acts of which we later regretted. And how often strong feelings prevent us from taking a new step in our development, trying to do something new! - Emotions affect us. But can we always accurately understand how we feel and influence it? Who leads: do we control emotions or do emotions control us? To answer this question, we turn to the modern scientific concept and think: “And what is your emotional intelligence?”
First of all, it’s worth clarifying that emotion- This is a special type of information which we exchange. We do this through different channels, they are all known to us: facial expressions, gestures, postures, intonations. They allow us to judge what emotions we feel inside, what we feel and how we are going to behave. Why do we need this in principle? - The fact is that emotions play a significant role in adapting the body to the environment. Thanks to them, we understand how we behave in these circumstances and what is generally happening around. For example, the emotion of fear allows us to mobilize our forces at the right time and avoid a dangerous situation, and the emotions of anger or anger allow us to effectively protect ourselves. These emotional signals that we can catch from each other, we recognize with varying degrees of success, for example, one of us successfully expresses emotions (remember the actors, which we see in the cinema and in the theater), someone recognizes them well, and someone can influence other people with the help of their emotions. Well, someone has both the first and the second, and the third is not good enough.
To describe and study all these processes, the concept of emotional intelligence was developed . The leap in the scientific research of emotional intelligence came in the 90s of the last century. Interestingly, then the popular science book of journalist Daniel Golemangenerated this wave of interest of readers (then this book was sold in record runs and people were really interested in what kind of “emotional intelligence” it was). But on the other hand, Daniel Goleman received a big wave of criticism from psychology researchers - they criticized him for overly commercializing this area, for the lack of a systematic scientific approach, for the fact that his conclusions, which he draws in his book, are not based on real empirical evidence. But, as often happens, the popularity of fans has generated a lot of new scientific research.
More than 30 years have passed since then, that by scientific standards there are not so many (therefore, this area of research is considered young) and with the scientific concept of emotional intelligence, everything is actually not so simple - researchers interpret it differently (sometimes very wide). And there are actually much more loud statements about the importance of emotional intelligence than real empirical data. Let's look at what we know about emotional intelligence at the moment and which of the conventional wisdom is a confirmed fact:
- We can say that there is no generally accepted concept of emotional intelligence. Some see it as an ability and distinguish it: identification (how we perceive emotions), using emotions to solve problems, understanding and analyzing emotions (when we can already say exactly what we feel), and, most difficult, regulation of emotions (and here it’s nice news: if emotional intelligence is an ability, then it can be developed).
Others believe that emotional intelligence is a set of certain traits, for example, social skills, empathy, self-knowledge. - Since the area is quite young, there is still not enough information about what happens to emotional intelligence in childhood (where it comes from). Most studies have been conducted on adults, but there is evidence that in childhood emotional intelligence is just beginning to form, it is actively developing and by the age of 30 it reaches the level that persists until about 50 years, after which certain aspects of emotional intelligence begin to get worse. Attempts are being made to find a connection between emotional intelligence and various personal characteristics: for example, a correlation was found with extraversion, openness to experience, and with psychometric intelligenceat the same time, a threshold connection was found - that is, it is necessary, but not enough for the development of emotional intelligence.
- There is a commercial request to study the relationship of emotional intelligence with the effectiveness of study and work. However, the argument that emotional intelligence is 70–90% related to success in this area is an exaggeration. Rather, it can be said that different profiles of emotional intelligence correspond to different types of activity. For example, in a certain profession there is a specific request, for example, a sales manager needs to be able to emotionally affect his customers - the higher his indicators in this aspect of emotional intelligence are, the more success he will achieve in his career. However, at the same time, he may not well understand and analyze the emotions with which he acts on people.
- There is scientific evidence that the profiles of emotional intelligence in men and women are slightly different. Women have a wider range of emotions that they perceive and use in their own lives, but the reasons for such differences have not yet been sufficiently studied.
Is it good or bad to have high emotional intelligence?
On the one hand, it allows us to solve difficult life situations and achieve our goals. But on the other hand, this does not always have a positive effect, for example, there is evidence that people who better recognize emotions are more prone to depression and pessimism.
There is a point of view that emotional intelligence is a manifestation of how we currently correspond to the environment in which we find ourselves. Well, for example, in the usual home or work environment, we show high emotional intelligence, and in an unusual environment, we get lost and do not know how to behave. Therefore, from this point of view, the question "Is it necessary to develop emotional intelligence?" turns into the question “Do we need to adapt to that multifaceted complex world in which we live?” - Of course you need! But how to do that? - There are a couple of tips that are tested by psychologists in practice:
- Watch people around you and what emotions they experience, what kind of behavior they demonstrate.
It sounds very simple, but, in fact, in our daily lives we are very inattentive to each other and miss a lot of emotional signals that could tell us what the other person feels and how he is going to behave. If we put ourselves in an enriched emotional environment, communicate with different people, read good books, watch films - in this way we accumulate a large number of different experiences, which in the future allows us to behave correctly in the situation in which we found ourselves for the first time. - Observe yourself
Knowing how emotional we are, how often, how long we experience emotions in our typical life situations, allows us to regulate these conditions in the future and not step on the same rake.
And in conclusion: yes, emotions affect us. But from childhood we learn to cope with them, analyze, predict their appearance in ourselves and in others.
To cope with emotions does not mean to be non-emotional and suppress emotions, it means to make sure that your emotions do not harm other people and lead you to achieve your goal.
Make friends with your emotions and may science be with you.
We remind you that this was a transcript of our video “WHAT IS THE POWER OF EMOTIONS? | IQ "(just in case, attach the video again):