On Emotional Intelligence: How Smart Can Be Dumb

For the longest time we have embraced IQ as the sole acceptable measure for human aptitudes but in the past couple decades scientists and psychologists have proved emotional intelligence to play a large role as well. This does not mean, however, that emotional intelligence represents the rest of the factors of success: it includes a wide range of forces such as the wealth and education of the family we are born into, temperament, blind luck and the like. But the fundamentals of emotional intelligence—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and the ability to manage relationships—have proven to translate into on the job success. We can have the highest IQ in our class but if we lack social skills, self-awareness, can’t tone into social cues or learn to control our own emotions and how to act in certain situations, we will find it hinders us from taking the steps forward we are desperately trying to take.

Here is an example of when smart can be dumb which Daniel Goleman writes about in his book Emotional Intelligence. In Coral Springs, Florida high school David Pologruto, a high-school physics teacher was stabbed with a kitchen knife by one of his star students. The student, Jason H., a sophomore and straight A student was fixated on getting into medical school, Harvard to be specific, he had high goals for himself. When his teacher Pologruto gave him an 80 on his quiz, Jason assumed this low grade would put his future in jeopardy. He decided to bring a kitchen knife to the classroom and after a confrontation with his teacher he stabbed the knife into Pologruto’s collar bone before being subdued in a struggle.

A judge found Jason innocent, temporarily insane at the time of the incident. A group of four psychologists and psychiatrists swore he was psychotic during the fight. Jason claimed he was planning to commit suicide because of the low grade, and had gone to Pologruto to tell him he was killing himself because of the test score.

Jason transferred to a private school and graduated two years later at the top of his class. Because he decided to take advanced courses instead of regular, which would have brought his average up to a 4.0 if he got perfect grades, instead he got a 4.614 average which is way beyond an A+.

So, how could someone with such intelligence do something so dumb? The answer, as Daniel Goleman explains is: academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. Some of the smartest people we know might be held back by the lack of many other important abilities that are essential to make it easier to pave the road to success.

The more we learn to control our emotions and impulses, to regulate our moods and keep distress from blocking the ability to think clearly, learn to motivate ourselves, and keep going in the face of adversities or frustrations, the easier the road to success seems.

Since IQ has nearly a 100 year history of research with hundreds of thousands of people and emotional intelligence is a new concept, most people still measure success depending on the scores we get on our tests. But the problem with academic intelligence is that it offers practically no preparation for the trials and tribulations that life brings. There are studies that prove that a high IQ is no guarantee to success, prestige or happiness in life yet our schools, systems and culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring emotional intelligence as a key factor that also matters for our personal destiny.

As we have all have most likely witnessed over the years with the people in our social circles, that there are some people who are more adept to handling emotional situations and some who are poor at it. One co-worker may stay calm in the middle of a crisis situation where another dealing with the same situation may fly off the handle, unable to control his emotions. Acting like this in a situation can cause other co-workers to also go into panic mode and worry too much about things they cannot change or are not helping the situation at hand. The calm co-worker will more than likely help others to stay calm and realise that there is a solution to the problem at hand but it might take a few steps to figure it out. They stay more level-headed making it easier for them to think clearer and come up with a solution.

Keeping control of our emotional lives does require a certain set of skills and competency and how capable a person is at these skills is crucial to understanding why one person thrives in life and another, with the same IQ level does not.

Here are some examples to show that IQ is not the only factor to leading the successful life we have always dreamed of:

• Ninety-five Harvard students from the classes of the 1940's were followed into middle age, the students with the highest scores in college were not particularly successful compared to their lower-scoring peers in terms of salary, productivity, or status in their field. Nor did they have the greatest life satisfaction, happiness with family, friendships, romantic relationships.

• A similar follow up in middle age was done with a group of 450 boys, most of them sons of immigrants, two thirds from families on welfare, who grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts. A third of them had IQs below 90. But again IQ had little relationship to how well they had done at work or in the rest of their lives. For instance, 7 percent of men with IQs under 80 were unemployed for ten years or more, but so were 7 percent of men with IQs over 100.

•  There was another study with eighty-one valedictorians and salutatorians from the 1981 class of Illinois High schools, with, of course, the highest grade-point averages in their schools. They continued to do well in college, getting above average grades but by their late twenties they had climbed to only average levels of success. Ten years after graduating from High-school, only one in four were at the highest level of young people of comparable age in their chosen profession.

Of course there are many paths to success and plus success is whatever we want it to be in for our individual selves: there is no exact definition, everyone has a different path they want to follow in order to get there. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being what they call a “nerd” and trying our best to get the highest possible score on every test we get. But I say, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. As I mentioned there is no one specific definition to the word success because it is different for us all but there is no doubt that what most of us search for is good relationships with good people, some wealth, a loving relationship where we can be ourselves fully, good health: physically and emotionally. We search for that happiness that we see in all the cheesy movies. Well, a lot of evidence shows that people who are emotionally adept—who know their feelings and can manage them well, and who can read and effectively deal with other’s feelings well—are at an advantage of any domain of life, whether it be intimate or romantic relationships, or in business. Anyone with well-developed emotional skills are more likely to be more content and effective in their everyday lives opposed to others who fail to master the habits of their mind, who fight inner battles with themselves. These habits foster or hinder our own productivity.

Anyone can be successful, we simply must learn the balance between raw intellect and emotional intelligence. Once we can do this, things really do seem a lot easier.

If you want to read more on this topic, check out the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. I learned everything in this post from that book.

If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts: