Copy of the Introduction to "Wisdom in Feeling" by Feldman and Salovey
My notes
Recently I came upon a copy of this chapter. I have heard of the book for quite a while, but have never seen it. I started reading with much interest and relatively high expectations. I liked the title of the book, "Wisdom in Feeling" It sounded like it might be a book that a normal person could read and also a book that would show that emotions have a practical survival value. As I read this introductory chapter, though, I felt disappointed and frustrated. Frustrated by the once again needlessly complicated language, or what I have called "Phidish" - the language of PhD's. From reading this chapter I saw that the authors wrote this book for other psychologists, not for normal people. (Yes, you could say that I am calling psychologists abnormal!) The authors even admit that they wrote this book for other psychologists as shown by the final sentence in the chapter:
Emotional intelligence may be an important conceptual framework for guiding research on emotional phenomena and their influence on the range of things that concern us as psychologists.
I was also disappointed that Peter Salovey did not write more of the book himself. I know he is a busy buy but if I really don't think much of these "edited" books which are just a collection of other people's journal articles Salovey only was a co-author on the introductory chapter, and even then he was not the primary writer, since Feldman is listed first. I had wanted to see more of Peter's own ideas about EI. After seeing how little he contributed to the book I question why he even has his name on it, except for the obvious reasons of fame and royalties.
Steve Hein
July 10, 2005
Here is a page I created a while back which shows the table of contents and also has some of my famous editorial comments
Introduction
Wisdom in Feeling: Psychological Processes in
Emotional Intelligence,
Edited by Lisa Feldman Barrett and Peter Salovey, Copyright ©
2002
The concept of emotional intelligence has emerged
as an area of intense interest, both in scientific (Mayer,
Salovey, & Caruso, 2000; Salovey & Mayer, 1990) and lay
(e.g., Goleman, 1995, 1998) circles. Because emotionally
intelligent individuals are socially effective, definitions of
the concept in trade books and the popular press have included
personality attributes more generally associated with adaptive
personal and social functioning that may or may not be related to
skills and abilities in the emotional arena (Mayer et al., 2000).
Scientific treatments have defined emotional intelligence in
terms of mental abilities rather than broad social competencies.
For instance, Mayer and Salovey (1997) defined emotional
intelligence as the ability to perceive, appraise, and express
emotions accurately; the ability to access and generate feelings
to facilitate cognitive activities; the ability to understand
emotion-relevant concepts and use emotion-relevant language; and
the ability to manage ones own emotions and the emotions of
others to promote growth, well-being, and functional social
relations.
The concept of emotional intelligence has been useful as an
organizing framework in diverse contexts. It has been helpful to
educators designing curricula for the purposes of improving
childrens social and emotional functioning (Mayer &
Cobb, 2000; Salovey & Sluyter, 1997). It has been used by the
human resources and organizational development fields to
characterize skills important in the workplace other than
specific job-related competencies (Caruso, Mayer, & Salovey,
2002; Cherniss & Goleman, 2001). Yet we wonder whether the
excitement about the heuristic value of emotional intelligence
has overshadowed a careful study of what it is, and in
particular, the underlying psychological components that when
brought together emerge as emotional intelligence. We expect that
with a detailed explication of the multiple processes that
characterize emotional intelligence, it will emerge as an
organizing framework for investigators who study phenomena in
which emotions play some role. The purpose of this volume is to
examine these component processes using the model outlined by
Mayer and Salovey (1997) as a starting point:
(1) perceiving and appraising emotion,
(2) using emotion to facilitate thought,
(3) understanding and communicating emotion concepts, and
(4) managing emotions in oneself and others.
By establishing the underlying processes that
characterize each of these domains of emotional intelligence, the
construct validity of emotional intelligence as a whole can
emerge. As research on emotion progresses at many levels of
analysis, from neuroscience to culture, the concept of emotional
intelligence continues to evolve. The chapters in this book
reflect some of these developments. One issue is whether it makes
sense to talk of accuracy when referring to the
representation of emotional events. Emotions are contextualized,
emergent phenomena, such that there are no right or wrong
responsesno accuracy in an absolute sense. However, some
responses are better than others. Usually, judgments about the
desirability of a response are culturally and temporally
situated. Thus, it is sensible to measure emotional intelligence
in terms of an individuals understanding and use of this
consensual knowledge.
