CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS

Concept of fear

2019-12-06T08:21:00.003-08:00

Fear is the great force that prompts to acts of self-preservation and operates as effectively in the brute as in the human animal.

In the psychological sciences, fear is defined as, “a reaction toan external stimulus...and appears to be associated with autonomic hyper-arousal when the individual is exposed to the stimulus...a common adaptive response to an immediate, threatening situation”.

Fear is predicted to have a less negative effect than anger on ethical decisions given the effects of fear appraisal tendencies on information-processing and social motives. However, fear often triggers physiological responses and action tendencies related to escape or flight from the emotion-eliciting situation.

When escape or flight is blocked, fear can turn into anxiety or “undirected arousal following the perception of threat”.

Courage, the opposite of fear, readily divides itself into the moral and the physical. One may be a moral coward yet physically brave; and obverse the physically brave may in certain circumstances prove a moral coward.

Theorists from Freud, to Spielberger (1975), to Barlow (2000, 2002), have suggested individual differences make some people more likely to experience fear or anxiety. The tendency to respond with fear or to experience pervasive anxiety was called neuroticism by Freud and trait anxiety by Spielberger.

Concept of fear

Anger management: Definition and consequences

2019-11-24T18:35:00.002-08:00

Anger is a normal, healthy emotion, neither good nor bad. Like any emotion, it conveys a message, telling the person that a situation is upsetting, unjust, or threatening. It is a physical and mental response to a threat or to harm done in the past. Anger takes many different forms from irritation to blinding rage or resentment that festers over many years.

Anger is not a condition, it’s a symptom that the person life is unbalanced. If he get insufficient sleep, go without breakfast, spend every day –including weekends –working, rarely exercise, and have no time for himself, he’ll be prone to extreme irritation and anger.

Anger can be just a simple irritation with something. At the other extreme, it can result in hysterical shouting, screaming and lashing out. Anger can often have a negative impact on the person’s relationships and his work. It can also change the way that he feel about himself.

Anger can cause lasting scars in the people he love most and get in the way of friendships and work relationships. Explosive anger makes it hard for others to trust him, speak honestly, or feel comfortable—and is especially damaging to children.

Chronic anger consumes huge amounts of mental energy, and clouds your thinking, making it harder to concentrate or enjoy life. It can also lead to stress, depression, and other mental health problems.

Anger gets the mind and body ready for action. It arouses the nervous system, increasing the heart rate, blood pressure, blood fl ow to muscles, blood sugar level and sweating. It also sharpens the senses and increases the production of adrenalin, a hormone produced at times of stress.

Anger management: Definition and consequences

Psychological distress

2019-11-10T05:42:00.002-08:00

Psychological distress is largely defined as a state of emotional suffering characterized by symptoms of depression (e.g., lost interest; sadness; hopelessness) and anxiety (e.g., restlessness; feeling tense). In medical term psychological distress is some form of neurological defect responsible forthe disordered thinking and behavior, and requires medical treatment and care.

These symptoms may be tied in with somatic symptoms (e.g., insomnia; headaches; lack of energy) that are likely to vary across cultures. The existence of psychological distress has been recognized for thousands of years.3,900 years old Egyptian manuscript provides an accurate picture of the distressed person as pessimistic, his losing faith in others, unable to carry out the everyday tasks of life and his serious consideration of suicide.

Anger or irritability, anxiety and exhaustion are typical states of psychological distress, as well as the tendency to devalue and an inclination to isolate, stay away, not engaging in activities with others. Experience these symptoms for two weeks may be a sign of distress. However, when the individual does not feel these symptoms it does not mean that the person is really fine.

Psychological distress

Component of emotional intelligence

2019-10-29T06:52:00.001-07:00

Emotions are involved in everything people do: every action, decision and judgment. In 1990, Salovey & Mayer coined the term ―Emotional Intelligence‖ and they defined Emotional Intelligence as a subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others‘ feelings and emotions to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one‘s thinking and actions. Their model of emotional intelligence defines four discretemental abilities (also referred to as ‘branches’) that comprise emotional intelligence:
(i)perception of emotion,
(ii) use of emotion to facilitate thought,
(iii) understanding of emotion, and
(iv) management of emotion.

