Love, Manufactured Feelings, Priorities, Emotional Intelligence

I was just going to write about emotional intelligence tests, religion, Christians, Muslims and Jews… then I found some writing which Laura had started. (If you don't know, Laura is from Peru and we were living and traveling together. She has now gone back to Peru and I in Argentina. There is a link to her page below, as are all the links.) Reading what she wrote changed my mood, re-directed my thoughts. I can't just go back to writing about EI tests now. Not in the same way.

I think of David Caruso and his concept of using emotions.

The more I think about David, the more I think he has led people away from the original concept of emotinal intelligence as Mayer and Salovey have written about it.

I don't really want to write about emotional intelligence though now. I want to write about Laura. Or actually I want to hug Laura. I want to hold her and cry and tell her I am sorry. I want to apologize for not being able to give her what she needs.

She's such a beautiful person. I'm crying now and I didn't just manufacture that feeling.

That is what David Caruso wants us to do, evidently. Manufacture feelings. Which reminds me of the term "manufactured consent."
Oh, David, you are getting so far away from what emotional intelligence could mean to the world...

Ok, I will try to write about the original idea I had before reading what Laura wrote. I have somewhat satisfied my need to talk about her and my feelings of love for her. But I also want to remind you that Mayer and or Salovey said that our feelings prioritize our thoughts to what is most important to think about.

In my case, my feelings of sadness and love re-directed my thoughts. And maybe if I were more emotionally intelligent I would stop writing and instead start packing my things and go back to Peru and try to find Laura and try to change my priorities to put love in a higher ranking.

I am so tempted to do just that.

But for better worse, my writing is important to me. While Laura was here I kept wanting to write. I spent a lot of time with her, probably too much actually, but I also felt a need to keep writing. I don't know if this need to write is more a product of evolution or of the abuse I received in the first 20 or so years of my life. Actually, it went on till about 35 probably when I finally distanced myself psychologically from my family, especially my emotionally abusive brother.

Anyhow, David Caruso thinks that it is a sign of emotional intelligence to be able to manufacture feelings.

For example, he has a question on the MSCEIT test about trying to write an inspiring military march. He asks something like "What feelings would be helpful in trying to write an inspiring war march?"

As I think about it now, would the feeling of love and compassion be helpful? Probably not.

But would these feelings be helpful to humanity? Probably.

Where David misses an important point is that he fails to take a world view. I have criticized him before for this. David is simply too American. He is too patriotic and too much a product of his environment. I have written about this on the pages where I discuss my concerns about his ability to design an objective test of emotional intelligence.

This is somewhat related to what I originally wanted to write about this morning…. The idea of how can we tell what is a "good" test of emotional intelligence?

Jack Mayer has unfortunately seemed to get caught up in the numbers of trying to validate or perfect his test of EI. I took a quick look at his site the other day to see what he has been publishing and it is all about the statistics of his MSCEIT test. Validity, reliability etc. I am afraid Jack has forgotten his own reasons for writing about the concept of emotional intelligence in the first place. I think Jack made a mistake in inviting David to help him design a test of emotional intelligence. I don't know how much it was Jack's idea to create a test of EI or how much it was Peter's, but I talk more about Jack because a) I know him better and b) I have more respect for him than I do for Peter. Peter seems too interested in money. I say this because of a personal experience I had with him and also because of his article about the stock market in the Ciarocci et al book. Also, I believe Jack has a higher level of respect for me than Peter does, partly because I think Jack and I have a bit more in common and partly because we have met in person and got along quite well.

Anyhow, I was thinking more about Geetu's letter. She thinks I am not representing the concept of emotional intelligence very well on my site. But she and I have different ideas about what it is and is not. And she doesn't seem to understand that one important thing I want to do with my site is to criticize the Goleman/BarOn/Caruso model of emotional intelligence. I may start calling this the GBC model from now on.

After writing that much, I then wrote this next editorial, which was what I was originally thinking about before I found Laura's writing...

How do we know what emotional intelligence is?

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Links

Laura
David Caruso
The war march question
Jack Mayer's recent publications
The table of contents entry in the Ciarrochi book showing Peter Salovey's article about the stock market
My editorial criticizing Peter Salovey for his chapter in the Ciarrochi, et al book
Geetu's letter

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S. Hein
April 4, 2006
Salta, Argentina