EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Definition
• Emotional intelligence (El), refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups – Mayer & Salovey, 1997
• Emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions, well in ourselves and in our relationships – Goleman, 1998
Models of Emotional Intelligence (El):
There are three main models of emotional intelligence:
• Ability model
• Mixed model
• Trait model
I. Ability Model
• The Ability model by Salovey and Mayer perceives El as a form of pure intelligence.
• It regards El as a cognitive ability.
• As per Mayer and Salovey, El is the ability:
• To perceive emotions
• To generate emotions to assist thought
• To understand emotions
• To effectively regulate emotions to promote emotional as well as intellectual growth.
Hence, Mayer and Salovey identified four areas (branches) of El:
1. Perceiving emotions
• the ability to detect and decipher emotions in faces, pictures, voices, and cultural artifacts—including the ability to identify one’s own emotions.
• Perceiving emotions represents a basic aspect of emotional intelligence, as it makes all other processing of emotional information possible.
2. Reasoning with emotions
• the ability to harness emotions to facilitate various cognitive activities, such as thinking and problem solving
• The emotionally intelligent person can capitalize fully upon his or her changing moods in order to best fit the task at hand.
3. Understanding emotions
• the ability to comprehend emotion language and to appreciate complicated relationships among emotions.
• For example, understanding emotions encompasses the ability to be sensitive to slight variations between emotions, and the ability to recognize and describe how emotions evolve over time.
4. Managing emotions
• the ability to regulate emotions in both ourselves and in others.
• Therefore, the emotionally intelligent person can harness emotions, even negative ones, and manage them to achieve intended goals.
Measurement:
• As the model considers El as a type of cognitive ability, these El tests are modelled on ability- based tests.
• The current measure of Mayer and Salovey’s model of El, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is based on a series of emotion-based problem-solving items.
II. Mixed Model:
• Includes two models:
• Reuven Bar-On Model
• El model by Daniel Goleman
Reuven Bar-On Model
• Reuven Bar-On (1988) considered El in the framework of personality theory, specifically a model of well-being.
• The model focuses on a range of emotional and social abilities, including the ability to be aware of, understand, and express oneself, the ability to be aware of, understand, and relate to others, the ability to deal with strong emotions, and the ability to adapt to change and solve problems of a social or personal nature.
• Bar-On model has five components of El:
• Intrapersonal
• Interpersonal
• Adaptability
• Stress management
• General mood
• This model postulates that El develops over time and that it can be improved through training, programming, and therapy.
El model by Daniel Goleman
• The model introduced by Daniel Goleman and focuses on El as a wide array of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance.
• Goleman’s model outlines five main El constructs:
1. Self-awareness
• the ability to know one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions.
2. Self-regulation
• involves controlling or redirecting one’s disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.
3. Social skill
• managing relationships to move people in the desired direction
4. Empathy
• considering other people’s feelings especially when making decisions
5. Motivation
• being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.
• Goleman includes a set of emotional competencies within each construct of EI.
• Emotional competencies are not innate talents, but rather learned capabilities that must be worked on and can be developed to achieve outstanding performance.
III. Trait Model:
• This model was proposed by K V Petrides.
• He defined the trait model as “a constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality.”
• Trait model is based on an individual’s self-perceptions of their emotional abilities.
Measurement:
• Trait Model uses personality framework to investigate trait El.
LEARNING & MEMORY
Memory
• Memory refers to retaining and recalling information over a period of time.
• It is conceptualised as a process consisting of three independent, though interrelated stages.
• These are:
• Encoding
• Storage and
• Retrieval
• Any information received by someone necessarily goes through these stages.
Models of Memory
I. Stage Model of Memory:
- Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968
Memory systems:
3 types –
- Sensory memory: the incoming information first enters the sensory memory. It has a large capacity and a very short time-span (<1 sec)
- Short-term memory (STM) : holds small information for 30 seconds or less. Only that information enters STM which is attended to. Information is primarily encoded acoustically (in terms of sound)
- Long-term memory: information is encoded semantically, in terms of meaning that any information carries
• Initially, it was thought that memory is the capacity to store all information that we acquire through learning and experience.
• But with the advent of the computer, human memory came to be seen as a system that processes information in the same way as a computer does.
• Both register, store, and manipulate large amount of information and act on the basis of the outcome of such manipulations.
• This led to development of the first model of memory, which was proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968 and known as Stage Model of Memory.
According to the Stage Model, there are three memory systems:
• The Sensory Memory
• The Short-term Memory and
• The Long-term Memory
Sensory Memory
• The incoming information first enters the sensory memory. Sensory memory has a large capacity. However, it is of very short duration, i.e. less than a second.
• It is a memory system that registers information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy.
• Often this system is referred to as sensory memories or sensory registers because information from all the senses are registered here as exact replica of the stimulus.
• Example: When you just switch of the light bulb, while looking at it, there is a trail of trail of light that stays after the bulb is switched off.
Short-Term Memory
• Short-term memory (STM), holds small amount of information for a brief period of time (usually for 30 seconds or less).
• Unless rehearsed continuously, information from STM may get lost in less than 30 seconds.
• Hence, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed that information in STM is primarily encoded acoustically, i.e. in terms of sound.
Long-Term Memory
• Materials that survive the capacity and duration limitations of the STM finally enter the long-term memory (LTM) which has a vast capacity.
• Once any information enters the long-term memory store it is never forgotten because it gets encoded semantically, i.e. in terms of the meaning that any information carries.
• What one experiences as forgetting is in fact retrieval failure; for various reasons one cannot retrieve the stored information.
Control Processes: monitor the flow of information through various memory stages
- Selective attention: only that information enters the STM from sensory memory, which has been attended to
- Maintenance rehearsal: performed by STM, to retain information through repetition
- Chunking: operate in STM, to expand its capacity
- Elaborative rehearsal: connects the ‘to-be-retained’ information with already-existing information in terms of associations it arouses, organising the information in as many ways as possible
• Atkinson and Shiffrin propose the notion of control processes which function to monitor the flow of information through various memory stores.
• Our senses do not register all the information they receive but through selective attention, only that information which is attended to, enters the STM from sensory registers.
o Sense impressions, which do not receive attention, fade away quickly.
• The STM then sets into motion another control process of maintenance rehearsal to retain the information for as much time as required.
• This is done through repetition and when such repetitions discontinue the information is lost.
• Sometimes, there is need to hold information which exceeds normal capacity.
• In such scenario, another control process operates in STM to expand its capacity called as Chunking.
o For example, if you are told to remember a string of digits such as 194719492004 (note that the number exceeds the capacity of STM), you may create the chunks as 1947,1949, and 2004 and remember them as the year when India became independent, the year when the Indian Constitution was adopted, and the year when the tsunami hit.
• From the STM, information enters the long-term memory through elaborative rehearsals.
• This rehearsal attempts to connect the ‘to be retained information’ to the already existing information in long-term memory.
• The number of associations one can create around the new information determines its permanence.
II. Levels of Processing Model
- Proposed by Craik and Lockhart in 1972
- According to this model, incoming information is analysed at more than one levels:
- Analysis in terms of physical or structural features: the first and shallowest level of processing
- Attending to phonetic sounds that are attached to the letters: the structural features are transformed into atleast one meaningful word
- Analysis in terms of meaning (semantic learning): necessary for retaining information in the long run
• Craik and Lockhart proposed that the processing of any new information relates to the manner in which it is perceived, analysed, and understood.
• This in turn determines the extent to which it will eventually be retained.
• They proposed that it is possible to analyse the incoming information at more than one level.
• One may analyse information through a shallower processing in terms of its structural and phonetic features.
• This information which goes through shallower processing tends to forget easily.
• However, Encoding information in terms of the meaning it carries (the semantic encoding) is the deepest processing level and it leads to memory that resists forgetting considerably.
Types of Memory
Long-Term Memory types:
• Declarative vs Procedural
o All information pertaining to facts, names, dates.
o Whereas, Procedural memory, refers to memories relating to procedures for accomplishing various tasks and skills such as how to ride a bicycle etc.
o Facts retained in the declarative memory are amenable to verbal descriptions while contents of procedural memory cannot be described easily.