Component of emotional intelligence:
* Emotional Self-Awareness, knowing what one feels. It involves keeping track of emotions and noticing different emotional reactions, as well as being able to identify the emotions correctly. John Mayer uses the term meta-mood, the affective analogue of meta-cognition, for key aspects of Emotional Self-Awareness.
* Emotional Self-Management involves controlling one's emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances. It is the ability to regulate distressing affects like anxiety and anger and to inhibit emotional impulsivity. PET (positron-emission tomography) measurements of glucose metabolism reveal that individual differences in metabolic activity in the amygdala are associated with levels of distress or dysphoria—the more activity, the greater the negative affect.
* Social Awareness, the third EI component, which encompasses the competency of Empathy, also involves the amygdala.
* Relationship Management, or Social Skill, the fourth EI component, poses a more complex picture. In a fundamental sense, the effectiveness of our relationship skills hinges on human ability to attune themselves to or influence the emotions of another person.

Component of emotional intelligence

The meaning of consciousness

2019-10-17T20:19:00.001-07:00

The word “consciousness” has its Latin root in conscio, formed by the coalescence of cum, meaning “with,” and scio, meaning “know”. In its original Latin sense, to be conscious of something was to share knowledge of it with someone else, or, metaphorically, to share it with oneself.

Consciousness is an ambiguous term. It can refer to
(1)the waking state;
(ii)experience; and
(iii)the possession of any mental state.

Self-consciousness is equally ambiguous, with senses including
(i) proneness to embarrassment in social settings;
(ii)the ability to detect our own sensations and recall our recent actions;
(iii)self-recognition;
(iv)the awareness of awareness; and
(v) self-knowledge in the broadest sense.

According to William James’ theory of mind (1890), human conscious mental life flows continuously like a stream in which “the transition between the thought of one object and the thought of another is no more a break in the thought than a joint in a bamboo is a break in the wood”.

Consciousness depends on the functioning of the brain; yet many philosophers have claimed that understanding how the brain produces subjective experience may lie forever beyond the realm of scientific explanation.
The meaning of consciousness

Emotional disorders

2019-10-08T20:05:00.005-07:00

Emotional disorders can be considered as collection of distressing behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that differ from “normality.” A person either has or does not have the disorder based on the number of symptoms that meet the established criteria.

An emotional behavioral disorder affects a person’s ability to be happy, control their emotions and pay attention in school.

What types of emotional disorders?
· Anxiety disorders
· Bipolar disorder
· Conduct disorders
· Obsessive-compulsive disorder
· Psychotic disorders
· Depressive disorders

Two areas are consistently blamed for this disorder and include biological factors(which include brain disorders, genetics, and temperament) and environmental factors(across the spectrums of home, school and community).
Emotional disorders

Basic idea of human emotions

2018-10-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

Humans are the most emotional animals on earth. Almost every aspect of human cognition, behavior, and social organization is driven by emotions.

In written English, the word “emotion” and its derivatives have passed through identifiable stages. In 17th and 18th centuries, written language remained faithful to the Latin derivation of emotion – namely ‘emovere, “to move away from.”

By the late 19th century, it was fashionable to distinguish emotion from cognition and volition. In some theories of the mind, emotion, cognition and volition were regarded as three fundamental faculties. According to the distinguished philosopher Richard Wollheim, an emotion is an extended mental episode that originates when events in the world frustrate or satisfy a pre-existing desire.

Emotions are the force behind social commitments to others in face-to-face interactions and groups. But they are much more; they are also the driving force responsible for the formation of social structures, and conversely, they are the fuel driving collective actions that tear down social structures and transform cultures.

