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d16ea231a5db-1 | I’d better give in.”
These parallel conversations—the spoken and the silent—are
reported by Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, as an
example of the kinds of thinking that can poison a marriage.
15
The
real emotional exchange between Melanie and Martin is shaped by
their thoughts, and those thoughts, in turn, are determined by
another, deeper layer, which Beck calls “automatic thoughts”—
fleeting, background assumptions about oneself and the people in
one’s life that reflect our deepest emotional attitudes. For Melanie the
background thought is something like, “He’s always bullying me with
his anger.” For Martin, the key thought is, “She has no right to treat
me like this.” Melanie feels like an innocent victim in their marriage,
and Martin feels righteous indignation at what he feels is unjust
treatment.
Thoughts of being an innocent victim or of righteous indignation
are typical of partners in troubled marriages, continually fueling anger
and hurt.
16
Once distressing thoughts such as righteous indignation
become automatic, they are self-confirming: the partner who feels | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bec6e5661bad-0 | victimized is constantly scanning everything his partner does that
might confirm the view that she is victimizing him, ignoring or
discounting any acts of kindness on her part that would question or
disconfirm that view.
These thoughts are powerful; they trip the neural alarm system.
Once the husband’s thought of being victimized triggers an emotional
hijacking, he will for the time being easily call to mind and ruminate
on a list of grievances that remind him of the ways she victimizes
him, while not recalling anything she may have done in their entire
relationship that would disconfirm the view that he is an innocent
victim. It puts his spouse in a no-win situation: even things she does
that are intentionally kind can be reinterpreted when viewed through
such a negative lens and dismissed as feeble attempts to deny she is a
victimizer.
Partners who are free of such distress-triggering views can entertain
a more benign interpretation of what is going on in the same
situations, and so are less likely to have such a hijacking, or if they
do, tend to recover from it more readily. The general template for
thoughts that maintain or alleviate distress follows the pattern
outlined in
Chapter 6
by psychologist Martin Seligman for pessimistic | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bec6e5661bad-1 | Chapter 6
by psychologist Martin Seligman for pessimistic
and optimistic outlooks. The pessimistic view is that the partner is
inherently flawed in a way that cannot change and that guarantees
misery:
“He’s selfish and self-absorbed; that’s the way he was brought
up and that’s the way he will always be; he expects me to wait on him
hand and foot and he couldn’t care less about how I feel.” The
contrasting optimistic view would be something like: “He’s being
demanding now, but he’s been thoughtful in the past; maybe he’s in a
bad mood—I wonder if something’s bothering him about his work.”
This is a view that does not write off the husband (or the marriage) as
irredeemably damaged and hopeless. Instead it sees a bad moment as
due to circumstances that can change. The first attitude brings
continual distress; the second soothes.
Partners who take the pessimistic stance are extremely prone to
emotional hijackings; they get angry, hurt, or otherwise distressed by
things their spouses do, and they stay disturbed once the episode
begins. Their internal distress and pessimistic attitude, of course,
makes it far more likely they will resort to criticism and contempt in | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bec6e5661bad-2 | confronting the partner, which in turn heightens the likelihood of
defensiveness and stonewalling.
Perhaps the most virulent of such toxic thoughts are found in | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
af5a0e85790a-0 | husbands who are physically violent to their wives. A study of violent
husbands by psychologists at Indiana University found that these men
think like schoolyard bullies: they read hostile intent into even neutral
actions by their wives, and use this misreading to justify to themselves
their own violence (men who are sexually aggressive with dates do
something similar, viewing the women with suspicion and so
disregarding their objections).
17
As we saw in
Chapter 7
, such men
are particularly threatened by perceived slights, rejection, or public
embarrassment by their wives. A typical scenario that triggers
thoughts “justifying” violence in wife-batterers: “You are at a social
gathering and you notice that for the past half hour your wife has
been talking and laughing with the same attractive man. He seems to
be flirting with her.” When these men perceive their wives as doing
something suggesting rejection or abandonment, their reactions run to
indignation and outrage. Presumably, automatic thoughts like “She’s
going to leave me” are triggers for an emotional hijacking in which
battering husbands respond impulsively, as the researchers put it,
with “incompetent behavioral responses”—they become violent. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
af5a0e85790a-1 | with “incompetent behavioral responses”—they become violent.
18
FLOODING THE SWAMPING OF A MARRIAGE
The net effect of these distressing attitudes is to create incessant crisis,
since they trigger emotional hijackings more often and make it harder
to recover from the resulting hurt and rage. Gottman uses the apt
term
flooding
for this
susceptibility to frequent emotional distress;
flooded husbands or wives are so overwhelmed by their partner’s
negativity and their own reaction to it that they are swamped by
dreadful, out-of-control feelings. People who are flooded cannot hear
without distortion or respond with clear-headedness; they find it hard
to organize their thinking, and they fall back on primitive reactions.
They just want things to stop, or want to run or, sometimes, to strike
back. Flooding is a self-perpetuating emotional hijacking.
Some people have high thresholds for flooding, easily enduring
anger and contempt, while others may be triggered the moment their
spouse makes a mild criticism. The technical description of flooding is
in terms of heart rate rise from calm levels.
19
At rest, women’s heart
rates are about 82 beats per minute, men’s about 72 (the specific | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
af5a0e85790a-2 | heart rate varies mainly according to a person’s body size). Flooding
begins at about 10 beats per minute above a person’s resting rate; if | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c8d39e7d9151-0 | the heart rate reaches 100 beats per minute (as it easily can do during
moments of rage or tears), then the body is pumping adrenaline and
other hormones that keep the distress high for some time. The
moment of emotional hijacking is apparent from the heart rate: it can
jump 10, 20, or even as many as 30 beats per minute within the space
of a single heartbeat. Muscles tense; it can seem hard to breathe.
There is a swamp of toxic feelings, an unpleasant wash of fear and
anger that seems inescapable and, subjectively, takes “forever” to get
over. At this point—full hijacking—a person’s emotions are so intense,
their perspective so narrow, and their thinking so confused that there
is no hope of taking the other’s viewpoint or settling things in a
reasonable way.
Of course, most husbands and wives have such intense moments
from time to time when they fight—it’s only natural. The problem for
a marriage begins when one or another spouse feels flooded almost
continually. Then the partner feels overwhelmed by the other partner,
is always on guard for an emotional assault or injustice, becomes
hypervigilant for any sign of attack, insult, or grievance, and is sure to | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c8d39e7d9151-1 | overreact to even the least sign. If a husband is in such a state, his
wife saying, “Honey, we’ve got to talk,” can elicit the reactive
thought, “She’s picking a fight again,” and so trigger flooding. It
becomes harder and harder to recover from the physiological arousal,
which in turn makes it easier for innocuous exchanges to be seen in a
sinister light, triggering flooding all over again.
This is perhaps the most dangerous turning point for marriage, a
catastrophic shift in the relationship. The flooded partner has come to
think the worst of the spouse virtually all the time, reading everything
she does in a negative light. Small issues become major battles;
feelings are hurt continually.
With time, the partner who is being
flooded starts to see any and all problems in the marriage as severe
and impossible to fix, since the flooding itself sabotages any attempt
to work things out. As this continues it begins to seem useless to talk
things over, and the partners try to soothe their troubled feelings on
their own. They start leading parallel lives, essentially living in
isolation from each other, and feel alone within the marriage. All too | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c8d39e7d9151-2 | often, Gottman finds, the next step is divorce.
In this trajectory toward divorce the tragic consequences of deficits
in emotional competences are self-evident. As a couple gets caught in
the reverberating cycle of criticism and contempt, defensiveness and
stonewalling, distressing thoughts and emotional flooding, the cycle | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5aa7e7fb516e-0 | itself reflects a disintegration of emotional self-awareness and self-
control, of empathy and the abilities to soothe each other and oneself.
MEN: THE VULNERABLE SEX
Back to gender differences in emotional life, which prove to be a
hidden spur to marital meltdowns. Consider this finding: Even after
thirty-five or more years of marriage, there is a basic distinction
between husbands and wives in how they regard emotional
encounters. Women, on average, do not mind plunging into the
unpleasantness of a marital squabble nearly so much as do the men in
their lives. That conclusion, reached in a study by Robert Levenson at
the University of California at Berkeley, is based on the testimony of
151 couples, all in long-lasting marriages. Levenson found that
husbands uniformly found it unpleasant, even aversive, to become
upset during a marital disagreement, while their wives did not mind it
much.
20
Husbands are prone to flooding at a lower intensity of negativity
than are their wives; more men than women react to their spouse’s
criticism with flooding. Once flooded, husbands secrete more
adrenaline into their bloodstream, and the adrenaline flow is triggered | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5aa7e7fb516e-1 | by lower levels of negativity on their wife’s part; it takes husbands
longer to recover physiologically from flooding.
21
This suggests the
possibility that the stoic, Clint Eastwood type of male imperturbability
may represent a defense against feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
The reason men are so likely to stonewall, Gottman proposes, is to
protect themselves from flooding; his research showed that once they
began stonewalling, their heart rates dropped by about ten beats per
minute, bringing a subjective sense of relief. But—and here’s a
paradox—once the men started
stonewalling, it was the wives whose
heart rate shot up to levels signaling high distress. This limbic tango,
with each sex seeking comfort in opposing gambits, leads to a very
different stance toward emotional confrontations: men want to avoid
them as fervently as their wives feel compelled to seek them.
Just as men are far more likely to be stonewallers, so the women
are more likely to criticize their husbands.
