EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE IMPACTS OF MORALITY

ROBERT P. GRANACHER, JR., M.D.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORDINARY IQ AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

Classical intelligence, as measured by ordinary IQ tests, is often called "test intelligence." Currently, the gold standard for measuring intellectual capacity in adults or children is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III for adults or the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III. IQ scores from these, and other accepted IQ tests, are presented as standard scores. A standard score has a mean (average) of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Average test IQ varies from 90 to 109. Test IQ is usually expressed as Verbal IQ (VIQ), Performance (PIQ), and Full Scale IQ (FSIQ).

New brain research suggests that emotions, not test IQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence. The phrase "emotional intelligence" was coined by Yale psychologist, Peter Salovey, and the University of New Hampshire's John Mayer, about 1990. This was used to describe qualities like understanding one's own feelings, empathy for the feelings of others, and the "regulation of emotion in a way that enhances living." When Harvard psychologist, Daniel Goleman, wrote the new book, Emotional Intelligence, he suggested that when it comes to predicting people's success, brain power as measured by test IQ and standardized achievement tests may actually matter less than the qualities of mind once thought of as "character" before this word began to sound quaint. Jack Block of the University of California at Berkeley has used the concept "ego resilience" rather than emotional intelligence and notes that its main components include emotional self-regulation, an adaptive impulse control, a sense of self-efficacy, and social intelligence. Research shows there is a modest correlation between test IQ and ego resilience, but the two are independent constructs.

Salovey has defined emotional intelligence into five main domains:

1. KNOWING ONE'S EMOTIONS:
   Self-awareness - recognizing a feeling as it happens - is the keystone of emotional intelligence. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives and have a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take.
    
2. MANAGING EMOTIONS:
   People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life's setbacks and upsets. This domain describes the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off anxiety, gloom or irritability, and the consequences of failing to do so.
    
3. MOTIVATING ONESELF:
   Emotional self control, that is being able to delay gratification and stifle impulsiveness, underlies accomplishment of every sort. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake.
    
4. RECOGNIZING EMOTIONS IN OTHERS:
   Empathy has been discussed in the prior lecture, How to Raise a Moral Child. Emotional self-awareness is the fundamental "people skill" but it is supported by empathy. People who are empathic are more tuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want.
    
5. HANDLING RELATIONS:
   The art of relationships is, in large part, the skill required to manage emotions in others. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others.

EMPATHY: THE BEDROCK OF MORALITY

There is a considerable psychological understanding of moral development at our time in human social evolution. Decades of recent research leave little doubt that empathy, the ability to know how another feels or the ability to assume another's point of view, develops naturally in the first years of life. For instance, a nine month old baby can see another baby fall and have tears well up in its own eyes and crawl off to be comforted by its mother as though it were the one who had been hurt. A fifteen month old child might go get its teddy bear for its crying friend and if the child continues to cry, it might even go back and retrieve the security blanket for him. Research studies have observed infants behaving in these manners. Thus, the results of various studies on empathy suggest that its roots can be traced to infancy, virtually from the day the child is born. For instance, infants only a few days old may become upset if they hear another infant crying. Researchers have seen this response as the earliest precursor of empathy.

Another feature of empathy in infants is motor mimicry. When a one year old sees another baby hurt its fingers, it may stick its fingers in its own mouth in an effort to see if it is hurting as well. If an infant sees its mother cry, it may wipe its own eyes even though it has no tears. At about age two and one-half, motor mimicry fades from a toddler's emotional repertoire and it begins to realize that someone else's pain is different from its own.

The development of empathy in humans is critically linked to a process called attunement. This is the process where an adult or another child lets the child know that its emotions are met with empathy, accepted, and reciprocated. Attunement occurs as part of a rhythm of a relationship between human beings. Through attunement, mothers let their infants know that they have a sense of what the infant is feeling. A baby squeals with delight and the mother affirms that delight by giving the baby a gentle shake or matching the pitch of her voice to the baby's squeal. The baby shakes its rattle and she gives a quick shimmy of her body in response. These interactions are affirming messages in the mother matching the baby's level of excitement. This gives the infant a reassuring feeling of being emotionally connected. Research shows us that mothers will send messages like this to their babies about once a minute when they interact. From repeated attunement an infant begins to develop a sense that other people can and will share in its feelings. This sense seems to emerge at about eight months when infants begin to realize they are separate from other people.

