Good information on Emotional Intelligence?

[Jeff Corey]

This is simply incorrect. There is a vast literature in human experimental psychology that does not use questionnaires.

 

[blutoski]

This is simply incorrect. There is a vast literature in human experimental psychology that does not use questionnaires.

Well, I was generalizing. The context was whether 'success' is independently verifiable, and my point was that just because we don't have a dipstick to measure success doesn't mean it's impossible to see if certain personality metrics are more likely to find success than others.

In the context of 'emotional intelligence', we're pretty much in the la-la land of questionnaires.

 

[Rustle]

I'm having trouble answering the questions: What do you mean by "it"? Science? Psychology? Emotional IQ?

Emotional Intelligence Theory. If it isn't predictive, what is the point of it?

I think your analogy is inappropriate. I'm saying that the specific measurement of success used in this test, and many others, is asking a subject if they are successful according to their own criteria. This is close to a real-world definition, and why it is popular within the literature. Success is a cognitive factor, not a behavior.

(emphasis mine)

Oh dear where to start. You said that "asking a subject if they are successful according to heir own criteria" is popular in the literature because "[it] is close to a real world definition" of success. You know what is even more like a real world definition of success? A real world definition of success. Why not use that? What you're talking about is "self-efficacy", which can often have little to do with what we would ordinarily consider "real world success". For example, a painter could be manic, report being "EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL!!!!! I AM PAINTING MY MASTERPIECE THAT WILL RESOUND THROUGH THE AGES!!!111", and yet be completly broke and producing a lot of what most people would consider "ugly paint splashes". Another painter might be depressed, report being "a complete failure in all ways, and I paint nothing but garbage", and yet produce works of great acclaim that sell for large amounts of money. Self-efficacy can have nothing to do with most objective measures of success. If you confuse success with self-efficacy, then you've put your theory of EQ on shifting sand. If EQ only predicts "self-efficacy", then I think a lot of executive types will be dissapointed. You can be quite happy with your own work, and still be a completely crappy employee. High self-efficacy, low success.

This is assuming of course that we are talking about "job effectiveness as assessed by a supervisor" to be success! You have to define some of this stuff before you can base a theory on it, and that is where EQ falls down. It is so very vague: it agrees on nothing, defines little, predicts less, and makes a lot of excuses. It is crap science, crap psychology, crap theory, and is crap as a product sold to executives and educators.

I'm well aware of the breadth of the psychological field. That is precisely the reason I found your statement "The debate isn't about whether EI or ES are scientific, since it's psychology we're dealing with here." to be really astounding. The vast majority of psychologists that I've known would find this to be an egregious insult.

 

[Kaylee]

(Post #12)
It's more the application that's fraudulent. It's an embryonic field of study. There's maybe, *maybe* twelve years of study, and not a lot is really confidently known. This has not stopped people from putting up a shingle and selling their consulting services to HR departments across the country.

OK, I see what you're saying now. I'm skeptical that EI could be applied successfully in a corporate setting. Most employees know what their employer wants and will do their best to answer questions accordingly.

I would be more optimistic about EI metrics being developed and measured for a private and confidential setting. Perhaps it could be used as an aid to help people recover from physical and/or emotional abuse. Or perhaps it could be used to help "tutor" people in this area who lag behind for whatever reason. Maybe this is being done already?

Read it. Critiqued it. The book exhausts me in the same way that creation science books exhaust me. The references rarely support the claims being made when they're refd in the text. The authors of the references have mostly disowned Goleman and resent his misrepresentation of their works.

There's also a decade of bad blood between Mayer and Salovey who did real peer-reviewed research and opened the field of EI in 1992, versus Goleman who popularized a bastardized version of EI and EQ in a non-fiction book and made millions consulting with fourtune 500s.

Well that's annoying. I read this book a long time ago as well as other sources on the topic. I don't recall what aspects of EI/EQ I learned from where, so that means that right now what I think I know about EI/EQ could very well be wrong.