22
This asymmetry arises as
a result of wives pursuing their role as emotional managers. As they
try to bring up and resolve disagreements and grievances, their | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5aa7e7fb516e-2 | try to bring up and resolve disagreements and grievances, their
husbands are more reluctant to engage in what are bound to be | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
704a86efa362-0 | heated discussions. As the wife sees her husband withdraw from
engagement, she ups the volume and intensity of her complaint,
starting to criticize him. As he becomes defensive or stonewalls in
return, she feels frustrated and angry, and so adds contempt to
underscore the strength of her frustration. As her husband finds
himself the object of his wife’s criticism and contempt, he begins to
fall into the innocent-victim or righteous-indignation thoughts that
more and more easily trigger flooding. To protect himself from
flooding, he becomes more and more defensive or simply stonewalls
altogether. But when husbands stonewall, remember, it triggers
flooding in their wives, who feel completely stymied. And as the cycle
of marital fights escalates it all too easily can spin out of control.
HIS AND HERS: MARITAL ADVICE
Given the grim potential outcome of the differences in how men and
women deal with distressing feelings in their relationship, what can
couples do to protect the love and affection they feel for each other—
in short, what protects a marriage? On the basis of watching
interaction in the couples whose marriages have continued to thrive | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
704a86efa362-1 | interaction in the couples whose marriages have continued to thrive
over the years, marital researchers offer specific advice for men and
for women, and some general words for both.
Men and women, in general, need different emotional fine-tuning.
For men, the advice is not to sidestep conflict, but to realize that
when their wife brings up some grievance or disagreement, she may
be doing it as an act of love, trying to keep the relationship healthy
and on course (although there may well be other motives for a wife’s
hostility). When grievances simmer, they build and build in intensity
until there’s an explosion; when they are aired and worked out, it
takes the pressure off. But husbands need to realize that anger or
discontent is not synonymous with personal attack—their wives’
emotions are often simply underliners, emphasizing the strength of
her feelings about the matter.
Men also need to be on guard against short-circuiting the discussion
by offering a practical solution too early on—it’s typically more
important to a wife that she feel her husband hears her complaint and
empathizes with her
feelings
about the matter (though he need not | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
704a86efa362-2 | feelings
about the matter (though he need not
agree with her). She may hear his offering advice as a way of
dismissing her feelings as inconsequential. Husbands who are able to | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a8e92ba85e2b-0 | stay with their wives through the heat of anger, rather than dismissing
their complaints as petty, help their wives feel heard and respected.
Most especially, wives want to have their feelings acknowledged and
respected as valid, even if their husbands disagree. More often than
not, when a wife feels her view is heard and her feelings registered,
she calms down.
As for women, the advice is quite parallel. Since a major problem
for men is that their wives are too intense in voicing complaints,
wives need to make a purposeful effort to be careful not to attack
their husbands—to complain about what they did, but not criticize
them as a person or express contempt. Complaints are not attacks on
character, but rather a clear statement that a particular action is
distressing. An angry personal attack will almost certainly lead to a
husband’s getting defensive or stonewalling, which will be all the
more frustrating, and only escalate the fight. It helps, too, if a wife’s
complaints are put in the larger context of reassuring her husband of
her love for him.
THE GOOD FIGHT
The morning paper offers an object lesson in how not to resolve
differences in a marriage. Marlene Lenick had a dispute with her | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a8e92ba85e2b-1 | husband, Michael: he wanted to watch the Dallas Cowboys-
Philadelphia Eagles game, she wanted to watch the news. As he
settled down to watch the game, Mrs. Lenick told him that she had
“had enough of that football,” went into the bedroom to fetch a .38
caliber handgun, and shot him twice as he sat watching the game in
the den. Mrs. Lenick was charged with aggravated assault and freed
on a $50,000 bond; Mr. Lenick was listed in good condition,
recovering from the bullets that grazed his abdomen and tunneled
through his left shoulder blade and neck.
23
While few marital fights are that violent—or that costly—they offer
a prime chance to bring emotional intelligence to marriage. For
example, couples in marriages that last tend to stick to one topic, and
to give each partner the
chance to state their point of view at the
outset.
24
But these couples go one important step further: they show
each other that they are being listened to. Since feeling heard is often
exactly what the aggrieved partner really is after, emotionally an act
of empathy is a masterly tension reducer. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a1c5559473e3-0 | Most notably missing in couples who eventually divorce are
attempts by either partner in an argument to de-escalate the tension.
The presence or absence of ways to repair a rift is a crucial difference
between the fights of couples who have a healthy marriage and those
of couples who eventually end up divorcing.
25
The repair mechanisms
that keep an argument from escalating into a dire explosion are
simple moves such as keeping the discussion on track, empathizing,
and tension reduction. These basic moves are like an emotional
thermostat, preventing the feelings being expressed from boiling over
and overwhelming the partners’ ability to focus on the issue at hand.
One overall strategy for making a marriage work is not to
concentrate on the specific issues—childrearing, sex, money,
housework—that couples fight about, but rather to cultivate a
couple’s shared emotional intelligence, thereby improving the chances
of working things out. A handful of emotional competences—mainly
being able to calm down (and calm your partner), empathy, and
listening well—can make it more likely a couple will settle their
disagreements effectively. These make possible healthy disagreements,
the “good fights” that allow a marriage to flourish and which | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a1c5559473e3-1 | overcome the negativities that, if left to grow, can destroy a
marriage.
26
Of course, none of these emotional habits changes overnight; it
takes persistence and vigilance at the very least. Couples will be able
to make the key changes in direct proportion to how motivated they
are to try. Many or most emotional responses triggered so easily in
marriage have been sculpted since childhood, first learned in our most
intimate relationships or modeled for us by our parents, and then
brought to marriage fully formed. And so we are primed for certain
emotional habits—overreacting to perceived slights, say, or shutting
down at the first sign of a confrontation—even though we may have
sworn that we would not act like our parents.
Calming Down
Every strong emotion has at its root an impulse to action; managing
those impulses is basic to emotional intelligence. This can be
particularly difficult, though, in love relationships, where we have so
much at stake. The reactions triggered here touch on some of our
deepest needs—to be loved and feel
respected, fears of abandonment
or of being emotionally deprived. Small wonder we can act in a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0686ae00e99b-0 | marital fight as though our very survival were at stake.
Even so, nothing gets resolved positively when husband or wife is in
the midst of an emotional hijacking. One key marital competence is
for partners to learn to soothe their own distressed feelings.
Essentially, this means mastering the ability to recover quickly from
the flooding caused by an emotional hijacking. Because the ability to
hear, think, and speak with clarity dissolves during such an emotional
peak, calming down is an immensely constructive step, without which
there can be no further progress in settling what’s at issue.
Ambitious couples can learn to monitor their pulse rates every five
minutes or so during a troubling encounter, feeling the pulse at the
carotid artery a few inches below the earlobe and jaw (people who do
aerobic workouts learn to do this easily).
27
Counting the pulse for
fifteen seconds and multiplying by four gives the pulse rate in beats
per minute. Doing so while feeling calm gives a baseline; if the pulse
rate rises more than, say, ten beats per minute above that level, it
signals the beginning of flooding. If the pulse climbs this much, a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0686ae00e99b-1 | couple needs a twenty-minute break from each other to cool down
before resuming the discussion. Although a five-minute break may
feel long enough, the actual physiological recovery time is more
gradual. As we saw in
Chapter 5
, residual anger triggers more anger;
the longer wait gives the body more time to recover from the earlier
arousal.
For couples who, understandably, find it awkward to monitor heart
rate during a fight, it is simpler to have a prestated agreement that
allows one or another partner to call the time-out at the first signs of
flooding in either partner. During that time-out period, cooling down
can be helped along by engaging in a relaxation technique or aerobic
exercise (or any of the other methods we explored in
Chapter 5
) that
might help the partners recover from the emotional hijacking.
Detoxifying Self-talk
Because flooding is triggered by negative thoughts about the partner,
it helps if a husband or wife who is being upset by such harsh
judgments tackles them head-on. Sentiments like “I’m not going to
take this anymore” or “I don’t deserve this kind of treatment” are
innocent-victim or righteous-indignation slogans. As cognitive | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0686ae00e99b-2 | innocent-victim or righteous-indignation slogans. As cognitive
therapist Aaron Beck points out, by catching these thoughts and
challenging them—rather than simply being enraged or hurt by them | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
cc3527987caa-0 | —a husband or wife can begin to become free of their hold.
28
This requires monitoring such thoughts, realizing that one does not
have to believe them, and making the intentional effort to bring to
mind evidence or perspectives that put them in question. For example,
a wife who feels in the heat of the moment that “he doesn’t care about
my needs—he’s always so selfish” might challenge the thought by
reminding herself of a number of things her husband has done that
are, in fact, thoughtful. This allows her to reframe the thought as:
“Well, he does show he cares about me sometimes, even though what
he just did was thoughtless and upsetting to me.” The latter
formulation opens the possibility of change and a positive resolution;
the former only foments anger and hurt.
Nondefensive Listening and Speaking
He: “You’re shouting!”
She: “Of course I’m shouting—you haven’t heard a word I’m saying.
You just don’t listen!”
Listening is a skill that keeps couples together. Even in the heat of
an argument, when both are seized by emotional hijackings, one or
the other, and sometimes both, can manage to listen past the anger,
and hear and respond to a partner’s reparative gesture. Couples | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
cc3527987caa-1 | and hear and respond to a partner’s reparative gesture. Couples
headed for divorce, though, get absorbed in the anger and fixated on
the specifics of the issue at hand, not managing to hear—let alone
return—any peace offerings that might be implicit in what their
partner is saying. Defensiveness in a listener takes the form of
ignoring or immediately rebutting the spouse’s complaint, reacting to
it as though it were an attack rather than an attempt to change
behavior. Of course, in an argument what one spouse says is often in
the form of an attack, or is said with such strong negativity that it is
hard to hear anything other than an attack.
Even in the worst case, it’s possible for a couple to purposely edit
what they hear, ignoring the hostile and negative parts of the
exchange—the nasty tone, the insult, the contemptuous criticism—to
hear the main message. For this feat it helps if partners can remember
to see each other’s negativity as an implicit statement of how
important the issue is to them—a demand for attention to be paid.
Then if she yells, “Will you
stop
interrupting me, for crissake!” he
might be more able to say, without reacting overtly to her hostility,
“Okay, go ahead and finish.” | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
3ab056b9983d-0 | The most powerful form of nondefensive listening, of course, is
empathy: actually hearing the feelings
behind
what is being said. As
we saw in
Chapter 7
, for one partner in a couple to truly empathize
with the other demands that
his own emotional reactions calm down
to the point where he is receptive enough for his own physiology to
be able to mirror the feelings of his partner. Without this
physiological attunement, a partner’s sense of what the other is
feeling is likely to be entirely off base. Empathy deteriorates when
one’s own feelings are so strong that they allow no physiological
harmonizing, but simply override everything else.
One method for effective emotional listening, called “mirroring,” is
commonly used in marital therapy. When one partner makes a
complaint, the other repeats it back in her own words, trying to
capture not just the thought, but also the feelings that go with it. The
partner mirroring checks with the other to be sure the restatement is
on target, and if not, tries again until it is right—something that
seems simple, but is surprisingly tricky in execution.
29
The effect of
being mirrored accurately is not just feeling understood, but having | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
3ab056b9983d-1 | the added sense of being in emotional attunement. That in itself can
sometimes disarm an imminent attack, and goes far toward keeping
discussions of grievances from escalating into fights.
The art of nondefensive speaking for couples centers around
keeping what is said to a specific complaint rather than escalating to a
personal attack. Psychologist Haim Ginott, the grandfather of
effective-communication programs, recommended that the best
formula for a complaint is “XYZ”: “When you did X, it made me feel
Y, and I’d rather you did Z instead.” For example: “When you didn’t
call to tell me you were going to be late for our dinner appointment, I
felt unappreciated and angry. I wish you’d call to let me know you’ll
be late” instead of “You’re a thoughtless, self-centered bastard,” which
is how the issue is all too often put in couples’ fights. In short, open
communication has no bullying, threats, or insults. Nor does it allow
for any of the innumerable forms of defensiveness—excuses, denying
responsibility, counterattacking with a criticism, and the like. Here
again empathy is a potent tool.
Finally, respect and love disarm hostility in marriage, as elsewhere | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
3ab056b9983d-2 | Finally, respect and love disarm hostility in marriage, as elsewhere
in life. One powerful way to de-escalate a fight is to let your partner
know that you can see things from the other perspective, and that this
point of view may have validity, even if you do not agree with it
yourself. Another is to take responsibility or even apologize if you see | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
26371e09efd5-0 | you are in the wrong. At a minimum, validation means at least
conveying that you are listening, and can acknowledge the emotions
being expressed, even if you can’t go along with the argument: “I see
you’re upset.” And at other times, when there is no fight going on,
validation takes the form of compliments, finding something you
genuinely appreciate and voicing some praise. Validation, of course, is
a way
to help soothe your spouse, or to build up emotional capital in
the form of positive feelings.
Practicing
Because these maneuvers are to be called upon during the heat of
confrontation, when emotional arousal is sure to be high, they have to
be overlearned if they are to be accessible when needed most. This is
because the emotional brain engages those response routines that
were learned earliest in life during repeated moments of anger and
hurt, and so become dominant. Memory and response being emotion-
specific, in such moments reactions associated with calmer times are
less easy to remember and act on. If a more productive emotional
response is unfamiliar or not well practiced, it is extremely difficult to
try it while upset. But if a response is practiced so that it has become
automatic, it has a better chance of finding expression during | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
26371e09efd5-1 | automatic, it has a better chance of finding expression during
emotional crisis. For these reasons, the above strategies need to be
tried out and rehearsed during encounters that are not stressful, as
well as in the heat of battle, if they are to have a chance to become an
acquired first response (or at least a not-too-belated second response)
in the repertoire of the emotional circuitry. In essence, these antidotes
to marital disintegration are a small remedial education in emotional
intelligence. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
de09fe0a1aee-0 | 10
Managing with Heart
Melburn McBroom was a domineering boss, with a temper that
intimidated those who worked with him. That fact might have passed
unremarked had McBroom worked in an office or factory. But
McBroom was an airline pilot.
One day in 1978 McBroom’s plane was approaching Portland,
Oregon, when he noticed a problem with the landing gear. So
McBroom went into a holding pattern, circling the field at a high
altitude while he fiddled with the mechanism.
As McBroom obsessed about the landing gear, the plane’s fuel
gauges steadily approached the empty level. But his copilots were so
fearful of McBroom’s wrath that they said nothing, even as disaster
loomed. The plane crashed, killing ten people.
Today the story of that crash is told as a cautionary tale in the
safety training of airline pilots.
1
In 80 percent of airline crashes, pilots
make mistakes that could have been prevented, particularly if the
crew worked together more harmoniously. Teamwork, open lines of
communication, cooperation, listening, and speaking one’s mind—
rudiments of social intelligence—are now emphasized in training
pilots, along with technical prowess. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
de09fe0a1aee-1 | pilots, along with technical prowess.
The cockpit is a microcosm of any working organization. But
lacking the dramatic reality check of an airplane crash, the destructive
effects of miserable morale, intimidated workers, or arrogant bosses—
or any of the dozens of other permutations of emotional deficiencies
in the workplace—can go largely unnoticed by those outside the
immediate scene. But the costs can be read in signs such as decreased
productivity, an increase in missed deadlines, mistakes and mishaps,
and an exodus of employees to more congenial settings. There is,
inevitably, a cost to the bottom line from low levels of emotional
intelligence on the job. When it is rampant, companies can crash and
burn.
The cost-effectiveness of emotional intelligence is a relatively new
idea for business, one some managers may find hard to accept. A | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
fbd729b2c0df-0 | study of 250 executives found that most felt their work demanded
“their heads but not their hearts.” Many said they feared that feeling
empathy or compassion for those they worked with would put them in
conflict with their organizational goals. One felt the idea of sensing
the feelings of those who worked for him was absurd—it would, he
said, “be impossible to deal with people.” Others protested that if they
were not emotionally aloof they would be unable to make the “hard”
decisions that business requires—although the likelihood is that they
would deliver those decisions more humanely.
2
That study was done in the 1970s, when the business environment
was very different. My argument is that such attitudes are outmoded,
a luxury of a former day; a new competitive reality is putting
emotional intelligence at a premium in the workplace and in the
marketplace. As Shoshona Zuboff, a psychologist at Harvard Business
School, pointed out to me, “corporations have gone through a radical
revolution within this century, and with this has come a
corresponding transformation of the emotional landscape. There was a
long period of managerial domination of the corporate hierarchy
when the manipulative, jungle-fighter boss was rewarded. But that | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
fbd729b2c0df-1 | rigid hierarchy started breaking down in the 1980s under the twin
pressures of globalization and information technology. The jungle
fighter symbolizes where the corporation has been; the virtuoso in
interpersonal skills is the corporate future.”
3
Some of the reasons are patently obvious—imagine the
consequences for a working group when someone is unable to keep
from exploding in anger or has no sensitivity about what the people
around him are feeling. All the deleterious effects of agitation on
thinking reviewed in
Chapter 6
operate in the workplace too: When
emotionally upset, people cannot remember, attend, learn, or make
decisions clearly. As one management consultant put it, “Stress makes
people stupid.”
On the positive side, imagine the benefits for work of being skilled
in the basic emotional competences—being attuned to the feelings of
those we deal with, being able to handle disagreements so they do not
escalate, having the ability to get into flow states while doing our
work. Leadership is not domination, but the art of persuading people
to work toward a common goal. And, in terms of managing our own
career, there may be nothing more essential than recognizing our | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
fbd729b2c0df-2 | deepest feelings about what we do—and what changes might make us
more truly satisfied with our work. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
dc32a6ba074f-0 | Some of the less obvious reasons emotional aptitudes are moving to
the
forefront of business skills reflect sweeping changes in the
workplace. Let me make my point by tracking the difference three
applications of emotional intelligence make: being able to air
grievances as helpful critiques, creating an atmosphere in which
diversity is valued rather than a source of friction, and networking
effectively.
CRITICISM IS JOB ONE
He was a seasoned engineer, heading a software development project, presenting the
result of months of work by his team to the company’s vice president for product
development. The men and women who had worked long days week after week were
there with him, proud to present the fruit of their hard labor. But as the engineer
finished his presentation, the vice president turned to him and asked sarcastically,
“How long have you been out of graduate school? These specifications are ridiculous.
They have no chance of getting past my desk.”
The engineer, utterly embarrassed and deflated, sat glumly through the rest of the
meeting, reduced to silence. The men and women on his team made a few desultory—
and some hostile—remarks in defense of their effort. The vice president was then | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
dc32a6ba074f-1 | called away and the meeting broke up abruptly, leaving a residue of bitterness and
anger.
For the next two weeks the engineer was obsessed by the vice president’s remarks.
Dispirited and depressed, he was convinced he would never get another assignment of
importance at the company, and was thinking of leaving, even though he enjoyed his
work there.