EMPATHY AND ETHICS: THE ROOTS OF ALTRUISM

"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." This is one of the most famous lines in English literature and John Donne speaks to the link between empathy and caring: another's pain is one's own. To feel with another person is to care for that person. The empathic attitude is engaged again and again in moral judgments, for moral dilemmas involve potential victims: Should you lie to keep from hurting your best friend's feelings? Should you keep a promise to help your child with its homework or accept a last minute invitation to a dinner party instead? How long should we maintain a life support system for a person who would otherwise die?

The roots of morality are found in empathy as it is empathizing with the potential victim, someone in pain, danger, or acute deprivation, and sharing his distress that moves a person to act to help the individual. Empathic affect, putting oneself in another's place, leads us to follow certain moral principles.

By late childhood, the most advanced level of empathy emerges. Children at this level are now able to understand distress beyond the immediate social situation and to see that a person's condition or station in life may be a source of chronic distress. At this point in its development, the child can feel for the plight of an entire group, such as the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. That understanding, found in adolescence, can improve moral conviction centered on wanting to alleviate misfortune and injustice.

Empathy underlies many facets of moral judgment in action. One such feeling is "empathic anger which is the natural feeling of retaliation when we feel wounded by another. Another instance in which empathy leads to moral action is when a bystander is moved to assist a victim. The more empathy a bystander feels for the victim, the more likely he will intervene. Studies in Germany and the United States have found that the more empathic people are, the more they will favor the moral principle that resources should be allocated according to people's needs.

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF RELIGION AND MORALITY UPON EMOTIONAL

As we have seen, knowing one's emotions, managing emotions, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships are four of the five domains of emotional intelligence. Religious practice, and moral principles have much to offer to the use of and development of emotional intelligence.

For example, there is ample evidence that (Patrick Fagan, The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability, 1996):

1. The strength of the family unit is intertwined with the practice of religion. Churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single, and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in marriage.
    
   Church attendance is the most important predictor of marital stability and happiness.
    
2. The regular practice of religion helps poor persons move out of poverty. Regular church attendance, for example, is particularly instrumental in helping young people to escape the poverty of inner-city life.
    
3. Religious belief and practice contribute substantially to the formation of personal moral criteria and sound moral judgment.
    
4. Regular religious practice generally inoculates individuals against a host of social problems, including suicide, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock birth, crime, and divorce.
    
5. The regular practice of religion also encourages such beneficial effects on mental health as less depression, more self esteem, and greater family and marital happiness.
    
6. Religious belief and practice are a major source of strength and recovery from those suffering alcoholism, drug addiction, and marital breakdown.
    
7. Regular practice of religion is good for personal physical health: it increases longevity, improves one's chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many killer diseases.

If one reviewed the five main domains of emotional intelligence, it is obvious that they can be destroyed by drug abuse, depression, or alcoholism. The moral development of adolescents within religious practice, markedly reduces the likelihood of alcoholism in teenagers, and of course later in adults (Drinking Patterns and Problems Among Female Children and Adolescents: A Comparison of Abstainers. Past Users and Current Users). We previously discussed in How to Raise a Moral Child, the marked importance of parental modeling on the behavior of adolescents. If parents have active religious beliefs and practices, their children are far more likely to abstain from alcohol or they will drink with moderation if they use alcohol (Walters, The Religious Background of Fifty Alcoholics, Quarterly Journal Studies on Alcohol, 1957). Alcoholics with a religious background or strong religious belief are much more likely to seek help and treatment. Alcoholics Anonymous has known for much of this century that the most effective element in its program is its religious or spiritual component. Thus, the moral development that occurs within religious practice is very important for helping one to know his emotions and manage his emotions.

With regard to depression, religion appears to reduce the incidence of depression among those with medical problems and also young people who are religious tend to experience fewer of the anxieties of growing up. A study of Texas high schoolers found that religious beliefs gave meaning to their lives and reduced the incidence of depression among them.

We have seen that self awareness is one of the five domains of emotional intelligence. Within self awareness, we find self esteem. Self esteem seems to be higher in those who are religiously active (Bensen, Current Perspectives in the Psychology of Religion, 1977).

