By: Jaime F. Adriazola
Could the term "Emotional Intelligence", which is prevalent in our present time, truly be a complete theory? Should it be part of our daily lives, and finally be incorporated into our customs as beneficial and necessary?
The term itself sounds wonderful; it's like having the opportunity to live in a world full of happiness, positive emotions, and people who inspire us with love. Emotional Intelligence can begin empathy within a social environment and a collective consciousness of happiness. However, let’s explore in much more detail what this romantic term means.
What is Emotional Intelligence (E.I.)?
E.I. is defined as the ability to perceive, assimilate, and regulate our emotions and of others. Emotional Intelligence seeks for emotional and intellectual growth, with the intention of using this information to guide our thinking and behavior.
The characteristics of this so called emotional intelligence are the following: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persevere in the effort despite possible frustrations, to control impulses, to defer gratification, to regulate our own moods, to prevent anxiety, all which is interfered with our rational faculties and the ability to empathize and trust others.
It was Edward L. Thorndike who use the term "Social Intelligence" in 1920 to describe the ability to understand and motivate others and in 1940 David Wechslet said that the intelligence tests would not be complete until these factors are adequately described.

Wayne Payne coined the term "Emotional Intelligence", although other psychologists had already described it before. Also, it was Daniel Goleman who helped popularize the "Intelligence" as Emotional, and become an exit beyond suspicion in education, games, etc.
Understanding the physiological basis of emotions
Emotions and conflicts with the reason lie in the Neo cortex, delegating the emotional life to the limbic system. This is where the amygdala is specialized in emotional issues and is considered a limbic structure closely linked to the processes of learning and memory. If the amygdala of the brain is removed it would not be possible to appreciate the emotional meaning of various events, to which is known as affective blindness.
Unconscious opinions are emotional memories stored in the amygdala. The hippocampus records the pure facts as the amygdala is responsible for registering the 'emotional atmosphere'. One of the drawbacks of this system of neuronal alarm is that more often than desirable, the urgency message sent by the amygdala often is obsolete.
"Humans evolved in parallel to other living beings on earth."
The amygdala prepares an anxious and impulsive emotional reaction, but another part of the brain is responsible for developing a more appropriate response.
The connections between the amygdala (also limbic structures) and the neo cortex are at the center of management between thoughts and feelings.
Emotions are the outward expressions of accumulated feelings and trained in the areas of imagination and visualization. There are three sources of feelings that interpret all information that enters the human being, the five senses, and give meaning to what we perceive.

According to what the author says Myriam Muñoz Polity in his book Emotions feelings and needs, emotional life is what moves us to behave, perceive, and act in certain ways in life.
There is no test that can determine the "degree of emotional intelligence", unlike what happens with tests that measure intelligence quotient (IQ). Jack Block, a psychologist at the University of Berkeley, has used a similar measure in emotional intelligence that he calls "adaptive capacity of the ego".This is in reference to establishing two or more theoretically pure types, but the most salient features differ slightly between women and men.
The famous Emotional Intelligence
Imagine that teachers, politicians, executives were so extremely skilled in the domain of Emotional Intelligence and imitate the characteristics of Adolf Hitler, who was an expert in emotional intelligence as many today, after all.
A professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Business said, "When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings."
Leaders with selfish motives can use their mastery of emotions as weapons to manipulate others. "The results" he says, "can be devastating."
Besides having a dark side, one may definitely be surprised to know some facts that the advocates of this popular fashion tend to omit on their enthusiastic and motivational books along with speeches and training sessions as well.
In the present, there is no test to measure the emotional quotient of a person, and if there is any evidence under study, one can ascertain that this would measure what we expect and would be easy to manipulate the results.

Moreover, what would happen to people suffering from emotional disturbances; would they be considered geniuses or fools? Undoubtedly, the pathological 'interference' would be almost impossible to measure. On the other hand, the projective tests of equalizations are self-tests based on self-perception. Consequently, "It would be easy to express feelings" and "remain calm under pressure" as that would certainly be a nice play.
Tests ask the same question in different ways in an attempt to improve its accuracy. The great irony with that is that those who are able to understand and control their emotions are quite adept at telling people what they think they want to hear.
In other words, the more delusional, narcissistic, and asocial we are, the easier it is to be in the trial and most likely go out thinking we are so aware of ourselves and as comprehensive as a Zen master or a Buddhist Monk .
The truth is that these tests are by no means scientific. However, the results are not essentially meaningless.
It is my personal opinion that the use of emotional intelligence for all reasons from performance of leadership and success in business, to stress reduction and personal happiness is simply false. There is no correlation between emotional intelligence and performance at work, according to the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Saying that managers and businessmen with high equalizers are more successful is just ridiculous. Imagine the great owners of large companies, like Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, Jerry Yang and David Filo, founders of Yahoo, and Jeff Bezo, CEO of Amazon all taking tests of emotional intelligence.

We know that there are different ways to become a successful person, have a productive life, or create a prestigious company, but emotional intelligence is in no way a predictor of any of those things.
Undoubtedly, advocates of emotional intelligence claim that consciousness leads to a change of behavior. They suggest that through reading his books, going to seminars, and listening to their CD’s would make their emotions more aware. Also, it is believed that following their methods would result to having a better life, great success at work, and becoming future millionaires.
This term sound cute and simple, right? - If it were that simple - people would not need years of psychological therapy, hard work, and psychological discipline to change their behavior. Simply becoming aware would allow all of us to end our self-destructive tendencies and avoid all the pitfalls that make us less happy and successful. It sounds like a famous story called "Alice in the Wonderland '. Dear readers, we live in a very different reality, and we should leave the wonderland stuff to Hollywood fantasies.
The human mind is a reality where its operation obeys to a correct way of life and a projection of our nervous system too, which frankly, has evolved over millions of years to become adapted to a society that we have built to live in. Not only is it with the inner works of our emotions and behavior of our subconscious, but there actually are very good reasons as to why our brain evolved that way.
In fact, self-consciousness is a very good thing in life, but it is very easy to confuse that with what is found on the surface of genuine feelings and what is buried underneath. That's why the way for a significant change in behavior it is long, arduous, and often painful.

Studying or implementing Emotional Intelligence, in its entirety, will not change anything in our lives. The current human intelligence is the product of an evolutionary process of adaptation to nature, and perhaps it no longer time to defend our self of prehistoric animals, but to rather be adapted to our modern society.
Sources:
Entrepreneur,
Steve Tovak
Wikipedia, and
References
NMJ Library
Jornal de Psicología Aplicada
Universidad de Pensilvania
Myriam Muñoz Polit
Daniel Goleman
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