Finally the engineer went to see the vice president, reminding him of the meeting,
his critical remarks, and their demoralizing effect. Then he made a carefully worded
inquiry: “I’m a little confused by what you were trying to accomplish. I assume you
were not just trying to embarrass me—did you have some other goal in mind?”
The vice president was astonished—he had no idea that his remark, which he meant
as a throwaway line, had been so devastating. In fact, he thought the software plan
was promising, but needed more work—he hadn’t meant to dismiss it as utterly
worthless at all. He simply had not realized, he said, how poorly he had put his
reaction, nor that he had hurt anyone’s feelings. And, belatedly, he apologized.
4 | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
dc32a6ba074f-2 | 4
It’s a question of feedback, really, of people getting the information
essential to keep their efforts on track. In its original sense in systems
theory,
feedback
meant the exchange of data about how one part of a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
56f4f6baf04b-0 | system is working, with the understanding that one part affects all
others in the system,
so that any part heading off course could be
changed for the better. In a company everyone is part of the system,
and so feedback is the lifeblood of the organization—the exchange of
information that lets people know if the job they are doing is going
well or needs to be fine-tuned, upgraded, or redirected entirely.
Without feedback people are in the dark; they have no idea how they
stand with their boss, with their peers, or in terms of what is expected
of them, and any problems will only get worse as time passes.
In a sense, criticism is one of the most important tasks a manager
has. Yet it’s also one of the most dreaded and put off. And, like the
sarcastic vice president, too many managers have poorly mastered the
crucial art of feedback. This deficiency has a great cost: just as the
emotional health of a couple depends on how well they air their
grievances, so do the effectiveness, satisfaction, and productivity of
people at work depend on how they are told about nagging problems.
Indeed, how criticisms are given and received goes a long way in | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
56f4f6baf04b-1 | determining how satisfied people are with their work, with those they
work with, and with those to whom they are responsible.
The Worst Way to Motivate Someone
The emotional vicissitudes at work in marriage also operate in the
workplace, where they take similar forms. Criticisms are voiced as
personal attacks rather than complaints that can be acted upon; there
are ad hominem charges with dollops of disgust, sarcasm, and
contempt; both give rise to defensiveness and dodging of
responsibility and, finally, to stonewalling or the embittered passive
resistance that comes from feeling unfairly treated. Indeed, one of the
more common forms of destructive criticism in the workplace, says
one business consultant, is a blanket, generalized statement like
“You’re screwing up,” delivered in a harsh, sarcastic, angry tone,
providing neither a chance to respond nor any suggestion of how to
do things better. It leaves the person receiving it feeling helpless and
angry. From the vantage point of emotional intelligence, such
criticism displays an ignorance of the feelings it will trigger in those
who receive it, and the devastating effect those feelings will have on
their motivation, energy, and confidence in doing their work. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
56f4f6baf04b-2 | their motivation, energy, and confidence in doing their work.
This destructive dynamic showed up in a survey of managers who
were asked to think back to times they blew up at employees and, in | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a65d6e4b3788-0 | the heat of the moment, made a personal attack.
5
The angry attacks
had effects much like they would in a married couple: the employees
who received them reacted most often by becoming defensive, making
excuses, or evading responsibility. Or they stonewalled—that is, tried
to avoid all contact with the
manager who blew up at them. If they
had been subjected to the same emotional microscope that John
Gottman used with married couples, these embittered employees
would no doubt have been shown to be thinking the thoughts of
innocent victimhood or righteous indignation typical of husbands or
wives who feel unfairly attacked. If their physiology were measured,
they would probably also display the flooding that reinforces such
thoughts. And yet the managers were only further annoyed and
provoked by these responses, suggesting the beginning of a cycle that,
in the business world, ends in the employee quitting or being fired—
the business equivalent of a divorce.
Indeed, in a study of 108 managers and white-collar workers, inept
criticism was ahead of mistrust, personality struggles, and disputes
over power and pay as a reason for conflict on the job.
6
An | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a65d6e4b3788-1 | 6
An
experiment done at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows just how
damaging to working relationships a cutting criticism can be. In a
simulation, volunteers were given the task of creating an ad for a new
shampoo. Another volunteer (a confederate) supposedly judged the
proposed ads; volunteers actually received one of two prearranged
criticisms. One critique was considerate and specific. But the other
included threats and blamed the person’s innate deficiencies, with
remarks like, “Didn’t even try; can’t seem to do anything right” and
“Maybe it’s just lack of talent. I’d try to get someone else to do it.”
Understandably, those who were attacked became tense and angry
and antagonistic, saying they would refuse to collaborate or cooperate
on future projects with the person who gave the criticism. Many
indicated they would want to avoid contact altogether—in other
words, they felt like stonewalling. The harsh criticism made those
who received it so demoralized that they no longer tried as hard at
their work and, perhaps most damaging, said they no longer felt
capable of doing well. The personal attack was devastating to their
morale. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
a65d6e4b3788-2 | morale.
Many managers are too willing to criticize, but frugal with praise,
leaving their employees feeling that they only hear about how they’re
doing when they make a mistake. This propensity to criticism is
compounded by managers who delay giving any feedback at all for | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
db2c45864c20-0 | long periods. “Most problems in an employee’s performance are not
sudden; they develop slowly over time,” J. R. Larson, a University of
Illinois at Urbana psychologist, notes. “When the boss fails to let his
feelings be known promptly, it leads to his frustration building up
slowly. Then, one day, he blows up about it. If the criticism had been
given earlier on, the employee would have been able to correct the
problem. Too often people criticize only when things boil over,
when
they get too angry to contain themselves. And that’s when they give
the criticism in the worst way, in a tone of biting sarcasm, calling to
mind a long list of grievances they had kept to themselves, or making
threats. Such attacks backfire. They are received as an affront, so the
recipient becomes angry in return. It’s the worst way to motivate
someone.”
The Artful Critique
Consider the alternative.
An artful critique can be one of the most helpful messages a
manager can send. For example, what the contemptuous vice
president could have told the software engineer—but did not—was
something like: “The main difficulty at this stage is that your plan will | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
db2c45864c20-1 | take too long and so escalate costs. I’d like you to think more about
your proposal, especially the design specifications for software
development, to see if you can figure out a way to do the same job
more quickly.” Such a message has the opposite impact of destructive
criticism: instead of creating helplessness, anger, and rebellion, it
holds out the hope of doing better and suggests the beginning of a
plan for doing so.
An artful critique focuses on what a person has done and can do
rather than reading a mark of character into a job poorly done. As
Larson observes, “A character attack—calling someone stupid or
incompetent—misses the point. You immediately put him on the
defensive, so that he’s no longer receptive to what you have to tell
him about how to do things better.” That advice, of course, is
precisely the same as for married couples airing their grievances.
And, in terms of motivation, when people believe that their failures
are due to some unchangeable deficit in themselves, they lose hope
and stop trying. The basic belief that leads to optimism, remember, is
that setbacks or failures are due to circumstances that we can do
something about to change them for the better. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
55c0dac06b62-0 | Harry Levinson, a psychoanalyst turned corporate consultant, gives
the following advice on the art of the critique, which is intricately
entwined with the art of praise:
•
Be specific
. Pick a significant incident, an event that illustrates a
key problem that needs changing or a pattern of deficiency, such as
the inability to do certain parts of a job well. It demoralizes people
just to hear that they are doing “something” wrong without knowing
what the specifics are so they
can change. Focus on the specifics,
saying what the person did well, what was done poorly, and how it
could be changed. Don’t beat around the bush or be oblique or
evasive; it will muddy the real message. This, of course, is akin to the
advice to couples about the “XYZ” statement of a grievance: say
exactly what the problem is, what’s wrong with it or how it makes
you feel, and what could be changed.
“Specificity,” Levinson points out, “is just as important for praise as
for criticism. I won’t say that vague praise has no effect at all, but it
doesn’t have much, and you can’t learn from it.”
7
•
Offer a solution | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
55c0dac06b62-1 | 7
•
Offer a solution
. The critique, like all useful feedback, should point
to a way to fix the problem. Otherwise it leaves the recipient
frustrated, demoralized, or demotivated. The critique may open the
door to possibilities and alternatives that the person did not realize
were there, or simply sensitize her to deficiencies that need attention
—but should include suggestions about how to take care of these
problems.
•
Be present
. Critiques, like praise, are most effective face to face and
in private. People who are uncomfortable giving a criticism—or
offering praise—are likely to ease the burden on themselves by doing
it at a distance, such as in a memo. But this makes the communication
too impersonal, and robs the person receiving it of an opportunity for
a response or clarification.
•
Be sensitive
. This is a call for empathy, for being attuned to the
impact of what you say and how you say it on the person at the
receiving end. Managers who have little empathy, Levinson points
out, are most prone to giving feedback in a hurtful fashion, such as
the withering put-down. The net effect of such criticism is destructive:
instead of opening the way for a corrective, it creates an emotional | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
55c0dac06b62-2 | instead of opening the way for a corrective, it creates an emotional
backlash of resentment, bitterness, defensiveness, and distance.
Levinson also offers some emotional counsel for those at the | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
45341201e6ac-0 | receiving end of criticism. One is to see the criticism as valuable
information about how to do better, not as a personal attack. Another
is to watch for the impulse toward defensiveness instead of taking
responsibility. And, if it gets too upsetting, ask to resume the meeting
later, after a period to absorb the difficult message and cool down a
bit. Finally, he advises people to see criticism as an opportunity to
work together with the critic to solve the problem, not as an
adversarial situation. All this sage advice, of course, directly echoes
suggestions for married couples trying to handle their complaints
without doing permanent damage to their relationship. As with
marriage, so with work.