HOW DO WE TRAIN OUR CHILDREN TO IMPROVE THEIR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

It should seem fairly obvious that we can't increase a person's test intelligence to any significant degree merely through training. Most of us are born with an innate test intelligence which can be enhanced with an enriched environment but cannot exceed an intrinsic potential. On the other hand, the domains of emotional intelligence are capable of change through teaching and instruction. It should seem obvious by looking at the elements of test intelligence that we would be much more happy and much more successful as individuals and as a society if we were more alert to the importance of emotional intelligence and better at teaching it to our children.

In the corporate world, according to personnel executives, test IQ gets you hired, but emotional intelligence gets you promoted. In Goleman's book, he points out that at A T & T Bell Laboratories, a think tank for brilliant engineers in New Jersey, a manager was asked to rank his top performers. They weren't the ones with the highest test IQs; they were the ones whose e-mail got answered. Those workers who were good collaborators and networkers and popular with colleagues were more likely to get the cooperation they needed to reach their goals than the socially awkward, lone-wolf geniuses. How many times have we heard in our lives, "it is not what you know but who you know?" This is an example of how networking and social ability improve one's performance and ability to succeed.

David Campbell at the Center for Creative Leadership studied "derailed executives." These were the rising executive stars who flamed out in their rise to the top. Researchers found these executives failed most often because of "an interpersonal flaw" rather than a technical ability. Interviews with top executives in the United States and Europe turned up nine so-called fatal flaws, many of them classic emotional failings, such as "poor working relations, being authoritarian, being too ambitious, and having conflict with upper management."

WHAT CAN PARENTS DO TO ENHANCE MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR CHILDREN AND THUS IMPROVE THEIR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?

1. The development of empathy is not enough. A child is born with natural empathy and a caring, nurturing environment will cause it to flower. Verbal, emotional, or physical abuse will destroy it.
    
2. While empathy is the bedrock of morality, a second crucial building block of morality is self discipline. Parents can enhance the development of self discipline, and empathy, by being accepting and warm, firm about rules and discipline, and supportive of their child's individuality.
    
3. How parents combine the traits of acceptance and warmth, firmness with rules and respect for the child's autonomy, send very important messages to their children. Over time these are internalized in such character traits as self-esteem, self-control, social competence, and responsibility. A rejecting, overly lenient, or controlling parent can destroy these traits.
    
4. The need for parents or institutions to overly control children appears to be especially damaging to self discipline. Parents who value obedience over independence reduce both the competence and integrity of their children. Parents should strive to achieve balance.

CAN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE BE TAUGHT BY SCHOOLS OR CHURCHES, IN ADDITION TO THE EFFECT OF PARENTS?

Many school administrators are completely rethinking the weight they give to traditional lessons and standardized tests and also to the weight given to ACT scores and SAT scores. However, it is not likely in the near future that most universities will abandon using ACT scores and SAT scores in lieu of attempting to assess emotional intelligence. The assessment of emotional intelligence is incredibly complex, time consuming and expensive. There is one large test recently published (BarOn Test of Emotional Intelligence). At this time there is no practical way for universities or high schools to measure this type of information in humans.

Many of the scientists involved in the study of emotional intelligence are concerned if schools will attempt to set a curriculum for this as has been done in some places. For instance, Dr. Salovey agrees that wanting to teach people a richer understanding of their emotional life to help them achieve their goals is an excellent idea but he adds, "What I would oppose is training conformity to social expectations." The danger is that any campaign to hone emotional skills in children will end up teaching that there is a "right" emotional response for any given situation. Dr. Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatrist, argues, "You can teach self control; you can teach that it is better to talk out your anger and not use violence. But, is it good emotional intelligence not to challenge authority?"

The problem is that many emotional skills, like intellectual ones, are morally neutral. Just as a genius could use his intellect either to cure cancer or engineer a deadly virus, someone with great empathic insight could use it to inspire colleagues or exploit them. Without a moral compass to guide people in how to employ their gifts, emotional intelligence can be used for good or evil. This, of course, is where our churches come in and the parameters within which emotional intelligence is used require moral boundaries. Moreover, with the continuing fragmentation of the family, it is manifestly important that churches assume a greater role in teaching moral development and thus indirectly churches will enhance our emotional intelligence.