Book Review

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman   

Why it can matter more than IQ

“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self- awareness, is you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are not going to get very far.” – Daniel Goleman

Every person around us has a feeling, sensation and some kind of emotions towards different situations, people, things and experiences.  Emotions are the most important aspect of a human being.  Emotions are a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstance, mood or relations with others. Due to emotions, people react to different situations. Every person’s reaction is different from another person even though the situation is the same. Like in a room there two people sitting a watching a movie, and suddenly a person entire the house wanting to steal something and realizes these people are awake watching television. One person could differently by just becoming mute and getting scared looking at the thief who has entire the house, the other person could immediately fight with the thief or may not panic so much that he could be in his right mind to call the police before anything horrible could happen. the thief who has entire the house would also be shocked to see them awake and would react in a way that he would threatening these people and trying to flee from the situation. So from this we see the different emotions of people that is - panic, fear, immediately reaction. Emotions are also in the form of happiness, sad, love, hate and joy.

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. We see that people are understanding, communicating, reasoning, learning, having self-awareness, planning and problem solving. They also have emotional knowledge.

Emotional Intelligence is that ability to identify, assess and control the emotions on self, of others and the groups present. “Emotional Intelligence as knowing ones emotions managing ones emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others and handling relationships” – Daniel Goleman.

The book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman is about introducing the concept of emotional intelligence, bring out self –awareness, self- motivation, self –esteem, impulse control, mood management, and people skills.  He explains all these concepts through many different examples that have occurred. Every chapter he explains with different examples and we see how people react in different situations.

The Part One of the book – The Emotional Brain - This chapter is again sub-divided into two parts which are; What are emotions for? And Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking.

In this chapter he starts off with different examples and explains what are emotions for, how emotions play around and what we do or react when we are emotional.  There is this one example which he gives of the parents scarifies for their child who is on a wheelchair in an accident. The emotion love is what the parents show for their child’s life than their own. They make sure that their child is safe and living that than taking caring for themselves.  In this chapter he explains the impulse feeling in one body in situations. Like when the emotion love is shown, it can be in different form like – tender feeling, sexual satisfaction or arousal, then the emotion fear where the body is scared and the blood rush all over the body and the you start to panic, run around,  and may do something wrong too. When the emotion angers is projected out we see that bloody flow in the body very fast, the person may turn red and without think would rasp a weapon and do something  in that fury which he may not realize what he is doing and later realize what has happened.  He also explains the emotion surprise, disgust and sadness and how the people may react to all these reactions.  In the part of the Anatomy of Hijacking the Brain he explains how the amygdale reacts before the message has reached the cortical centers. Here when the message has been visualized it goes to the visual cortex to be assessed and then a signal goes to the amygdale where the emotional centers are activated. From there a small part of the original message is sent through the thalamus to the amygdale in a quicker transmission where the response is faster than usual. By this the amygdale triggers the emotional response before the cortical centers which would have fully understood the situation or the message. He gives more examples which link to the emotional responses.

The Part two of the book is about  The Nature of Emotional Intelligence – which is sub-dived into six parts  that are – When Smart is Dumb , Knowing Thyself, Passion’s Slaves, The Master Aptitude , The  Roots of Empathy and The Social Art.

In this chapter we again see that he takes different examples. He tells us how people who are smart and something happens that they did not expect or think that did not deserve, and by doing a not so smart move, their dreams are broken apart. He says that how can somebody so smart do such a thing and his life just changes. He says that even if people are academically intelligent they are also very much emotional in their life. They do have an emotional life that is revolving around them.  He explains about IQ in the chapter, how people with perfect and highest test score are not really good and successful in their life compared to those people who have score les on them. He says they were not so happy with their life, family, friends and romantic relations.  We see the example of Judy matching her class with the perfect match as best friends. For a four year old who is a social map for her class, when she becomes big and she is working she would have good working and people skills already.

He also talks about the Marshmallow Test which was done by Walter Mischel a Psychologist. For this test a group of four year olds were brought in. They were presented with a single marshmallow in a room and were told to wait till the in charge had returned to get another marshmallow if they had eaten this first one. And if they had eaten they would have not got the second marshmallow and if they did not eat the first one they would get another. Some of the children waited anxiously for the in charge to be back to be able to eat the first marshmallow and have another one. Some of them could not wait and slowly starts eat it. These children would stare at the marshmallow, maybe take a lick of it, and then start taking tiny bites of it from its corner area and make the above of the marshmallow look the same so as to get another marshmallow. Phils Peake a psychologist did further study that was like a follow of the marshmallow test – where we could see the ability of delayed gratification for an extra marshmallow.  These people who had this ability could score better in their SAT tests than the IQ that was measured at the age of four. This happens because the IQ- test that was made for children were different from these SAT tests. So from this his point of view was about self- discipline and determination.

The Part – 3 of the book talks about Emotional Intelligence Applied – and is subdivided into three parts they are; Intimate Enemies, Managing with Heart and Mind and Medicine.

In this part of the book, he talks about awareness, capabilities and leadership skills. He also talks about the different emotional in a marriage. He focus on the emotions and the way they expressed by males and female from the childhood time through their adult life. By knowing the emotions of a person we will get to know how they will behave and we can also react to in a better way. Like if the person is really angry and frustrated we can control his behavior and help him calm by hearing him out first and then getting him calm. He talks about how to manage relationships. He also talks about the boss and subordinate works relationship. How it should be maintained under a high stress period of time. how to control the pressure the boss gives at a point of time in work which may lead to frustration and anger which will affect the person heart or if the person lets go of the frustration the relations built between him and his boss may change and he would be at major loss in his job career.

Part – 4 of the book talks about Windows of Opportunity and is subdivided into three parts they are; The Family Crucible, Trauma and Emotional Relearning, Temperament is not Destiny

In this chapter we see that he looking at parenting. He is looking at a child’s emotional responses and how it plays a major role to the emotional intelligence level. This emotional response shows the intelligence level the child will have. He explains that when the child learns at school there is something the child will learn and benefit out of it. The child will be confident, curious, self control, relatedness, communication capacity will be better and the child will be cooperative when he or she learns all this in school. The emotional intelligence level will be better and good.

The most striking information in the book for me is that, there is this one example where couple who came home at 1 am after visiting their friends. They thought that their daughter was staying the night over at her friends place. But she was in her room waiting to for her parent to come and to surprise and scare them. And when her dad came to her room to check if somebody was around, she came out and scared him and he without any realization shot her. It did not register yet to him that it was his daughter who jumped to scare him and that he had shot her, after few seconds it registered to him that it was his daughter whom he shot and now because of him he is dead. This one of the striking information for me because as we know the information travels fast to the brain but our reactions are in such a way that even without realizing anything we first to do the unneeded thing and then realize what we have done is wrong and what we should have done is what comes late from our brain even though information is passed through the body fast it is also a slow and not so controlled to be able to stop our reactions. 

            This book teaches a lot of things which a person may not realizes in his everyday life. He may not realize that his emotions play around him to get his way though his life. The person may be happy about his life but one small move that could happen to emotions playing around him and he does something bad, all that he may have in his life may just disappear. I feel that this book could be read by everybody and it would benefit in their life. They would become more aware of their reactions offend or benefit others or themselves. They would be more conscious and aware when they are taking important decision, acting on something. I feel that even the persons IQ is high and good, he still has some kind of emotions in him even thought he does not agree to them. Emotions would and will play an important role in everybody life however their IQ is.

Maya Chandrashekaran

FSLE-3