DEALING WITH DIVERSITY
Sylvia Skeeter, a former army captain in her thirties, was a shift
manager at a Denny’s restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina. One
slow afternoon a group of black customers—a minister, an assistant
pastor, and two visiting gospel singers—came in for a meal, and sat
and sat while the waitresses ignored them. The waitresses, recalls
Skeeter, “would kind of glare, with their hands on their hips, and then
they’d go back to talking among themselves, like a black person | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
45341201e6ac-1 | they’d go back to talking among themselves, like a black person
standing five feet away didn’t exist.”
Skeeter, indignant, confronted the waitresses, and complained to
the manager, who shrugged off their actions, saying, “That’s how they
were raised, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Skeeter quit on the
spot; she is black.
If that had been an isolated incident, this moment of blatant
prejudice might have passed unnoted. But Sylvia Skeeter was one of
hundreds of people who came forward to testify to a widespread
pattern of antiblack prejudice throughout the Denny’s restaurant
chain, a pattern that resulted in a $54 million settlement of a class-
action suit on behalf of thousands of black customers who had
suffered such indignities.
The plaintiffs included a detail of seven African-American Secret
Service agents who sat waiting for an hour for their breakfast while
their white colleagues at the next table were served promptly—as
they were all on their way to provide security for a visit by President
Clinton to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. They also
included a black girl with paralyzed legs in Tampa, Florida, who sat in | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
cd62fb2fce33-0 | her wheelchair for two hours waiting for her food late one night after
a prom. The pattern of discrimination, the class-action suit held, was
due to the widespread assumption throughout the Denny’s chain—
particularly at the level of district and branch manager—that black
customers were bad for business. Today, largely as a result of the suit
and publicity surrounding it, the Denny’s chain is making amends to
the black community. And every employee, especially managers, must
attend sessions on the advantages of a multiracial clientele.
Such seminars have become a staple of in-house training in
companies throughout America, with the growing realization by
managers that even if people bring prejudices to work with them, they
must learn to act as though they have none. The reasons, over and
above human decency, are pragmatic. One is the shifting face of the
workforce, as white males, who used to be the dominant group, are
becoming a minority. A survey of several hundred American
companies found that more than three quarters of new employees
were nonwhite—a demographic shift that is also reflected to a large
extent in
the changing pool of customers.
8
Another reason is the
increasing need for international companies to have employees who | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
cd62fb2fce33-1 | increasing need for international companies to have employees who
not only put any bias aside to appreciate people from diverse cultures
(and markets) but also turn that appreciation to competitive
advantage. A third motivation is the potential fruit of diversity, in
terms of heightened collective creativity and entrepreneurial energy.
All this means the culture of an organization must change to foster
tolerance, even if individual biases remain. But how can a company
do this? The sad fact is that the panoply of one-day, one-video, or
single-weekend “diversity training” courses do not really seem to
budge the biases of those employees who come to them with deep
prejudice against one or another group, whether it be whites biased
against blacks, blacks against Asians, or Asians resenting Hispanics.
Indeed, the net effect of inept diversity courses—those that raise false
expectations by promising too much, or simply create an atmosphere
of confrontation instead of understanding—can be to heighten the
tensions that divide groups in the workplace, calling even greater
attention to these differences. To understand what
can
be done, it
helps to first understand the nature of prejudice itself.
The Roots of Prejudice | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
cd62fb2fce33-2 | The Roots of Prejudice
Dr. Vamik Volkan is a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia now, | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bd4d6636fe58-0 | but he remembers what it was like growing up in a Turkish family on
the island of Cyprus, then bitterly contested between Turks and
Greeks. As a boy Volkan heard rumors that the local Greek priest’s
cincture had a knot for each Turkish child he had strangled, and
remembers the tone of dismay in which he was told how his Greek
neighbors ate pigs, whose meat was considered too filthy to eat in his
own Turkish culture. Now, as a student of ethnic conflict, Volkan
points to such childhood memories to show how hatreds between
groups are kept alive over the years, as each new generation is
steeped in hostile biases like these.
9
The psychological price of loyalty
to one’s own group can be antipathy toward another, especially when
there is a long history of enmity between the groups.
Prejudices are a kind of emotional learning that occurs early in life,
making these reactions especially hard to eradicate entirely, even in
people who as adults feel it is wrong to hold them. “The emotions of
prejudice are formed in childhood, while the beliefs that are used to
justify it come later,” explained Thomas Pettigrew, a social | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bd4d6636fe58-1 | psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who has
studied prejudice for decades. “Later in life you may
want to change
your prejudice, but it is far easier to change your intellectual beliefs
than your deep feelings. Many Southerners have confessed to me, for
instance, that even though in their minds they no longer feel prejudice
against blacks, they feel squeamish when they shake hands with a
black. The feelings are left over from what they learned in their
families as children.”
10
The power of the stereotypes that buttress prejudice comes in part
from a more neutral dynamic in the mind that makes stereotypes of
all kinds self-confirming.
11
People remember more readily instances
that support the stereotype while tending to discount instances that
challenge it. On meeting at a party an emotionally open and warm
Englishman who disconfirms the stereotype of the cold, reserved
Briton, for example, people can tell themselves that he’s just unusual,
or “he’s been drinking.”
The tenacity of subtle biases may explain why, while over the last
forty years or so racial attitudes of American whites toward blacks
have become increasingly more tolerant, more subtle forms of bias | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bd4d6636fe58-2 | persist: people disavow racist attitudes while still acting with covert
bias.
12
When asked, such people say they feel no bigotry, but in
ambiguous situations still act in a biased way—though they give a
rationale other than prejudice. Such bias can take the form, say, of a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c7583ec65d13-0 | white senior manager—who believes he has no prejudices—rejecting
a black job applicant, ostensibly not because of his race but because
his education and experience “are not quite right” for the job, while
hiring a white applicant with about the same background. Or it might
take the form of giving a briefing and helpful tips to a white salesman
about to make a call, but somehow neglecting to do the same for a
black or Hispanic salesman.
Zero Tolerance for Intolerance
If people’s long-held biases cannot be so easily weeded out, what
can
be changed is what they
do
about them. At Denny’s, for example,
waitresses or branch managers who took it upon themselves to
discriminate against blacks were seldom, if ever, challenged. Instead,
some managers seem to have encouraged them, at least tacitly, to
discriminate, even suggesting policies such as demanding payment for
meals in advance from black customers only, denying blacks widely
advertised free birthday meals, or locking the doors and claiming to
be closed if a group of black customers was coming. As John P.
Relman, an attorney who sued Denny’s on behalf of the black Secret | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c7583ec65d13-1 | Service agents, put it, “Denny’s management closed their eyes to what
the
field staff was doing. There must have been some
message … which freed up the inhibitions of local managers to act on
their racist impulses.”
13
But everything we know about the roots of prejudice and how to
fight it effectively suggests that precisely this attitude—turning a
blind eye to acts of bias—allows discrimination to thrive. To do
nothing, in this context, is an act of consequence in itself, letting the
virus of prejudice spread unopposed. More to the point than diversity
training courses—or perhaps essential to their having much effect—is
that the norms of a group be decisively changed by taking an active
stance against any acts of discrimination, from the top echelons of
management on down. Biases may not budge, but acts of prejudice
can be quashed, if the climate is changed. As an IBM executive put it,
“We don’t tolerate slights or insults in any way; respect for the
individual is central to IBM’s culture.”
14
If research on prejudice has any lesson for making a corporate
culture more tolerant, it is to encourage people to speak out against
even low-key acts of discrimination or harassment—offensive jokes, | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c7583ec65d13-2 | say, or the posting of girlie calendars demeaning to women | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
da3800f28cd3-0 | coworkers. One study found that when people in a group heard
someone make ethnic slurs, it led others to do the same. The simple
act of naming bias as such or objecting to it on the spot establishes a
social atmosphere that discourages it; saying nothing serves to
condone it.
15
In this endeavor, those in positions of authority play a
pivotal role: their failure to condemn acts of bias sends the tacit
message that such acts are okay. Following through with action such
as a reprimand sends a powerful message that bias is not trivial, but
has real—and negative—consequences.
Here too the skills of emotional intelligence are an advantage,
especially in having the social knack to know not just when but
how
to speak up productively against bias. Such feedback should be
couched with all the finesse of an effective criticism, so it can be
heard without defensiveness. If managers and coworkers do this
naturally, or learn to do so, bias incidents are more likely to fall away.
The more effective diversity training courses set a new,
organizationwide, explicit ground rule that makes bias in any form
out-of-bounds, and so encourages people who have been silent
witnesses and bystanders to voice their discomforts and objections. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
da3800f28cd3-1 | witnesses and bystanders to voice their discomforts and objections.
Another active ingredient in diversity courses is perspective-taking, a
stance that encourages empathy and tolerance. To the degree that
people come to understand the pain of those who feel discriminated
against, they are more likely to speak out against it.
In short, it is more practical to try to suppress the expression of bias
rather than trying to eliminate the attitude itself; stereotypes change
very slowly, if at
all. Simply putting people of different groups
together does little or nothing to lower intolerance, as witness cases of
school desegregation in which intergroup hostility rose rather than
decreased. For the plethora of diversity training programs that are
sweeping through the corporate world, this means a realistic goal is to
change the
norms
of a group for showing prejudice or harassing; such
programs can do much to raise into the collective awareness the idea
that bigotry or harassment are not acceptable and will not be
tolerated. But to expect that such a program will uproot deeply held
prejudices is unrealistic.