A second issue concerns the harnessing of emotions to encourage
rational thought, stimulate creative problem solving, and
motivate behavior. It is not a new idea that emotions play a
pivotal role in assisting good decision making (e.g., Damasio,
1994; DeSousa, 1987), but the multiple ways in which this can
occur are still being delineated. To begin with, emotional
intelligence is more than just relying on feeling in reasoning.
It is also harnessing the motivating properties of affect in
everyday life. Traditional discussions of passion and reason
assume a strong boundary between the two. Although thinking and
feeling are certainly experientially distinct, recent
neuroscience investigations suggest that they may be less
neuroanatomically separable than originally assumed (Lane &
Nadel, 2000). As a consequence, the relationship between emotion
and cognition may need to be reconsidered. Moreover, less
attention has been paid to the role of emotion in instigating
behavior when the behaviors in question are not related to
immediate survival. Unless one lives in a war-torn part of the
world or in a distressed urban center, the probability of
confronting stimuli that threaten survival and provoke
prototypical emotional events (of the kind described by Darwin,
1872/1998) is relatively low. A useful theory must account for
those events, but should also be able to capture the more
frequent, but perhaps less dramatic, emotional responses that
characterize modern daily living.
As for the structure of emotion knowledge, we do not know whether
emotion concepts have the functional properties of concepts in
other domains such as animals, automobiles, and food, or whether
they have unique properties. If emotion concepts are like other
concepts, then are they best described as traditional
feature-based categories (Clore & Ortony, 1991), fuzzy sets
with prototypes (Russell, 1991), or theory-based groupings
(Medin, 1989)? Are they permanent or fluid, changing in response
to situational contingencies in the immediate external
environment (Barsalou, 1983) or phenomenological experiences in
ones internal environment (e.g., Niedenthal, Halberstadt,
& Innes-Ker, 1999)? Of course, the most important questions
concern the relations between how emotional information is
represented and the manner in which such representations
influence diverse elements in an emotional response.
Finally, theories about coping, mechanisms of defense, finding
meaning in adversity, resilience, and flexible responding all
converge on the notion that components in an emotional response
often require active management. This idea is reflected in the
fourth branch of emotional intelligence concerning the
regulationoften strategicof feelings and emotions in
oneself and other people. Typically, theorizing on these issues
focuses on the prevention, abbreviation, or transformation of
negative emotion, but is this really the dominant motivation for
emotion management? It is plausible, even likely, that negative
emotional responses allow us to function effectively in certain
situations. Even more likely is the notion that cultivating
positive emotions can have adaptive value in its own right, over
and above the amelioration of negative responses.
The chapters included in this volume link ongoing basic research
on affect and emotion to the ideas embodied in the emotional
intelligence concept. In doing so, they provide evidence for the
value of emotional intelligence as a framework for organizing and
advancing theory and research on emotion. These chapters also
stretch the boundaries of the emotional intelligence idea in new
and important ways.
Part I of this volume deals with the processes involved in
perceiving and identifying emotions in oneself and others.
Bachorowski and Owren describe the functional acoustics in an
emotional signaling system. They argue that there are direct and
indirect ways in which perceivers attribute emotion to targets on
the basis of their nonlinguistic vocal properties. Especially
interesting are the ways in which declarative knowledge about the
vocalizer interact with prosodic features of the
vocal cues to produce an emotional impression in the listener.
Perhaps even more apparent are the emotional cues provided on the
canvas of the face. Elfenbein, Marsh, and Ambady describe the
crucial role of reading facial expressions in emotional
intelligence. Their chapter addresses how the meanings of facial
expressions are interpreted against a contextual backdrop.
Although facial expressions may provide some signal in an
emotional transaction, they are not impervious to the influence
of the relationship between sender and receiver, culture, social
class, gender, and other features of the social environment. In
the final chapter of Part I, Nelson and Bouton argue that the
types of judgments described in the first two chapters may have
their basis in associative learning. They detail the associative
processes that modify or change the affective value of a
stimulus. On the basis of the evidence they present, Nelson and
Bouton argue that our learning histories are always with us.
Although the affective significance of a stimulus may change,
that change is often contextual (and therefore conditional in
nature). As a result, learning histories are accumulative and to
some extent indelible. These properties of acquisition and change
in the affective significance of stimuli have profound
implications for other aspects of an emotional response.
Together, these three chapters begin to characterize how we come
to view certain kinds of cues as emotionally meaningful, and
certain types of information as emotionally relevant.
