
Emotional Intelligence Needs a Rewrite - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/emotional-intelligence-needs-a-rewrite
======
altonzheng
I felt like the attack on "traditional" emotional intelligence in the
beginning was contrived and not really thought through.

Yes, it's true that we assume we can approximate the emotional experience of
others, but I think a critical piece the author left is the verbal part of
emotional intelligence - the words someone says that convey nuances that
facial expressions/non verbal cues don't. And I'm not saying what a person
says is what they really mean. You need to be cognizant of both to hear the
"real message". That's at the heart of emotional intelligence. I feel like the
beginning was just a contrived critique made to draw the reader into the meat
of the article. Can't we just examine the existing literature and add our own
thoughts without suggesting some grand "rewrite"?

Also internal and external emotional intelligence are very different, I feel
like somewhere the author conflated the two without making a clear distinction
although maybe I just didn't read it deeply enough.

That said, the discussion on emotional granularity is very interesting and I
will definitely be reading more into it.

~~~
wpietri
Yeah. That initial attack seems like a huge straw man to me. The author's
cartoon version of "emotional intelligence" isn't much like my understanding
of the concept.

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0xcde4c3db
> The idea that you can increase your emotional intelligence by broadening
> your emotion vocabulary is solid neuroscience. Your brain is not static; it
> rewires itself with experience. When you force yourself to learn new
> words—emotion-related or otherwise—you sculpt your brain’s microwiring,
> giving it the means to construct those emotional experiences, as well as
> your perceptions of others’ emotions, more effortlessly in the future.

This part makes me very leery of the strength of any claims in the article.
The general phenomenon of neuroplasticity is _not_ evidence that any
particular intervention will do what somebody claims or expects. Quietly
jumping that gap is a favorite method of peddlers of neurobullshit. Dr.
Barrett has certainly earned a bit more benefit of the doubt than, say,
Lumosity, but that doesn't make this particular line of argument any less
grating.

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dasil003
It's a huge straw man to suggest that people believe emotional intelligence
amounts to a mechanistic reading of facial expressions and body language.
Emotional intelligence is just as much about understanding how people will
react to things even when they're not in the room at all. Reading signals is
just the tip of the iceberg, does anyone really think it's that simple?

~~~
Zarath
True, but someone who can interpret real feedback quickly will calibrate a
hell of a lot faster.

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jventura
> "How do you enable your brain to create a wider variety of emotions and
> improve your emotional intelligence? One approach is to learn new emotion
> words. Each new word seeds your brain with the capacity to make new emotion
> predictions (...)"

This is a very interesting article. However, I wonder if/how the concept (or
skill) of emotional granularity can be obtained only from learning new words
for emotions. It kind of reminds me of NLP (Neuro-Linguisting programming).

Anyone here has any knowledge on these subjects, or is aware of an accessible
research paper where this is explained in a simple way? Also, how is this
approach of emotional granularity seen by other researchers?

~~~
IgorPartola
I am polyamorous. One of the frequent questions I get asked is how big of a
problem is jealousy. It's a red herring because it usually is not a problem.
But early on doing this you learn the difference between jealousy (I don't
want my partner doing that with that person), and envy (I want my partner to
do that with me). The two have very different fixes.

~~~
ethbro
Or back-generalize to monogamous relationships and anger. I see a lot of
relationships in trouble because the partners get into verbal fights. But in
my experience, they could both do with a lot more specificity in exactly how
and why they're angry (rather than just being "angry").

~~~
IgorPartola
That's the difference between primary and compound emotion. Compound emotions
need to be broken down more to see what the root cause is.

~~~
ethbro
The Nautilus article about emotional intelligence on HN yesterday was
interesting. Specifically in the encouragement that having access to a larger
vocabulary of emotional words helped your brain select a more specific one. Vs
defaulting to the base emotion if there's nothing more specific available.

~~~
IgorPartola
I am not talking about defaulting to base emotions but about figuring out what
makes up the complex emotion. It's not that something like jealousy is just
fear that is masking as something else. It can be something like fear,
insecurity, feeling unimportant or ignored, surprise, and sense of loss,
combined in some proportion. In my experience, you first have to identify the
complex neuanced emotion, then you have to break it down to its components,
and then you address those. Complex emotions are very hard to address
directly, but easy to throw misdirected and misguided solutions at.

~~~
ethbro
We're saying the same thing with different words. Here's the article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14935079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14935079)

------
xxxdarrenxxx
I personally believe a lot of this can be learned like any other skill. You
just need to approach it differently and actively, not passively.