Still, since prejudices are a variety of emotional learning, relearning
is
possible—though it takes time and should not be expected as the | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
da3800f28cd3-2 | is
possible—though it takes time and should not be expected as the
outcome of a one-time diversity training workshop. What can make a
difference, though, is sustained camaraderie and daily efforts toward a
common goal by people of different backgrounds. The lesson here is | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
2e48ea932b2b-0 | from school desegregation: when groups fail to mix socially, instead
forming hostile cliques, the negative stereotypes intensify. But when
students have worked together as equals to attain a common goal, as
on sports teams or in bands, their stereotypes break down—as can
happen naturally in the workplace, when people work together as
peers over the years.
16
But to stop at battling prejudice in the workplace is to miss a
greater opportunity: taking advantage of the creative and
entrepreneurial possibilities that a diverse workforce can offer. As we
shall see, a working group of varied strengths and perspectives, if it
can operate in harmony, is likely to come to better, more creative, and
more effective solutions than those same people working in isolation.
ORGANIZATIONAL SAVVY AND THE GROUP IQ
By the end of the century, a third of the American workforce will be
“knowledge workers,” people whose productivity is marked by adding
value to information—whether as market analysts, writers, or
computer programmers. Peter Drucker, the eminent business maven
who coined the term “knowledge worker,” points out that such
workers’ expertise is highly specialized, and that their productivity
depends on their efforts being coordinated as part of an organizational | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
2e48ea932b2b-1 | depends on their efforts being coordinated as part of an organizational
team: writers are not publishers; computer programmers are not
software distributors. While people have always worked in tandem,
notes Drucker, with knowledge work, “teams become the work unit
rather than the individual himself.”
17
And that suggests why
emotional intelligence, the skills that help people harmonize, should
become increasingly valued as a workplace asset in the years to come.
Perhaps the most rudimentary form of organizational teamwork is
the meeting, that inescapable part of an executive’s lot—in a
boardroom, on a conference call, in someone’s office. Meetings—
bodies in the same room—are but the most obvious, and a somewhat
antiquated, example of the sense in which work is shared. Electronic
networks, e-mail, teleconferences, work teams, informal networks,
and the like are emerging as new functional entities in organizations.
To the degree that the explicit hierarchy as mapped on an
organizational chart is the skeleton of an organization, these human
touchpoints are its central nervous system.
Whenever people come together to collaborate, whether it be in an | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c2d83cf43300-0 | executive planning meeting or as a team working toward a shared
product, there is a very real sense in which they have a group IQ, the
sum total of the talents and skills of all those involved. And how well
they accomplish their task will be determined by how high that IQ is.
The single most important element in group intelligence, it turns out,
is not the average IQ in the academic sense, but rather in terms of
emotional intelligence. The key to a high group IQ is social harmony.
It is this ability to harmonize that, all other things being equal, will
make one group especially talented, productive, and successful, and
another—with members whose talent and skill are equal in other
regards—do poorly.
The idea that there is a group intelligence at all comes from Robert
Sternberg, the Yale psychologist, and Wendy Williams, a graduate
student, who were seeking to understand why some groups are far
more effective than others.
18
After all, when people come together to
work as a group, each brings certain talents—say, a high verbal
fluency, creativity, empathy, or technical expertise. While a group can
be no “smarter” than the sum total of all these specific strengths, it | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c2d83cf43300-1 | can be much dumber if its internal workings don’t allow people to
share their talents. This maxim became evident when Sternberg and
Williams recruited people to take part in groups that were given the
creative challenge of coming up with an effective advertising
campaign for a fictitious sweetener that showed promise as a sugar
substitute.
One surprise was that people who were
too
eager to take part were
a drag on the group, lowering its overall performance; these eager
beavers were too controlling or domineering. Such people seemed to
lack a basic element of social intelligence, the ability to recognize
what is apt and what inappropriate in give-and-take. Another negative
was having deadweight, members who did not participate.
The single most important factor in maximizing the excellence of a
group’s product was the degree to which the members were able to
create a state of internal harmony, which lets them take advantage of
the full talent of their members. The overall performance of
harmonious groups was helped by having a member who was
particularly talented; groups with more friction were far less able to
capitalize on having members of great ability. In groups where there
are high levels of emotional and social static—whether it be from fear | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c2d83cf43300-2 | are high levels of emotional and social static—whether it be from fear
or anger, from rivalries or resentments—people cannot offer their
best. But harmony allows a group to take maximum advantage of its | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0593b6cdc670-0 | most creative and talented members’ abilities.
While the moral of this tale is quite clear for, say, work teams, it
has a more general implication for anyone who works within an
organization. Many things people do at work depend on their ability
to call on a loose network of fellow workers; different tasks can mean
calling on different members of the network. In effect, this creates the
chance for ad hoc groups, each with a membership tailored to offer an
optimal array of talents, expertise, and placement. Just how well
people can “work” a network—in effect, make it into a temporary, ad
hoc team—is a crucial factor in on-the-job success.
Consider, for example, a study of star performers at Bell Labs, the
world-famous scientific think tank near Princeton. The labs are
peopled by engineers and scientists who are all at the top on academic
IQ tests. But within this pool of talent, some emerge as stars, while
others are only average in their output. What makes the difference
between stars and the others is not their academic IQ, but their
emotional
IQ. They are better able to motivate themselves, and better
able to work their informal networks into ad hoc teams. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0593b6cdc670-1 | able to work their informal networks into ad hoc teams.
The “stars” were studied in one division at the labs, a unit that
creates and designs the electronic switches that control telephone
systems—a highly sophisticated and demanding piece of electronic
engineering.
19
Because the work is beyond the capacity of any one
person to tackle, it is done in teams that can range from just 5 or so
engineers to 150. No single engineer knows enough to do the job
alone; getting things done demands tapping other people’s expertise.
To find out what made the difference between those who were highly
productive and those who were only average, Robert Kelley and Janet
Caplan had managers and peers nominate the 10 to 15 percent of
engineers who stood out as stars.
When they compared the stars with everyone else, the most
dramatic finding, at first, was the paucity of differences between the
two groups. “Based on a wide range of cognitive and social measures,
from standard tests
for IQ to personality inventories, there’s little
meaningful difference in innate abilities,” Kelley and Caplan wrote in
the
Harvard Business Review
. “As it develops, academic talent was not | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
0593b6cdc670-2 | . “As it develops, academic talent was not
a good predictor of on-the-job productivity,” nor was IQ.
But after detailed interviews, the critical differences emerged in the
internal and interpersonal strategies “stars” used to get their work
done. One of the most important turned out to be a rapport with a
network of key people. Things go more smoothly for the standouts | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
88deb141f646-0 | because they put time into cultivating good relationships with people
whose services might be needed in a crunch as part of an instant ad
hoc team to solve a problem or handle a crisis. “A middle performer
at Bell Labs talked about being stumped by a technical problem,”
Kelley and Caplan observed. “He painstakingly called various
technical gurus and then waited, wasting valuable time while calls
went unreturned and e-mail messages unanswered. Star performers,
however, rarely face such situations because they do the work of
building reliable networks before they actually need them. When they
call someone for advice, stars almost always get a faster answer.”
Informal networks are especially critical for handling unanticipated
problems. “The formal organization is set up to handle easily
anticipated problems,” one study of these networks observes. “But
when unexpected problems arise, the informal organization kicks in.
Its complex web of social ties form every time colleagues
communicate, and solidify over time into surprisingly stable networks.
Highly adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and elliptically,
skipping entire functions to get things done.”
20
The analysis of informal networks shows that just because people
work together day to day they will not necessarily trust each other | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
88deb141f646-1 | work together day to day they will not necessarily trust each other
with sensitive information (such as a desire to change jobs, or
resentment about how a manager or peer behaves), nor turn to them
in crisis. Indeed, a more sophisticated view of informal networks
shows that there are at least three varieties: communications webs—
who talks to whom; expertise networks, based on which people are
turned to for advice; and trust networks. Being a main node in the
expertise network means someone will have a reputation for technical
excellence, which often leads to a promotion. But there is virtually no
relationship between being an expert and being seen as someone
people can trust with their secrets, doubts, and vulnerabilities. A petty
office tyrant or micromanager may be high on expertise, but will be
so low on trust that it will undermine their ability to manage, and
effectively exclude them from informal networks. The stars of an
organization are often those who have thick connections on all
networks, whether communications, expertise, or trust.
Beyond a mastery of these essential networks, other forms of
organizational savvy the Bell Labs stars had mastered included | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
88deb141f646-2 | organizational savvy the Bell Labs stars had mastered included
effectively coordinating their efforts in teamwork; being leaders in
building consensus; being able to see things from the perspective of
others, such as customers or others on a work team; persuasiveness; | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
bcf4f2d69452-0 | and promoting cooperation while avoiding conflicts. While all of these
rely on social skills, the stars also displayed another kind of knack:
taking initiative—being self-motivated enough to take on
responsibilities above and beyond their stated job—and self-
management in the sense of regulating their time and work
commitments well. All such skills, of course, are aspects of emotional
intelligence.
There are strong signs that what is true at Bell Labs augurs for the
future of all corporate life, a tomorrow where the basic skills of
emotional intelligence will be ever more important, in teamwork, in
cooperation, in helping people learn together how to work more
effectively. As knowledge-based services and intellectual capital
become more central to corporations, improving the way people work
together will be a major way to leverage intellectual capital, making a
critical competitive difference. To thrive, if not survive, corporations
would do well to boost their collective emotional intelligence. | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
b4c7283c038c-0 | 11
Mind and Medicine
“Who taught you all this, Doctor?”
The reply came promptly:
“Suffering.”
—A
LBERT
C
AMUS
,
The Plague
A vague ache in my groin sent me to my doctor. Nothing seemed
unusual until he looked at the results of a urine test. I had traces of
blood in my urine.
“I want you to go to the hospital and get some tests … kidney
function, cytology …,” he said in a businesslike tone.
I don’t know what he said next. My mind seemed to freeze at the
word
cytology
. Cancer.
I have a foggy memory of his explaining to me when and where to
go for diagnostic tests. It was the simplest instruction, but I had to ask
him to repeat it three or four times.
Cytology
—my mind would not
leave the word. That one word made me feel as though I had just been
mugged at my own front door.
Why should I have reacted so strongly? My doctor was just being
thorough and competent, checking the limbs in a diagnostic decision
tree. There was a tiny likelihood that cancer was the problem. But this
rational analysis was irrelevant at that moment. In the land of the | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
b4c7283c038c-1 | sick, emotions reign supreme; fear is a thought away. We can be so
emotionally fragile while we are ailing because our mental well-being
is based in part on the illusion of invulnerability. Sickness—especially
a severe illness—bursts that illusion, attacking the premise that our
private world is safe and secure. Suddenly we feel weak, helpless, and
vulnerable.
The problem is when medical personnel ignore how patients are
reacting
emotionally
, even while attending to their physical condition.
This inattention to the emotional reality of illness neglects a growing
body of evidence showing that people’s emotional states can play a
sometimes significant role in their vulnerability to disease and in the | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
1b844e9507f1-0 | course of their recovery. Modern medical care too often lacks
emotional intelligence.
For the patient, any encounter with a nurse or physician can be a
chance for reassuring information, comfort, and solace—or, if handled
unfortunately, an invitation to despair. But too often medical
caregivers are rushed or indifferent to patients’ distress. To be sure,
there are compassionate nurses and physicians who take the time to
reassure and inform as well as administer medically. But the trend is
toward a professional universe in which institutional imperatives can
leave medical staff oblivious to the vulnerabilities of patients, or
feeling too pressed to do anything about them. With the hard realities
of a medical system increasingly timed by accountants, things seem to
be getting worse.
Beyond the humanitarian argument for physicians to offer care
along with cure, there are other compelling reasons to consider the
psychological and social reality of patients as being within the
medical realm rather than separate from it. By now a scientific case
can be made that there is a margin of
medical
effectiveness, both in
prevention and treatment, that can be gained by treating people’s
emotional state along with their medical condition. Not in every case | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
1b844e9507f1-1 | emotional state along with their medical condition. Not in every case
or every condition, of course. But looking at data from hundreds and
hundreds of cases, there is on average enough increment of medical
benefit to suggest that an
emotional
intervention should be a standard
part of medical care for the range of serious disease.
Historically, medicine in modern society has defined its mission in
terms of curing
disease
—the medical disorder—while overlooking
illness
—the patient’s experience of disease. Patients, by going along
with this view of their problem, join a quiet conspiracy to ignore how
they are reacting emotionally to their medical problems—or to
dismiss those reactions as irrelevant to the course of the problem
itself. That attitude is reinforced by a medical model that dismisses
entirely the idea that mind influences body in any consequential way.
Yet there is an equally unproductive ideology in the other direction:
the notion that people can cure themselves of even the most
pernicious disease simply by making themselves happy or thinking
positive thoughts, or that they are somehow to blame for having
gotten sick in the first place. The result of this attitude-will-cure-all
rhetoric has been to create widespread confusion
and | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
1b844e9507f1-2 | rhetoric has been to create widespread confusion
and
misunderstanding about the extent to which illness can be affected by
the mind, and, perhaps worse, sometimes to make people feel guilty | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5ad84d5a2984-0 | for having a disease, as though it were a sign of some moral lapse or
spiritual unworthiness.
The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. By sorting
through the scientific data, my aim is to clarify the contradictions and
replace the nonsense with a clearer understanding of the degree to
which our emotions—and emotional intelligence—play a part in
health and disease.
THE BODY’S MIND: HOW EMOTIONS MATTER
FOR HEALTH
In 1974 a finding in a laboratory at the School of Medicine and
Dentistry, University of Rochester, rewrote biology’s map of the body:
Robert Ader, a psychologist, discovered that the immune system, like
the brain, could learn. His result was a shock; the prevailing wisdom
in medicine had been that only the brain and central nervous system
could respond to experience by changing how they behaved. Ader’s
finding led to the investigation of what are turning out to be myriad
ways the central nervous system and the immune system
communicate—biological pathways that make the mind, the
emotions, and the body not separate, but intimately entwined.
In his experiment white rats had been given a medication that
artificially suppressed the quantity of disease-fighting T cells
circulating in their blood. Each time they received the medication, | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5ad84d5a2984-1 | they ate it along with saccharin-laced water. But Ader discovered that
giving the rats the saccharin-flavored water alone, without the
suppressive medication, still resulted in a lowering of the T-cell count
—to the point that some of the rats were getting sick and dying. Their
immune system had learned to suppress T cells in response to the
flavored water. That just should not have happened, according to the
best scientific understanding at the time.
The immune system is the “body’s brain,” as neuroscientist
Francisco Varela, at Paris’s Ecole Polytechnique, puts it, defining the
body’s own sense of self—of what belongs within it and what does
not.
1
Immune cells travel in the bloodstream throughout the entire
body, contacting virtually every other cell. Those cells they recognize,
they leave alone; those they fail to recognize, they attack. The attack
either defends us against viruses, bacteria, and cancer or, if the
immune cells misidentify some of the body’s own cells, creates an
autoimmune disease such as allergy or lupus. Until the day Ader made | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
045ba0e8fa47-0 | his serendipitous discovery, every anatomist, every physician, and
every biologist
believed that the brain (along with its extensions
throughout the body via the central nervous system) and the immune
system were separate entities, neither able to influence the operation
of the other. There was no pathway that could connect the brain
centers monitoring what the rat tasted with the areas of bone marrow
that manufacture T cells. Or so it had been thought for a century.
Over the years since then, Ader’s modest discovery has forced a new
look at the links between the immune system and the central nervous
system. The field that studies this, psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI, is
now a leading-edge medical science. Its very name acknowledges the
links:
psycho
, or “mind”;
neuro
, for the neuroendocrine system (which
subsumes the nervous system and hormone systems); and
immunology
,
for the immune system.
A network of researchers is finding that the chemical messengers
that operate most extensively in both brain and immune system are
those that are most dense in neural areas that regulate emotion.
2
Some of the strongest evidence for a direct physical pathway allowing
emotions to impact the immune system has come from David Felten, a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
045ba0e8fa47-1 | colleague of Ader’s. Felten began by noting that emotions have a
powerful effect on the autonomic nervous system, which regulates
everything from how much insulin is secreted to blood-pressure levels.
Felten, working with his wife, Suzanne, and other colleagues, then
detected a meeting point where the autonomic nervous system
directly talks to lymphocytes and macrophages, cells of the immune
system.
3
In electron-microscope studies, they found synapselike contacts
where the nerve terminals of the autonomic system have endings that
directly abut these immune cells. This physical contact point allows
the nerve cells to release neurotransmitters to regulate the immune
cells; indeed, they signal back and forth. The finding is revolutionary.
No one had suspected that immune cells could be targets of messages
from the nerves.
To test how important these nerve endings were in the workings of
the immune system, Felten went a step further. In experiments with
animals he removed some nerves from lymph nodes and spleen—
where immune cells are stored or made—and then used viruses to
challenge the immune system. The result: a huge drop in immune
response to the virus. His conclusion is that without those nerve | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
045ba0e8fa47-2 | response to the virus. His conclusion is that without those nerve
endings the immune system simply does not respond as it should to | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5b5adbfeea8d-0 | the challenge of an invading virus or bacterium. In short, the nervous
system not only connects to the immune system, but is essential for
proper immune function.
Another key pathway linking emotions and the immune system is
via the
influence of the hormones released under stress. The
catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine—otherwise known
as adrenaline and noradrenaline), cortisol and prolactin, and the
natural opiates beta-endorphin and enkephalin are all released during
stress arousal. Each has a strong impact on immune cells. While the
relationships are complex, the main influence is that while these
hormones surge through the body, the immune cells are hampered in
their function: stress suppresses immune resistance, at least
temporarily, presumably in a conservation of energy that puts a
priority on the more immediate emergency, which is more pressing
for survival. But if stress is constant and intense, that suppression may
become long-lasting.
4
Microbiologists and other scientists are finding more and more such
connections between the brain and the cardiovascular and immune
systems—having first had to accept the once-radical notion that they
exist at all.
5
TOXIC EMOTIONS: THE CLINICAL DATA
Despite such evidence, many or most physicians are still skeptical that | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
5b5adbfeea8d-1 | emotions matter clinically. One reason is that while many studies
have found stress and negative emotions to weaken the effectiveness
of various immune cells, it is not always clear that the range of these
changes is great enough to make a
medical
difference.
Even so, an increasing number of physicians acknowledge the place
of emotions in medicine. For instance, Dr. Camran Nezhat, an eminent
gynecological laparoscopic surgeon at Stanford University, says, “If
someone scheduled for surgery tells me she’s panicked that day and
does not want to go through with it, I cancel the surgery.” Nezhat
explains, “Every surgeon knows that people who are extremely scared
do terribly in surgery. They bleed too much, they have more
infections and complications. They have a harder time recovering. It’s
much better if they are calm.”
The reason is straightforward: panic and anxiety hike blood
pressure, and veins distended by pressure bleed more profusely when | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
91c261447dab-0 | cut by the surgeon’s knife. Excess bleeding is one of the most
troublesome surgical complications, one that can sometimes lead to
death.