On the other hand, since I don't know what Mayer and Salovey point of contentions are with Goleman, it could very well just be sour grapes over Goleman being able to get so much of the corporate consulting budgets funneled his way. {shrug} I could see them being especially annoyed about this if they felt that they had done the real leg work. Research and sales are two very different abilities, and my guess is that often there are hard feelings between the technical and "marketing" people in any field.

(Post #17)
Here's a critique in the critical thinking website:
Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence

... I also have read a Critical Review of Daniel Goleman (www .eqi.org/gole.htm, I can't post URL at the moment) that discusses how he misled the public with the EI idea. I don't know whether it should be regarded as credible information.

Thanks for the web sites, as I have time -- I will read them. I am hoping that at least one of them will specify what the exact difference of opinions are between Mayer & Salovey and Goleman are.

 

[chance]

My interpretation:

IQ – observation, some people are smarter than others. Tests that can measure to some degree how smart you are. But it’s based on the ability of putting 1 and 1 to get 2 type of reasoning.

EQ – observation, just because some people are smarter than other, why is it that some smart people do not do well while others less smart do, do well? . The inference now is that, “there must be something else” .
BUT that may be a false inference. Other factors just as likely to influence, Looks, sex, political/social affiliations, environment, luck etc

 

[blutoski]

I'm well aware of the breadth of the psychological field. That is precisely the reason I found your statement "The debate isn't about whether EI or ES are scientific, since it's psychology we're dealing with here." to be really astounding. The vast majority of psychologists that I've known would find this to be an egregious insult.

I'm aware they get upset, but their reaction doesn't alter my opinion. This is a discussion that goes beyond the subject of EQ. As I said, this usually degenerates in to quibbling over the meaning of 'scientific.'

 

[blutoski]

My interpretation:

IQ – observation, some people are smarter than others. Tests that can measure to some degree how smart you are. But it’s based on the ability of putting 1 and 1 to get 2 type of reasoning.

EQ – observation, just because some people are smarter than other, why is it that some smart people do not do well while others less smart do, do well? . The inference now is that, “there must be something else” .
BUT that may be a false inference. Other factors just as likely to influence, Looks, sex, political/social affiliations, environment, luck etc

That's the starting point for emotional awareness studies in the late '80s and early '90s, from which EQ evolved. However, there are complications with this summary:

1. IQ predicts success better than any other metric, correlations are about 0.8, which is pretty high.

2. Nevertheless, EQ advocates say there's only about a 0.2 correlation between IQ and success. (debatable, so let's give them this for the sake of argument)

3. They then assert that the remaining 80% must be emotional awareness, designed a test for it, and advertise it as much more predictive than IQ testing. They skipped the part where they proved that the 80% of success unexplained by IQ was explained by emotional awareness.

For all we know, IQ counts for 20% (minimum) predictive power, and EQ 1%, with the remaining 79% unexplained. This is not, however, the way they promote it.

 

[blutoski]

OK, I see what you're saying now. I'm skeptical that EI could be applied successfully in a corporate setting. Most employees know what their employer wants and will do their best to answer questions accordingly.

I would be more optimistic about EI metrics being developed and measured for a private and confidential setting. Perhaps it could be used as an aid to help people recover from physical and/or emotional abuse. Or perhaps it could be used to help "tutor" people in this area who lag behind for whatever reason. Maybe this is being done already?

EI metrics are themselves not necessarily informative to the layperson being surveyed. However, you are correct that then can inform therapists, and I believe they hold promise here.

Well that's annoying. I read this book a long time ago as well as other sources on the topic. I don't recall what aspects of EI/EQ I learned from where, so that means that right now what I think I know about EI/EQ could very well be wrong.

On the other hand, since I don't know what Mayer and Salovey point of contentions are with Goleman, it could very well just be sour grapes over Goleman being able to get so much of the corporate consulting budgets funneled his way. {shrug} I could see them being especially annoyed about this if they felt that they had done the real leg work. Research and sales are two very different abilities, and my guess is that often there are hard feelings between the technical and "marketing" people in any field.

