05 Track 5

Unit 6

A New Generation of Thinking

Chapter 1

Emotional Intelligence

Page 95

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman is discussing his famous “impulse control” test at a San Francisco lecture and has the entire audience’s attention.

Goleman, a psychologist and science writer, is the author of the best-seller Emotional Intelligence, a fascinating book about recent discoveries in brain research that prove emotional stability is more important than IQ in determining an individual’s success in life.

One of the highlights of the book, Goleman explains to his audience of foundation leaders, educators, and grants donors, is a test administered thirty years ago that Goleman calls “The Marshmallow Challenge.”

In this experiment, four-year-old children were individually called into a room at Stanford University during the 1960s.

There, a kind man gave a marshmallow to each of them and said they could eat the marshmallow right away, or wait for him to come back from an errand, at which point they would get to marshmallows.

Goleman gets everyone laughing as he describes watching a film of the preschoolers while they waited for the nice man to come back. Some of them covered their eyes or rested their heads on their arms so they wouldn’t have to look at the marshmallow, or played games or sang to keep their thoughts off the single marshmallow and waited for the promised double prize.

Others about a third of the group simply watched the man leave and ate the marshmallow within seconds.

What is surprising about this test, claims Goleman, is its diagnostic power: A dozen years later the same children were tracked down as adolescents and tested again.

“The emotional and social difference between the grab-the marshmallow preschoolers and their gratification-delaying peers was dramatic,” Goleman says.

The ones who had resisted eating the marshmallow were clearly more socially competent than the others.

They were less likely to go to pieces, freeze or regress under stress, or become rattled and disorganized when pressured; they embraced challenges and pursued them instead of giving up, even in the face of difficulties; they were self-reliant and confident, trustworthy and dependable.”

The third or so who grabbed the marshmallow were “more likely to be seen as shying away from social contacts, to be stubborn and indecisive, to be easily upset by frustrations, to think of themselves as unworthy, to become immobilized by stress, to be mistrustful or prone to jealousy, or to overreact to certain situations with a sharp temper.”

And all because of a single marshmallow? In fact, Goleman explains, it’s all because of a lone neuron in the brain, only recently discovered, that bypasses the neocortex, the area of the brain where rational decisions are made and goes straight to the amygdala, or emotional center of the brain.

It is here that quicker, more primitive “fight or flight” responses occur, and are stored for future use. The more that emotional memories involving temper, frustration, anxiety, depression, impulse, and fear pile up in early adolescence, the more the amygdala can “hijack the rest of the brain,” Goleman says, “by flooding it with strong and inappropriate emotions, causing us to wonder later, ‘Why did I overreact?’”

But if the emotion stored in the brain are those of restraint, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, hope, and optimism, then we become endowed with an “emotional intelligence” that serves rather than enslaves us for the rest of our lives.

The bad news, says Goleman, is that a widely praised but disturbing study from the University of Vermont has shown a “decline in emotional aptitude among children across the board.”

Rich or poor, East Coast or West Coast, inner city or suburb, children today are more vulnerable than ever to anger, depression, anxiety, what he calls a massive “emotional malaise.”

The good news, however, involves another recent discovery that the amygdala takes a long time to mature around 15 or 16 years, which means to Goleman that “emotional intelligence can be taught, not only in the home but perhaps, more importantly, in school.”

Goleman’s own story is as intriguing as his book. The author or co-author of nearly a dozen other books involving brain research and behavior, he experienced steady but modest sales until Emotional Intelligence hit the stores.

Later came the cover of Time magazine and appearances on television, such as the Oprah Winfrey Show.

“But I think the book also points out the real strength in what has been a feminine preserve in this culture,” claims Goleman. “Girls are raised to be emotionally astute and perceptive, but sons learn little about emotions except how to control anger.

Women are absolutely more empathetic than men, on average, but they’ve felt powerless to bring up the idea of emotions as a serious topic.”

The irony, Goleman feels, is that if he had written a book about women and emotions, school reform, emotion-based leadership in business, or child psychology, “the book wouldn’t have gotten much attention.

As it happens this is a book about all those things, but women and children and school reform are marginalized in the society. So, I come along with a lot of scientific data that says, ‘Hey this stuff is consequential’; and maybe some doors are opening in our society.”