• Episodic vs Semantic – This was proposed by Tulving.
o Episodic: Episodic Memory contains biographical details of one’s personal life experiences. Consequently, its contents are generally emotional in nature
o Semantic: Contains meaning of words and concepts, rules of using these in language. Semantic memory is not easily forgotten as the information is stored in highly organized way in logical hierarchies, from general to specific ones. Example: 2+6=8 or the fact that New Delhi is the capital of India.
Forgetting
• Forgetting is failure to retrieve information from long term memory store.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
• The first systematic attempt to understand the nature of forgetting was made by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who memorised lists of nonsense syllables and then measured the number of trials he took to relearn the same list at varying time intervals.
• He observed that the course of forgetting follows a certain pattern.
• Observations: The rate of forgetting is maximum in the first nine hours, particularly during the first hour. After that, the rate slows down and not much is forgotten even after many days.
• Although Ebbinghaus’s experiments constituted initial explorations and were not very sophisticated yet they have influenced memory research in many important ways.
• It is now upheld, almost unanimously, that there is always a sharp drop in memory and thereafter the decline is very gradual.
Causes of Forgetting
Forgetting due to Trace Decay
• Trace decay (also called disuse theory) is the earliest theory of forgetting.
• This theory propounds that it is due to gradual fading of memory traces or decay that happens with lapse of time.
• This does not explain why certain memories fade forever while others seem to be well preserved.
• Passing of time cannot, therefore, be considered as the main cause of forgetting.
Forgetting due to Interference
• Interference theory suggests that forgetting is due to interference between various information that the memory store contains.
• Interference can be proactive (forward moving) which means what you have learnt earlier interferes with the recall of your subsequent learning or retroactive (backward moving) which refers to difficulty in recalling what you have learnt earlier because of learning a new material.
Forgetting due to Retrieval Failure
• Forgetting can also occur because at the time of recall, either the retrieval cues are a bsent or they are inappropriate.
• This view was advanced by Tulving and his associates who carried out several experiments to show that contents of memory may become inaccessible either due to absence or inappropriateness of retrieval cues.
Enhancing Memory
Mnemonics
• There are a number of strategies for improving memory called mnemonics.
Mnemonics using Images
• Mnemonics using images require that one creates vivid and interacting images of and around the material one wishes to remember.
• The two prominent mnemonic devices, which make interesting use of images, are:
o The keyword method
• In this method already remembered word is used as the keyword and then images of keyword and the target word are evoked and imagined as interacting.
o The method of loci
• In this method items that one wants to remember are placed as objects arranged in a physical space in the form of visual images.
Mnemonics using Organisation
• Organisation refers to imposing certain order on the material one wants to remember.
• The framework one creates while organisation eases the task of retrieval.
o Chunking – In chunking, several smaller units are combined to form large chunks.
o First Letter Technique – In this, the first letter of each word one wants to remember is picked up and then arranged to form another word or a sentence. For example, way to remember colours of a rainbow – VIBGYOR- that stands for Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red).
Applying Memory
• In place of mnemonics, a more comprehensive approach to memory improvement has been suggested by many psychologists.
• In such an approach, emphasis is laid on applying knowledge about memory processes to the task of memory improvement.
• This includes:
o Engage in Deep Level Processing: Deep processing would involve asking as many questions related to the information as possible, considering its meaning and examining its relationships to the facts you already know.
o Minimise Interference: Interference is a major cause of forgetting. Maximum interference is caused when very similar materials are learned in a sequence and hence should be avoided.
o Give Yourself enough Retrieval Cues : While you learn something, think of retrieval cues inherent in your study material. Identify them and link parts of the study material to these cues.
PQRST Model
• Thomas and Robinson developed the PORST model for remembering more
• PORST stands for five steps that need to be followed to enhance memory
• These are – Preview, Question, Read, Self-recite and Test
• Preview refers to giving a cursory look at the chapter and familiarising oneself with its contents.
• Question means raising questions and seeking answers from the lesson.
• Read – Start reading and look for answers of questions you had raised. Also, think about the meaning and relate this to other things you know about this and similar topics.
• Self-Recite – Once you have finished reading, think back about what were the main ideas you learnt. Try and recite some of this information.
• Test – In the end, test how much you have been able to understand.