Where are You on the Emotional Intelligence Scale?
How to assess the level of your Emotional Intelligence.
Every now and then someone will share a link to one of the “personality type” test. Let’s be honest who never did that test even just for fun? And what if there is something, that is based on neuroscience, that will help you assess your emotional intelligence traits?
Dr. Richard Davidson, an American psychologist, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist associated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison described an emotional inteligence scale that appeals to me. By studying the images of the brain and its activity under the influence of emotional stimuli in neuro-typical people and people suffering from autism or depression, he determined specific components of the emotional style and linked them with the functioning of our brain.
Those components are:
ATTENTION
The level of attention determines how well are we able to concentrate on a given activity or thought. Davidson defines two types of attention, selective attention, and open attention.
Open-non-judgmental attention is a type of attention that reflects our ability to perceive external signals and our own feelings and thoughts in an open and non-judgmental way.
The open type of attention is essential in developing self-awareness of your emotional states. By practicing it with, for example, popular methods of mindfulness meditation, we develop our own self-awareness at the same time. People with a high level of open attention have little or no so-called ‘attention blink’. Attention blinking is a state of our brain arousal after it has managed to observe the stimulus that our focus was concentrated on. When we focus on catching a specific stimulus, e.g. in a skill game, the state of our brain’s excitement seems to disturb our concentration and prevent us from seeing other stimuli of the same type for a short time. It can be compared to the momentary closing of the eyelids with the impression that we have noticed something.
Selective attention is a more practical type of attention. It allows us to focus on one source and stillness all other stimuli. We use this type of attention every day, unknowingly, for example when we are talking to someone in a noisy room. Our brain adjusts to the goal we want to focus on and (generously) fades out background noise to allow us to have a conversation. We are able to do this thanks to our prefrontal cortex, which keeps our attention focused, and the parietal cortex, which, like a rudder, directs our attention to a specific area.
RESILIENCE
Our level of immunity is responsible for how quickly we can recover from an unpleasant event. If we are able to calm down quickly after an unpleasant clash with our boss or colleagues, we can thank our prefrontal cortex for it. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for planning. The left area of the prefrontal cortex at the moment of emotional arousal sends inhibitory signals to the agitated amygdala, which causes it to quiet down and weaken our negative emotional reaction.
ATTITUDE
Everyone knows the concept of pessimism or optimism. We also know that it is most advantageous to be in the area of positive attitude, but not on its hedonistic end. Over-optimistic people may not be able to “postpone the reward” or consider the future consequences of their actions, so over-optimism is also not good. Unfortunately, most of us are in the pessimistic zone, so I can comfort you that there is nothing abnormal about it. Of course, being on the edge of this zone can cause depression and anxiety, so if there is a way to reprogram your brain and move towards the positive spectrum, it’s worth trying. Pessimistic tendencies are natural for our our brain which picks up signals informing us about the threat, thanks to which we survived as a species. The pessimistic mood can be used to motivate yourself or to plan and strategize by investigating the likely lurking dangers. Interestingly, Davidson, in the course of researching people with depression, noticed that their brain reacts to joyful signals almost in the same way as the brains of healthy people, but people who are depressed are not able to maintain this positive arousal, as a result of which positive mood disappears as quickly as appeared.
Greater activity of the left prefrontal cortex is the basis for the ability to sustain the effects of positive emotions for a longer time, greater activity of the right prefrontal cortex is associated with negative emotions.
A positive attitude is associated with greater arousal:
- The ventral part of the striatum, more precisely the nucleus accumbens responsible for the feeling of satisfaction.
- Abdominal globe pale, sensitive to feeling hedonistic pleasure. It is connected to the ventral striatum.
- The prefrontal cortex is responsible for planning. It helps to maintain the higher arousal of the nucleus accumbens.
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
Self-awareness describes the extent to which we perceive our own physiological feelings that reflect our emotional states. The area of self-awareness is the island, which seems to map and moderate our internal organs. Apart from the island, the sensory cortex is also responsible for the perception of internal sensations. For people with high self-consciousness, the island is usually more active.
SOCIAL INTUITION
Social intuition is responsible for how well we can read signals from other people. A person confused on the axis of social intuition cannot recognize the emotional states of others. Most likely, she/he will have more trouble forming a bond and may be described as shy. The brain of a socially disoriented person is characterized by a low activity of the fusiform gyrus and high activity of the amygdala.
The socially intuitive type — oriented — vice versa, is characterized by high stimulation of the fusiform gyrus and moderate or low stimulation of the amygdala.
If you want to develop areas of the brain responsible for improving social intuition, it may be beneficial to observe the environment and try to draw conclusions, e.g. by looking at a conversation that we cannot hear and trying to determine what the topic is, similarly, you can watch movies without sound and try to decode emotions by observing actors’ gestures. These types of exercises increase the arousal of the spindle gun while learning to read emotions from the face can increase the activity of the temporal furrow, which is activated in response to social stimuli.
SENSITIVITY TO CONTEXT
Context sensitivity determines how well we are able to regulate our behavior and emotional responses depending on the context of the situation. We are unadapted if it happens to us that people looking at us weirdly after we tell a nice anecdote… and we don’t understand what happened. This is, of course, a humorous diagnosis, but probably everyone knows someone who can burn some stupidity in the least appropriate situation, e.g. recall alcoholic escapades at someone’s funeral or raise a toast on the wedding and talk about how crazy it was with the bride in the barn. Some people just don’t seem to understand the context or what is appropriate. Our sensitivity to context appears to be dependent on how strongly the hippocampus connects to other areas of the brain. The hippocampus is an area associated with memory and the storage of memories. It turns some of our short-term memories into long-term ones and, along with other areas of the brain, it is able to relate memories to emotions, so that we remember not only the event but also how we felt at the time. The anterior hippocampus, the area close to the amygdala, is responsible for behavioral inhibitions in response to different contexts. The low sensitivity of the hippocampus is the basis of lacking the social adaptability.
You can develop a sensitivity to context by practicing resistance to stimuli that cause you anxiety or anger, such as through breathing meditation, or by observing yourself and analyzing stimuli that arouse you negatively and then by rationalizing you to disarm them.
Davidson claims that we are born genetically predisposed to a certain emotional style, but our experiences can shape and change that emotional style. We can do this because the brain itself is plastic and thanks to the magic of persistent exercise, we are able to create new connection pathways, silence certain areas in the brain or increase the activity of others. Of course, at home, without specialized neurological knowledge, it will be difficult for us to trim the brain activity as we see fit. However, meditation and mindfulness training is simple ways to move closer to the “positive area” on the Emotional Intelligence Scale.
[Writing is a hobby]
*The author of this post is not a psychologist, psychiatrist or neurologist. Do not cite this entry in your PhD thesis. Cite this guy instead https://www.danielgoleman.info