Emotion came to be regarded as distinct from cognition (reasoning) and volition (willing). We retain the vestiges of this analysis in our present day conception of emotion: emotion is commonly thought to be the obverse of reason, a separate faculty, usually one to be guarded lest it interfere with the rational aspects of the mind and thereby subvert motivation or values.

There are dozens of emotions. They include anger, contempt, enthusiasm, envy, fear, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, disgust, happiness, hate, hope, jealousy, joy, love, pride, surprise, and sadness. There have been numerous research efforts to limit and define the dozens of emotions into a fundamental or basic set of emotions.
Basic idea of human emotions

Emotional feeling of disappointment

2018-10-06T22:07:00.001-07:00

Hurt, disappointment, loneliness and sadness – all have to do with a feeling of loss. Something anyone expected to go a certain way did not and he feels a loss; a sense of sadness.

Disappointment is an emotion that people experience daily to varying degrees. Disappointment is an interesting emotion, because it is obviously triggered by people own beliefs, longings, desires, goals, perspectives, and expectations. In fact, when they pay attention to their disappointment it will reveal all sorts of information to them about these things.

It is a concerned with the discrepancy between expectation and outcome. It is primarily an emotional reaction to an outcome that falls short of one’s original positive expectation.

The experience of disappointment is uncomfortable for everyone involved during the point of ignition. If they go to their emotional pain of disappointment and release it, their children or partner don’t have to feel it in them.

Disappointment is a huge barrier in conversation and can only be overcome if each person takes care of the blame that is being experienced.
Emotional feeling of disappointment

Characteristics of obsessive-compulsive disorder

2018-08-29T05:00:00.002-07:00

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a condition which can have major effects on the life of both the sufferer and their family members. Previous research has shown that the impact of illness on family members is related to their conceptualization of the illness.

Symptoms are often accompanied by feelings of shame and secrecy. In addition, health care professionals do not always recognize the diverse manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is described as an anxiety disorder. The condition has two main parts: obsessions and compulsions.

Obsessions are unwelcome thoughts, images, urges or doubts that repeatedly appear in the person’s mind; for example, thinking that other people have been contaminated by dirt and germs, or experiencing a sudden urge to hurt someone. The patient is persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of strong urges to save items and/or distress with discarding items.

Compulsions are repetitive activities that the person feels he has to do. This could be something like repeatedly checking a door to make sure it is locked or repeating a specific phrase in the head to prevent harm coming to a loved one.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder has a substantial effect on quality of life and level of functioning. It is often a chronic disorder (60% to 70% of cases) and is likely to persist if not treated effectively.
Characteristics of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Emotional signs of stress

2018-07-22T20:34:00.000-07:00

Stress can be defined as a real or interpreted threat to an organism in a biological or a psychological sense. It results in physiological or behavioral responses When faced with a threat, whether to body physical safety or emotional equilibrium, the body's defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight” response.

The specific signs and symptoms of stress vary widely from person to person. Some people primarily experience physical symptoms, such as low back pain, stomach problems, and skin outbreaks. In others, the stress pattern centers on emotional symptoms, such as crying or hypersensitivity.

Emotional signs of stress
• Fear
• Depression or general unhappiness
• Anxiety and agitation
• Hopelessness
• Helplessness
• Moodiness, irritability, or anger
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Impatience
• Nervousness
• Guilt
• Loneliness and isolation
• Other mental or emotional health problems

While awareness about the impact stress can have on emotional and physical health seems to be present, many Americans continue to report symptoms of stress: Americans report irritability or anger (42 percent); fatigue (37 percent); lack of interest, motivation or energy (35 percent); headaches (32 percent); and upset stomachs (24 percent) due to stress. A smaller percentage report having a change in appetite (17 percent) and sex drive (11 percent).
Emotional signs of stress

Psychological and emotional distress

2018-06-12T19:13:00.001-07:00

Black's Law Dictionary defines "mental anguish" or "emotional distress"' as an element of damages including "the mental suffering resulting from the excitation of the more poignant and painful emotions, such as grief, severe disappointment, indignation, wounded pride, shame, public humiliation, despair, etc."