That said, I think it's slightly overrated, because most people don't even
understand their own emotions, and some don't even allow themselves to talk
about emotions/cry in presence of friends/other's.

So if one doesn't even understand, allow or acknowledge his/her own feelings,
how could one possibly begin to understand, observe or manipulate that in
other's with accuracy.

And actually that's not even fully true.. (this is why I think it can also be
learned) Someone with anti-social disorder (sociopath), contrary to popular
believe has the same emotions as everyone else. It's their empathy which is
less/nonexistent. Yet they tend to be very good in picking up nuances in
social settings and perform on them.

A lot of it also depends on personality/upbringing. Parents who lie a lot to
their children, potentially makes these children more apt in lying/bluffing
and giving false trust themselves when they grow up, which is still a form off
emotional intelligence, morality is a different aspect.

Another example; One with social anxiety could very well have a high emotional
intelligence. They naturally spend way more time focusing on nuances of
themselves as well as other's, as the innate fear will push their thoughts
constantly (with all due respect to people who experience this)

So almost ironically they might be socially less present, but probably spot
true feelings far faster and more precise than people who are more "in the
moment".

* a small anecdote*

I spend a few years giving music lessons, and I told a student I could teach
him to just hear the music then be able to play it by ear. They almost all
said "I am not born with good ears".

I began to pick a guitar and play a few notes off a famous song. They
recognized it as anyone would.

Then I played a song but played wrong notes randomly. He didn't spot the first
one, but then he noticed.

I asked him, how did u know the song and recognize the wrong notes if your
ears are shit? he laughed.

Thing is, our senses are all very good, everyone can hear when singers are out
off tune, anyone can recognize a person by a voice or most songs by melody.

You just need to learn which sound fits which spot on the guitar, like
pictures to words.

The hearing, just like empathy, or sight and smell for that matter is there,
or will naturally develop if actively used, and more efficient with added
knowledge and guidance.

~~~
thanatropism
> Thing is, our senses are all very good, everyone can hear when singers are
> out off tune

Yeah. But how precisely people are able to do this varies a lot, and
correlates strongly to musical training or (anecdotally) growing up in a
"musical environment". This supports the emotional granularity idea from the
article.

[Now all pop music is auto-tuned by computer, but a lot of older music
(Madonna, etc.) is grating if you have moderately good musical hearing.]

------
sattoshi
>Now, I might know my husband well enough to tell when his scowl means he’s
puzzling something out versus when I should head for the hills, but that’s
because I’ve had years of experience learning what his facial movements mean
in different situations. People’s movements in general, however, are
tremendously variable.

Variable and yet really similar. There are general patterns and, as with all
patterns, there are exceptions.

Years of experience with one person are not useless with another. Not _as_
useful but helpful nonetheless.

------
ducttapecrown
About the author:
[https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/about/](https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/about/)

------
alexanderdmitri
A common question I get while I'm thinking is "What's wrong?"