Thanks for the web sites, as I have time -- I will read them. I am hoping that at least one of them will specify what the exact difference of opinions are between Mayer & Salovey and Goleman are.

For one thing, M&S do not believe that the ECI-360 is a test of EQ. That's a showstopper, afaic. I understand that this dispute can be characterized as sour grapes, and there's some truth to this in all academic fields. However, the literature is very different than what Goleman portrays, so the key complaint is that Goleman is not actually selling what academics call EI. It is pretty easy to see that he has invented his own patented flavour of business management tools, inspired by EI research, but not really based upon it. ie: they are not accusing him of stealing their EI ideas, but of selling his own ideas, and calling it EI.

 

[Kaylee]

For one thing, M&S do not believe that the ECI-360 is a test of EQ. That's a showstopper, afaic. I understand that this dispute can be characterized as sour grapes, and there's some truth to this in all academic fields. However, the literature is very different than what Goleman portrays, so the key complaint is that Goleman is not actually selling what academics call EI. It is pretty easy to see that he has invented his own patented flavour of business management tools, inspired by EI research, but not really based upon it. ie: they are not accusing him of stealing their EI ideas, but of selling his own ideas, and calling it EI.

Can you recommend something by M&S to read?

This may be off topic, but should M&S have copyrighted the name EI? And then allowed others to use the term only as long as they stuck to the same definition? Or is that something simply not done in academics?

 

[Rustle]

1. IQ predicts success better than any other metric, correlations are about 0.8, which is pretty high.

2. Nevertheless, EQ advocates say there's only about a 0.2 correlation between IQ and success. (debatable, so let's give them this for the sake of argument)

3. They then assert that the remaining 80% must be emotional awareness, designed a test for it, and advertise it as much more predictive than IQ testing. They skipped the part where they proved that the 80% of success unexplained by IQ was explained by emotional awareness.

For all we know, IQ counts for 20% (minimum) predictive power, and EQ 1%, with the remaining 79% unexplained. This is not, however, the way they promote it.

WHAT IS SUCCESS.

Your definitions change on the fly from sentence to sentence.

What is success?

How should we measure success?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

How should we measure EQ?

What does EQ theory predict?

Can this prediction be tested?

What correlations have been observed between EQ as you just defined it, and success, as you just defined it and don't flip to some other definition because it fits your needs in this sentence please?

How can you say "EQ advocates say there's only about a 0.2 correlation between IQ and success. " when you just got done saying "we don't have a dipstick to measure success". How can you correlate with something you can't measure?? And you're STILL confounding self-efficacy with success, which I suppose is easy to do when you won't define success in the first place.

 

[Dancing David]

I'm surprised. What could be woo about having the ability to manage one's emotions well and interelate well with others? These type of skills obviously vary widely, and I think it would be interesting to be able to pinpoint exactly what part of the brain is responsible for those abilities, and/or to determine if or how much they can be improved and how.

Just call me very surprised, I didn't realize this was an area that was widely disrespected.


Have you looked at the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman? It was written for the lay audience, but it has almost 30 pages of footnotes. (Yeah, I have a copy of the book. ) Perhaps your local library or bookstore has a copy, and you could see if any of the footnotes would point you towards a worthwhile double blinded study. You may also find what you need in the sources for Appendices D, E & F.

I have read it as well, but it is very unscientific, it contains a lot of what is reffered to as qualitative research, and a lot is purely anecdotal. The idea is a good one, but not yet developed or researched very well. So it is sort of a good introduction to an idea that needs to be studied, as someone who works with adults it has little to offer in terms of practical stuff. It covers a great idea however.

There is a lot of school based stuff usualy under character or conflict reduction education. It is something that counselors and social workers do on a daily basis and so it is part of the therapeutic prcess, but not a lot on standard testing.