Beyond such medical anecdotes, evidence for the
clinical
importance
of emotions has been mounting steadily. Perhaps the most compelling
data on the medical significance of emotion come from a mass
analysis combining results from 101 smaller studies into a single
larger one of several thousand men and women. The study confirms
that perturbing emotions are bad for
health—to a degree.
6
People
who experienced chronic anxiety, long periods of sadness and
pessimism, unremitting tension or incessant hostility, relentless
cynicism or suspiciousness, were found to have
double
the risk of
disease—including asthma, arthritis, headaches, peptic ulcers, and
heart disease (each representative of major, broad categories of
disease). This order of magnitude makes distressing emotions as toxic
a risk factor as, say, smoking or high cholesterol are for heart disease
—in other words, a major threat to health.
To be sure, this is a broad statistical link, and by no means indicates
that everyone who has such chronic feelings will thus more easily fall | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
91c261447dab-1 | prey to a disease. But the evidence for a potent role for emotion in
disease is far more extensive than this one study of studies indicates.
Taking a more detailed look at the data for specific emotions,
especially the big three—anger, anxiety, and depression—makes
clearer some specific ways that feelings have medical significance,
even if the biological mechanisms by which such emotions have their
effect are yet to be fully understood.
7
When Anger Is Suicidal
A while back, the man said, a bump on the side of his car led to a fruitless and
frustrating journey. After endless insurance company red tape and auto body shops
that did more damage, he still owed $800. And it wasn’t even his fault. He was so fed
up that whenever he got into the car he was overcome with disgust. He finally sold the
car in frustration. Years later the memories still made the man livid with outrage.
This bitter memory was brought to mind purposely, as part of a
study of anger in heart patients at Stanford University Medical School.
All the patients in the study had, like this embittered man, suffered a
first heart attack, and the question was whether anger might have a | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
91c261447dab-2 | significant impact of some kind on their heart function. The effect was | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
9f353acf44df-0 | striking: while the patients recounted incidents that made them mad,
the pumping efficiency of their hearts dropped by five percentage
points.
8
Some of the patients showed a drop in pumping efficiency of
7 percent or greater—a range that cardiologists regard as a sign of a
myocardial ischemia, a dangerous drop in blood flow to the heart
itself.
The drop in pumping efficiency was not seen with other distressing
feelings, such as anxiety, nor during physical exertion; anger seems to
be the one emotion that does most harm to the heart. While recalling
the upsetting incident, the patients said they were only about half as
mad as they had been
while it was happening, suggesting that their
hearts would have been even more greatly hampered during an actual
angry encounter.
This finding is part of a larger network of evidence emerging from
dozens of studies pointing to the power of anger to damage the heart.
9
The old idea has not held up that a hurried, high-pressure Type-A
personality is at great risk from heart disease, but from that failed
theory has emerged a new finding: it is hostility that puts people at
risk.
Much of the data on hostility has come from research by Dr.
Redford Williams at Duke University.
10 | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
9f353acf44df-1 | Redford Williams at Duke University.
10
For example, Williams found
that those physicians who had had the highest scores on a test of
hostility while still in medical school were seven times as likely to
have died by the age of fifty as were those with low hostility scores—
being prone to anger was a stronger predictor of dying young than
were other risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and high
cholesterol. And findings by a colleague, Dr. John Barefoot at the
University of North Carolina, show that in heart patients undergoing
angiography, in which a tube is inserted into the coronary artery to
measure lesions, scores on a test of hostility correlate with the extent
and severity of coronary artery disease.
Of course, no one is saying that anger alone causes coronary artery
disease; it is one of several interacting factors. As Peter Kaufman,
acting chief of the Behavioral Medicine Branch of the National Heart,
Lung, and Blood Institute, explained to me, “We can’t yet sort out
whether anger and hostility play a causal role in the early
development of coronary artery disease, or whether it intensifies the
problem once heart disease has begun, or both. But take a twenty- | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
9f353acf44df-2 | year-old who repeatedly gets angry. Each episode of anger adds an
additional stress to the heart by increasing his heart rate and blood | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c70383bd3807-0 | pressure. When that is repeated over and over again, it can do
damage,” especially because the turbulence of blood flowing through
the coronary artery with each heartbeat “can cause microtears in the
vessel, where plaque develops. If your heart rate is faster and blood
pressure is higher because you’re habitually angry, then over thirty
years that may lead to a faster buildup of plaque, and so lead to
coronary artery disease.”
11
Once heart disease develops, the mechanisms triggered by anger
affect the very efficiency of the heart as a pump, as was shown in the
study of angry memories in heart patients. The net effect is to make
anger particularly lethal in those who already have heart disease. For
instance, a Stanford University Medical School study of 1,012 men
and women who suffered from a first heart attack and then were
followed for up to eight years showed that those men who were most
aggressive and hostile at the outset suffered the highest
rate of second
heart attacks.
12
There were similar results in a Yale School of
Medicine study of 929 men who had survived heart attacks and were
tracked for up to ten years.
13
Those who had been rated as easily | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c70383bd3807-1 | 13
Those who had been rated as easily
roused to anger were three times more likely to die of cardiac arrest
than those who were more even-tempered. If they also had high
cholesterol levels, the added risk from anger was five times higher.
The Yale researchers point out that it may not be anger alone that
heightens the risk of death from heart disease, but rather intense
negative emotionality of any kind that regularly sends surges of stress
hormones through the body. But overall, the strongest scientific links
between emotions and heart disease are to anger: a Harvard Medical
School study asked more than fifteen hundred men and women who
had suffered heart attacks to describe their emotional state in the
hours before the attack. Being angry more than doubled the risk of
cardiac arrest in people who already had heart disease; the heightened
risk lasted for about two hours after the anger was aroused.
14
These findings do not mean that people should try to suppress anger
when it is appropriate. Indeed, there is evidence that trying to
completely suppress such feelings in the heat of the moment actually
results in magnifying the body’s agitation and may raise blood
pressure.
15 | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
c70383bd3807-2 | pressure.
15
On the other hand, as we saw in
Chapter 5
, the net effect
of ventilating anger every time it is felt is simply to feed it, making it
a more likely response to any annoying situation. Williams resolves
this paradox by concluding that whether anger is expressed or not is
less important than whether it is chronic. An occasional display of | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
f9fc3289f9b7-0 | hostility is not dangerous to health; the problem arises when hostility
becomes so constant as to define an antagonistic personal style—one
marked by repeated feelings of mistrust and cynicism and the
propensity to snide comments and put-downs, as well as more obvious
bouts of temper and rage.
16
The hopeful news is that chronic anger need not be a death
sentence: hostility is a habit that can change. One group of heart-
attack patients at Stanford University Medical School was enrolled in
a program designed to help them soften the attitudes that gave them a
short temper. This anger-control training resulted in a second-heart-
attack rate 44 percent lower than for those who had not tried to
change their hostility.
17
A program designed by Williams has had
similar beneficial results.
18
Like the Stanford program, it teaches basic
elements of emotional intelligence, particularly mindfulness of anger
as it begins to stir, the ability to regulate it once it has begun, and
empathy. Patients are asked to jot down cynical or hostile thoughts as
they
notice them. If the thoughts persist, they try to short-circuit them
by saying (or thinking), “Stop!” And they are encouraged to purposely | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
f9fc3289f9b7-1 | substitute reasonable thoughts for cynical, mistrustful ones during
trying situations—for instance, if an elevator is delayed, to search for
a benign reason rather than harbor anger against some imagined
thoughtless person who may be responsible for the delay. For
frustrating encounters, they learn the ability to see things from the
other person’s perspective—empathy is a balm for anger.
As Williams told me, “The antidote to hostility is to develop a more
trusting heart. All it takes is the right motivation. When people see
that their hostility can lead to an early grave, they are ready to try.”
Stress: Anxiety Out of Proportion and Out of Place
I just feel anxious and tense all the time. It all started in high school. I was a straight-A
student, and I worried constantly about my grades, whether the other kids and the
teachers liked me, being prompt for classes—things like that. There was a lot of
pressure from my parents to do well in school and to be a good role model.… I guess I
just caved in to all that pressure, because my stomach problems began in my
sophomore year of high school. Since that time, I’ve had to be really careful about | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
f9fc3289f9b7-2 | drinking caffeine and eating spicy meals. I notice that when I’m feeling worried or
tense my stomach will flare up, and since I’m usually worried about something, I’m
always nauseous.
19 | emotional_intelligence.pdf |
f4ab7c833c0e-0 | Anxiety—the distress evoked by life’s pressures—is perhaps the
emotion with the greatest weight of scientific evidence connecting it
to the onset of sickness and course of recovery. When anxiety helps us
prepare to deal with some danger (a presumed utility in evolution),
then it has served us well. But in modern life anxiety is more often out
of proportion and out of place—distress comes in the face of situations
that we must live with or that are conjured by the mind, not real
dangers we need to confront. Repeated bouts of anxiety signal high
levels of stress. The woman whose constant worrying primes her
gastrointestinal trouble is a textbook example of how anxiety and
stress exacerbate medical problems.
In a 1993 review in the
Archives of Internal Medicine
of extensive
research on the stress-disease link, Yale psychologist Bruce McEwen
noted a broad spectrum of effects: compromising immune function to
the point that it can speed the metastasis of cancer; increasing
vulnerability to viral infections; exacerbating plaque formation
leading to atherosclerosis and blood clotting
leading to myocardial
infarction; accelerating the onset of Type I diabetes and the course of
Type II diabetes; and worsening or triggering an asthma attack.
20 | emotional_intelligence.pdf |