Previous research indicates that emotional distress plays a role in the development of adolescent alcohol use, particularly patterns of problematic use. Adolescents who display higher levels of emotional distress are less likely to regulate their emotions effectively and are more likely to select unsuccessful coping strategies, resulting in maladaptive outcomes.

The model posits that psychological and emotional distress is a fundamental link between socioeconomic disadvantage and weight gain. At particular risk are children growing up in a disharmonious family environment, mainly caused by parental socioeconomic disadvantage, where they are exposed to parental frustrations, relationship discord, a lack of support and cohesion, negative belief systems, unmet emotional needs and general insecurity.

The current study tests the hypothesis that adolescents who display higher levels of emotional distress and deficits in their ability to cope with distress may be at greater risk to drink on days in which they experience heightened negative mood (indicative of self-medication) and at increased risk to experience negative mood as a result of drinking episodes (indicative of greater drinking consequences) potentially due to their lower capacity to manage or recover from the aftereffects of drinking episodes (International Journal of Emotional Education Volume 4, Number 1, April 2012).
Psychological and emotional distress

Emotional Self-regulation

2018-05-01T18:39:00.002-07:00

In the domain of emotion, self-regulation involves the ability to modulate emotional responses to meet an emotion-relevant goal. Emotion-relevant goals may be tied to specific situational demands, societal expectations for emotion-related responses or the pursuit of emotional health.

Emotional self-regulation deals primarily with the management of feelings and subsequent behaviors. People seek to redirect the spontaneous flow of their emotions.

Emotions are understood here as people’s valenced (positive or negative) reactions to events that they perceive as relevant to their ongoing concerns. Emotions in the present conception consist of multiple components that include specific thoughts and feelings, along with behavioral and physiological responses.

Emotion regulation has been linked to such important outcomes as mental health, physical health, relationship satisfaction, and work performance. Individuals who are better at emotional self-regulation are more primed for success - whether it is pursuing a career, building a business or establishing relationships.
Emotional Self-regulation

Factors in emotional stress

2018-04-01T22:49:00.003-07:00

Stress always causes an emotion, but emotion not necessarily stressful. Stress experiences can be emotionally or physiologically challenging and activate stress responses and adaptive processes to regain homeostasis.

Emotional stress and depression can down-regulate various parts of the immune system, which is located in both the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system, by influences on the principal effectors, such as neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, neurohormones and adrenal hormones. Emotional stress is often triggered by a dramatic event that puts a person's nervous system under severe strain.

Examples of emotional stressors include interpersonal conflict, loss of relationship, death of a close family member, and loss of a child. An event such as this can put severe strain on a person's mind and nerves and the incredible strain can cause changes in the way that the brain works.

Things that cause people stress are called stressors. Stress affects everyone, young and old, rich and poor. Life is full of stress. Stress is an every fact of life that everyone must all deal with. It comes in all shapes and sizes; even human thoughts can cause the stress and make the human body more susceptible to illness.
Factors in emotional stress

Jealousy

2018-03-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

Jealousy has disrupted lives, relationships and communities for centuries. Not until the twentieth century, however, social science began to study it. Jealousy a powerful emotion in which he person experiences extreme fear that he or she might lose that which is love to someone or something else.

Jealousy is best thought of as compound emotion that arises from the situational labeling of one or more of such primary emotions as anger or fear.

It can occur in any close relationship where in the parties are affections or desirers. It can occur within romantic relationships, sexual relationship, friendships, in a child’s relationship to its parent, or a parent’s relationship to the child or one parent may be jealous of the child’s affectionate displays toward other parent.

Jealousy can be viewed as functional because it spur activities that are designed to prevent the loss of one’s partner to a rival.” It can also be viewed as dysfunctional because it is often associated with psychopathologies, such as low self-esteem, neuroticisms, insecurity and anxiety.
Jealousy

Social competence and social incompetence

2018-01-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

Rose-Krasnor in 1997 defines social competence as “effectiveness in interaction, considered from both self and other perspectives. Social competence is viewed as an organizing construct, with transactional context-dependent, performance oriented, and goal-specific characteristics”.