~~~
nevertoolate
If there is no problem why are you thinking? The existence of the problem
suggests that there is something wrong. Although I don't like the "what's
wrong" question it perfectly makes sense.

~~~
alexanderdmitri
Sometimes this is the true, other times not. For example, sometimes it's
reflection or being a space cadet or just me having not achieved bodhi-level
control over my mind.

It's one of those things where there's often nothing wrong until someone asks
me "What's wrong?" and then suddenly { _bam!_ } there are two things wrong:

1) apparently my expression is conveying there's something wrong and 2) now my
chain of thought is broken (unless what I'm thinking about happens to lend
itself to good conversation or it's just not important (admittedly I think
about many unimportant things, which some might argue is problematic, but then
again, what's really important?)).

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vanderZwan
> _How do you enable your brain to create a wider variety of emotions and
> improve your emotional intelligence? One approach is to learn new emotion
> words. Each new word seeds your brain with the capacity to make new emotion
> predictions, which your brain can employ as a tool to construct your future
> experiences and perceptions, and to direct your actions. Instead of
> perceiving someone as generically “glad,” learn to distinguish more
> specifics. Are they “overjoyed” or “contented” or “grateful?” Are they
> “angry” or “indignant” or “resentful” or “bitter?” More fine-grained
> emotions allow your brain to prepare for an array of different actions,
> whereas more generic emotions (angry, glad) confer less information and
> restrict your flexibility._

Time to dig into the dictionary of obscure sorrows.

[http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/](http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/)

------
Animats
It's going to be embarrassing when machine learning starts outperforming
humans at this. Since that would be valuable to advertisers, a few billion
dollars will be spent solving that problem. Remember, when you're watching
your phone, it's watching you.

------
threatofrain
I'm surprised the article makes no mention of theory of mind, and I'm also
surprised that one might discuss the capability of attributing emotional
states to others and not mention the broader ability to attribute different
mental states to others.

I'm also surprised to hear that there's scientific consensus that thought does
not have an inhibiting effect on emotions. I wonder how that comments on
Daniel Kahneman's observations of interacting system of cognition (System 1 &
2), where one may block the other? Is the author also saying that beliefs
can't be changed to ultimately have a causal relationship with emotions?

------
shock
I think this is the TED talk that forms the basis of this article:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucina...](https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality).
TL;DR: It proposes that the brain's main function is to predict both the outer
and inner reality based on sensory electrical signals.

------
hyperion2010
Let's not forget those who are abundantly aware of the emotional state of
those around them but simply choose not to act on that information because
they find it irrelevant in their decision process. To an external observer it
can look an awful lot like autism, among other things.

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cowpig
I am completely shocked the author of this article has published 200 peer-
reviewed articles, testified before congress, etc...

> Let’s begin with the assumption that you can detect emotion in another
> person accurately. [...] People who are happy sometimes smile and sometimes
> don’t. Sometimes they even cry when they’re happy (say, at a wedding) and
> smile when they’re sad (when missing a beloved aunt who passed away).

Apparently the need for contextual cues and nuanced understanding renders the
task of reading anothers' emotions futile for the author and her coleagues. I
have found myself capable of overcoming it.

> A reasonable, science-backed way to define and practice emotional
> intelligence comes from a [process that] is completely unconscious.

Ah, yes. That very scientific and well-understood "consciousness" thing.

You shouldn't argue that people are approaching emotional intelligence wrong
by appealing to neuroscience any more than you should tell people they've
built their house wrong by appealing to particle physics.

~~~
stagbeetle
I believe you misread the two points you're quoting.

The point of the first, is expanded upon later in the article:

> _Your brain may automatically make sense of someone’s movements in context,
> allowing you to guess what a person is feeling, but you are always guessing,
> never detecting. Now, I might know my husband well enough to tell when his
> scowl means he’s puzzling something out versus when I should head for the
> hills, but that’s because I’ve had years of experience learning what his
> facial movements mean in different situations._

The point is not that we, as people, should not partake in trying to find what
someone is feeling, just that we can never be absolutely certain. Now, this
would be an arbitrary philosophical point if we don't take into context that
emotions are not bits. They're not on and off, but always different
combinations of different signals:

> _When we place electrodes on people’s faces to record their muscle
> movements, we see that they move in different ways, not one consistent way,
> when their owners feel the same emotion. Where the body is concerned,
> hundreds of studies show that instances of the same emotion involve
> different heart rates, breathing, blood pressure, sweat, and other factors,
> rather than a single, consistent response. Even in the brain, we see that
> instances of a single emotion, such as fear, are handled by different brain
> patterns at different times, both in the same individual and in different
> people._

There's no way we can be absolutely correct in emotional diagnosis, just the
same as we cannot always be in the black when speculating on the stock market.
There's too many factors at work and they'll never (rarely) align in the same
pattern.

As for the "consciousness" point, I believe you're misconstruing unconscious
to mean subconscious. Subconsciousness, in the practical sense, is part of the
philosophical (and psychoanalytical) "consciousness" school. While
unconsciousness is just the brain's autonomic functions, like encoding memory
and recalling your multiplication tables.

~~~
cowpig
> There's no way we can be absolutely correct in emotional diagnosis, just the
> same as we cannot always be in the black when speculating on the stock
> market. There's too many factors at work and they'll never (rarely) align in
> the same pattern.

In the real world, nothing ever aligns in the same pattern. That only happens
in mathematical models. That doesn't mean we can't use language to describe
those phenomena.

In the real world, we also can never be never be "absolutely certain" of
anything, beyond maybe something Cartesian. That doesn't mean we can't make
judgments about our surroundings.

> While unconsciousness is just the brain's autonomic functions, like encoding
> memory and recalling your multiplication tables.

Why are you assuming that the difference between what's "automatic" and "not
automatic" in the brain is well-understood, and fundamentally distinct from
the concept of consciousness?

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sova
Whatever the context, keep writing. Emergent vocabularies must start somewhere