 

[Roboramma]

Oh dear where to start. You said that "asking a subject if they are successful according to heir own criteria" is popular in the literature because "[it] is close to a real world definition" of success. You know what is even more like a real world definition of success? A real world definition of success. Why not use that?

Success at what?
Most people concider themselves successful when they have acheived their goals. The problem is that everyone has different goals. One person might want to climb mount everest, another to retire at 40, another to send his kids to college, another to write a novel.
All of these things would be success for that individual. Their intelligence certainly has a part to play in whether or not they acheive those things. Does their emotional intelligence also have a part to play? Does the concept have meaning? I don't know.

This is assuming of course that we are talking about "job effectiveness as assessed by a supervisor" to be success!

Why would we do that? If someone doesn't care about their job effectiveness, we wouldn't expect this "emotional intelligence" to positively correlate with it.

It's all well and good to have a nice clear-cut definition, and useful too. But your definition also has to be informtive. I could define success as how many hamburgers you can eat - more successful people being able to eat more hamburgers. It would be very easy to measure, but I don't think it would tell me much.

 

[Rustle]

Success at what?
Most people concider themselves successful when they have acheived their goals. The problem is that everyone has different goals. One person might want to climb mount everest, another to retire at 40, another to send his kids to college, another to write a novel.

Yes exactly my point! We can quantify "trips to the top of mt. everest", "retirement at 40", "novels written", and "percentage of kids tuition paid". Which of these things is EQ positively correlated with? Are you going to tell me that people that write novels are likely to have high EQ? Writers as a group have an over representation of substance abuse, bipolar disorder, and introversion, so I'd find this to be a really interesting claim. However, its something we could talk about, if that is your definition of success. Putting your kids through college and retiring at 40 both have to do with making money. Are you going to say that income level is positively correlated with EQ? I would doubt that, but it is something we could argue about. However, by not defining success in any of these objective ways, EQ gets out of all the hard work of being valid. At the moment, EQ is correlated with one thing: a self assessment of success in life. I am saying that this is a seperate entity from mountain climbing, book writing, or money making.

Why would we do that? If someone doesn't care about their job effectiveness, we wouldn't expect this "emotional intelligence" to positively correlate with it.

We would do it so that we could actually be talking about something. At the moment, we're talking about nothing.

It's all well and good to have a nice clear-cut definition, and useful too. But your definition also has to be informtive. I could define success as how many hamburgers you can eat - more successful people being able to eat more hamburgers. It would be very easy to measure, but I don't think it would tell me much.

It would tell you something. By not defining success, and relying on self-report inventories, you are describing and predicting nothing.

I feel like I'm repeating myself to a large degree, so I think I'm going to stop posting on this thread. My opinion is, this is like a discussion on the existence of god. If you can't define what you mean by "god", then you can't have a debate.

 

[chance]

I must admit this is one of the most interesting threads I’ve read for some time.

Question for the informed on this subject – we are all familiar with IQ tests (sequences patterns, etc). So:

a. Is there an EQ test? if not,
b. what sort of questions should be on the test (presuming EQ exists)?

As others have stated “success” seems to be the key factor, we are all looking to define, but that can be so subjective, it becomes impossible to quantify.

 

[Kaylee]

I have read it as well, but it is very unscientific, it contains a lot of what is reffered to as qualitative research, and a lot is purely anecdotal. The idea is a good one, but not yet developed or researched very well. So it is sort of a good introduction to an idea that needs to be studied, as someone who works with adults it has little to offer in terms of practical stuff. It covers a great idea however.

There is a lot of school based stuff usualy under character or conflict reduction education. It is something that counselors and social workers do on a daily basis and so it is part of the therapeutic prcess, but not a lot on standard testing.

Thanks for your comments. It has been a very long time since I read the book and it was before I started reading the JREF forums. I was not as aware as how suspect anecdotal evidence by a researcher could be. So while I actually don't recall, I doubt that while I read it I was keeping track of the ratio of anecdotal evidence to more substantial types of evidence.

But that is something I definitely do now.