Part II describes how affective experiences come to influence
thought and action. Gohm and Clore provide an explicit framework
for understanding how individuals rely on affective feelings as a
source of information in social judgment. They suggest that there
is significant variability in this process, however. Those
individuals who report attending to their feelings, and
experiencing those feelings in a clear, intense way, use them in
the judgment process differently than do others. Gilbert,
Driver-Linn, and Wilson also describe the informational value of
affective experience, specifically the value of anticipated
affective states. They describe the processes involved in
impact bias, the tendency to misjudge both the
duration and the intensity of predicted affective reactions. They
suggest that similar biases may play out in retrospective
accounts of emotional reactions as well, leading to the idea that
prospective and retrospective judgments have more in common with
each other than they do with actually experienced affective
states.
Schwarzs analysis suggests that the states of mind
accompanying everyday moods are best suited for different kinds
of cognitive tasks. The expansive orientation facilitated by
pleasant affective feelings encourages top-down information
processing that is creative and heuristic driven. In contrast,
the detail-oriented focus facilitated by unpleasant affective
feelings encourages bottom-up information processing that is
stimulus driven, deductive, and engenders the careful scrutiny of
incoming information. Schwarzs ideas about how moods tune
the cognitive system have implications for a range of outcomes,
including stereotyping, attitude change, and analytical
reasoning. Niedenthal, Dalle, and Rohmann also discuss how
feeling tunes cognitive processing. The emotional aspects of
stimuli form a core organizing principle around which they can be
grouped into concepts. Discrete emotional experiences function as
the glue in perceiving these concepts. The
implication is clear: People literally perceive the world
differently depending on how they are feeling. Discrete emotions
influence not only categorization processes, but other cognitive
processes as well. DeSteno and Braverman discuss the various ways
in which discrete emotional experiences affect attitude change.
They argue that individual differences in emotional intelligence
influence the mechanisms by which emotions have their impact. In
doing so, they synthesize the affect-as-information perspective
with the cognitive-tuning approach to provide an emotional spin
on the popular elaboration-likelihood model of attitude change.
The final chapter in Part II provides a neuroanatomical basis for
the idea that feelings influence strategic information processing
and planned behavior. Using examples from psychopathology,
especially obsessivecompulsive disorder, Savage details how
one area of the prefrontal cortex, called the orbital frontal
cortex, allows individuals to harness affective information
during the early stages of responding to stimuli, especially
those that are novel or ambiguous in some way. In a preliminary
sense, Savage lays the anatomical foundation for how emotional
information influences thought and behavior.
Part III deals with emotion conceptsindividuals
knowledge base about emotion and their ability to represent
symbolically elements of the emotional response. This issue has
been a focus of systematic research in developmental psychology.
Denham and Kochanoff describe much of this research in their
review of the developmental milestones in childrens
understanding of emotionhow this understanding develops
from the ability to label emotional expressions, identify
emotion-eliciting situations, comprehend probable causes of
emotion, appreciate the consequences of emotion, and infer the
emotional experiences of others. These authors provide a useful
summary of the development of an emotional knowledge base that
may be involved in other aspects of emotional intelligence. Lane
and Pollermann describe the different levels of sophistication
that characterize individuals understanding of emotional
experience. Using a Piagetian framework, they suggest that there
are different levels of development, from understanding emotional
experience in simplistic ways (e.g., in global or physical terms)
to a more
complex conceptual system that is precise and multifaceted. The
complexity of a persons conceptual framework will
determine, in turn, both the degree to which emotional experience
can be represented mentally in a complex fashion and the
complexity of the experience itself.
When laypersons think about emotional intelligence, they likely
focus on regulation. In fact, managing the potential array of
elements in an emotional response, and attempting to influence
the feelings of others, are central aspects of competence in the
emotional domain. Part IV of this volume concerns managing
emotion. Gross and John are especially concerned with providing a
framework for understanding the range of strategies involved in
emotion regulation. Specifically, they contrast those strategies
focused on managing the potential antecedents of an emotion
response with those that change the response once it has
occurred. They are also concerned with the effects of such
strategies, in particular the consequences of suppression. Next,
Tugade and Fredrickson point out the value of positive emotions.
They suggest that positive emotions provide a powerful antidote
to negative reactions. In addition, they highlight the intrinsic
adaptive value of positive
emotions themselves. Their broaden-and-build model suggests that
positive emotions provide us with the psychological resources to
engage in the more adaptive antecedent-focused strategies
described by Gross and John. The final chapter in Part IV
explores the consequences of challenging the deeply held belief
that hedonism alone is the primary motive for emotion regulation.
Knowing that certain types of cognitive and behavioral tasks are
accomplished better when our cognitive system is tuned by
negative emotion, Parrott argues that there may be circumstances
in which it is useful to cultivate negative emotions and unleash
their functional power. Contrary to being hijacked by
negative emotion (e.g., Goleman, 1995), Parrotts analysis
suggests that we may benefit from our negative feelings, which
can sometimes be the guide to thinking clearly and behaving
appropriately.
A good theory is generative. And although it is too early to know
whether emotional intelligence is a foundation for creative
research in emotion, Part V of this volume provides three
illustrations of interesting directions for future research.
Russell and Blanchard suggest that a person cannot be intelligent
unless he or she knows what to be intelligent about. They argue
that emotion is a category too broad for scientific discourse and
suggest a lexicon for parsing the emotion domain that is
consistent with many theories of emotion. Just as a
well-developed emotion lexicon is important for functionally
effective emotional behavior, these authors suggest that the
definitional clarity resulting from a precise scientific lexicon
can be important for effective future research on emotional
intelligence.
The final two chapters provide examples of how emotional
intelligence can make contact with research that is traditionally
considered outside the realm of affect science. Ferguson and
Bargh describe their work on automatic attitudes. They discuss
the mechanisms through which individuals effortlessly integrate
evaluative information from individual features of a novel object
to provide an evaluative summary response to it. Aspects of this
process appear to occur outside of consciousness and likely
contribute to the initial affective appraisal of a stimulus.
Blair reviews some of the literature on Theory of Mind, the
ability to represent the mental states of self and others, and
examines potential links to the various facets of emotional
intelligence. Using examples from autism, where Theory of Mind is
impaired, and examples from sociopathy, where emotional
intelligence is impaired, Blair examines whether Theory of Mind
is necessary for emotionally intelligent behavior.
Much of the popular media attention to the idea of emotional
intelligence has focused on the measurement of an EQ
(e.g., Gibbs, 1995). Although assessing individual differences in
the abilities that constitute emotional intelligence is a useful
endeavor, it is our view that the field will benefit from a
deeper understanding of the processes that subserve these
different skills. Such an analysis allows research on emotional
intelligence to be better situated in the field of affect
science, rather than merely a provocative contribution to the
intelligence testing literature. Once situated there, emotional
intelligence has the potential to organize what we know and
stimulate new questions about how emotional phenomena serve
adaptive personal and social functioning at many levels of
analysis. Regardless of ones core theoretical preferences,
there is a convergence of thought that emotions are functional.
One cannot study the processes by which people emote or assign
emotional value without considering their effectiveness. And, as
learning theorist O. H. Mowrer (1960, p. 308) noted, the emotions
do not at all deserve being put into
opposition with intelligence. The spirit of
Mowrers comment is clear: We cannot understand the workings
of the mind and their influence on behavior without understanding
the role of emotional processes. Emotional intelligence may be an
important conceptual framework for guiding research on emotional
phenomena and their influence on the range of things that concern
us as psychologists.
REFERENCES
Barsalou, L. W. (1983). Ad hoc categories. Memory and Cognition,
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Caruso, D. R., Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (2002). Emotional
intelligence and emo
tional leadership. In R. E. Riggio, S. E. Murphy, & F. J.,
Pirozzolo (Eds.),
Multiple intelligences and leadership (pp. 5574). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Cherniss, C., & Goleman, D. (Eds.). (2001). The emotionally
intelligence workplace.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
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Clore, G. L., & Ortony, A. (1991). What more is there to
emotion concepts than
prototypes? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60,
4850.
Damasio, A.R. (1994). Descartes error: Emotion, reason, and
the human brain. New
York: Putnams.
Darwin, C. (1998). The expression of emotions in man and animals
(3rd ed.). New
York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1872)
DeSousa, R. B. (1987). The rationality of emotion. Cambridge, MA:
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Gibbs, N. (1995, October 2). The E.Q. factor. Time, pp.
6068.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam
Books.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New
York: Bantam
Books.
Lane, R. D., & Nadel, L. (Eds.). (2000). Cognitive
neuroscience of emotion. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Mayer, J. D., & Cobb, C. D. (2000). Educational policy on
emotional intelligence: Does it make sense? Educational
Psychology Review, 12, 163183.
Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional
intelligence? In P. Salovey
& D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional
intelligence: Implications for educators (pp. 331). New
York: Basic Books.
Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P. & Caruso, D. R. (2000). Emotional
intelligence as zeitgeist, as personality, and as mental ability.
In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker
(Eds.), Handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 92117). San
Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.
Medin, D. L. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American
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Wiley.
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(1999). Emotional response categorization. Psychological Review,
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emotion concepts.
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Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence.
Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185211.
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Guilford Publications
72 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
212-431-9800
800-365-7006
www.guilford.com
Below is the table of contents from the book The Wisdom in Feeling, by Lisa Feldman Barrett and Peter Salovey (copied from David Caruso's site)
It looks like a collection of very academic articles, not many of which are really directly related to emotional intelligence. And not many related to wisdom. It also looks to me like Peter Salovey did not do too much except probably read some of the articles, help write the introduction and put his name on the book. Notice that he did not write, or even co-write any of the main chapters. And there is not even a chapter with Jack Mayer as an author or co-author. I'm not sure what is up with that. But it all looks a bit suspicious to me.
Also, from just the table of contents, it reminds me of Reuven BarOn's so called Handbook of Emotional Intelligence. I would like volunteers to read the book, or parts of it and send me notes -- similar to how I did for Reuven's book. Being in Peru, I can't go to the library and get the book like I could if I lived in the USA. It also is very expensive, 55 dollars. But if you want to buy it, please do so through this link to Amazon so I will get a little kickback.
Thanks, Steve
Introduction, Barrett and Salovey
I. Perceiving Emotion
1. Vocal Acoustics in Emotional Intelligence, Bachorowski and
Owren
2. Emotional Intelligence and the Recognition of Emotion from
Facial Expressions, Elfenbein, Marsh, and Ambady
3. Extinction, Inhibition, and Emotional Intelligence, Nelson and
Bouton
II. Using Emotion in Thought and Action
4. Affect as Information: An Individual-Differences Approach,
Gohm and Clore
5. The Trouble with Vronsky: Impact Bias in the Forecasting of
Future Affective States, Gilbert, Driver-Linn, and Wilson
6. Situated Cognition and the Wisdom in Feelings: Cognitive
Tuning, Schwarz
7. Emotional Response Categorization as Emotionally Intelligent
Behavior, Niedenthal, Dalle, and Rohmann
8. Emotion and Persuasion: Thoughts on the Role of Emotional
Intelligence, DeSteno and Braverman
9. The Role of Emotion in Strategic Behavior: Insights from
Psychopathology, Savage
III. Understanding Emotion
10. "Why Is She Crying?": Children's Understanding of
Emotion from Preschool to Preadolescence, Denham and Kochanoff
11. Complexity of Emotion Representations, Lane and Pollermann
IV. Managing Emotion
12. Wise Emotion Regulation, Gross and John
13. Positive Emotions and Emotional Intelligence, Tugade and
Fredrickson
14. The Functional Utility of Negative Emotions, Parrott
V. Extensions
15. Toward a Shared Language for Emotion and Emotional
Intelligence, Russell and Barchard
16. Sensitivity and Flexibility: Exploring the Knowledge Function
of Automatic Attitudes, Ferguson and Bargh
17. Theory of Mind, Autism, and Emotional Intelligence, Blair
Some marketing propoganda also from David's site
--
"Barrett and Salovey have chosen an outstanding group of
emotion researchers to contribute to this volume. The work
reported here goes a long way toward allaying the editors' stated
concern that excitement about the heuristic value of the concept
of emotional intelligence might overshadow careful study of the
processes attributed to it. Chapters, many of which grabbed my
attention immediately, include accounts of exciting basic
research and suggest new directions for future work. This book is
not just about emotional intelligence, but about emotion science
itself." -Carroll E. Izard, PhD, Department of Psychology,
University of Delaware
"Here, finally, is a book that puts the notion of emotional intelligence on the map of psychological science. While John Mayer and Peter Salovey, the pioneers in this area, worked assiduously to produce theory and data on the issue over the years, their work often seemed a bit overshadowed by the piles of popular bestsellers vulgarizing their ideas. In this book, Lisa Feldman Barrett and Salovey bring together a large group of expert researchers from different areas in psychology, including many eminent scholars in the psychology of emotion, to take an in-depth look at what psychological science can contribute to understanding the processes involved in perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions. This volume will be an invaluable source for anyone interested in this important and timely research area." - Klaus R. Scherer, University of Geneva