According to Burton in 1996, social competence concerns such areas as understanding an following social rules, adjusting social behavior to the situation, social problem solving and understanding other.

Social noncompetence has been selected as the descriptor for populations lacking social skills sufficient to allow them to enter into the social world well and to generate essential small groups. Social incompetence is to be found in wide cross-section of people, not just those with learning disabilities. For examples, people with chronic mental health problems as well as con-conformist.

Alternatively, problems of communication, hearing and vision could be the cause of social incompetence too. Virtually, every social interaction in which individuals with less advance in mental, physical and social development participate is to some degree influence by the fundamental reality of the stigma attached to intellectual and social incompetence.

Ultimately the social incompetence of mentally disable person lies in their inability to extend and strengthen their families through social activities, and relationships. Those who are unmarried are unlikely to find a spouse, so they cannot contribute to family growth through relations of affinity procreation.
Social competence and social incompetence

Self-Categorization Theory

2017-12-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

Self-categorization theory was developed by John Turner and his students and grew out of the social identity tradition that he had been involved in developing.

It is a theory of self-perception which anticipates that aspects of social behaviors, especially group behavior can be explained by variations in self-perception.

That is, the way people act in social situations depends on the way that they perceive themselves in those situations, and in particular, the way in which people perceive themselves to be similar to or different from other people.

The theory elaborates the operations of the categorization process as the cognitive basis of group behavior. Categorization accentuates both similarities among stimuli (physical, social, or aspects of the self) belonging to the same category and differences among stimuli belonging to different categories on dimension believed to be correlate with the categorization.
Self-Categorization Theory

The Empty Nest Syndrome

2017-12-22T20:19:00.001-08:00

As children reach maturity, the family becomes a launching center that fires adolescents and young adults off into the world to work and start their own families. The term empty nest describes the family after departure of the last child. Clearly the emptying of the nest involves changes in roles and lifestyles for parents, particularly for mothers who have centered their lives on child rearing. How parents affected by this transition?

Just as the entry of children into the family seems to cause modest decreases in marital satisfaction, their departure seems to cause modest increases in marital satisfaction and perceived quality of life.

After nest empties, parents feel that their marriages are more equitable and that their spouses are more accommodating to their needs. Mothers especially likely to feel somewhat better about themselves, and their lives in general when they no longer have children in the house. So much for the belief – one that was common among developmentalists in the not too distant past – that the empty nest creates feelings of emptiness.

True, a minority of parents, mothers and fathers, find this transition very disturbing, and others have mixed feelings about it. For example, women with experience the transition “off time” – who feel that their departing children are not yet ready to leave – are likely to experience the event negatively. And fathers who have poor marriages but who appear to have very close relationships with their children may also suffer. Still, hard as it may be for departing children to believe, children appear to cause more stress to their parents when they arrive in the family than when they depart.

Why do parents generally react positively to the empty nest? Possibly it is because they have fewer roles and responsibilities and therefore experience less stress and strain. If parenting is a little like beating ones head against a wall, there is surely some relief when one stop. Indeed, marital satisfaction is highest during the empty nests transition when couples do participate in activities together rather that in activities together rather than leading separate social lives. Moreover, parents are likely to view the emptying of the nest as evidence they have accomplished the ultimate goal of parenting.
The Empty Nest Syndrome

The New Biology

2017-11-22T07:57:00.001-08:00

The nineteenth and early twentieth century were keen to emphasize the difference between man and animals, and focus on ‘man as a rational being’, at the apex of the tree of evolution, rising above his animal origins.

The logical conclusions of Darwinism, with its emphasis on man as an animal, took some time to have a real impact on our understanding of what it is to be human, but in the late twentieth century a certain disillusionment with the notion of progress, civilization, rationality and industrialization has lead to an interest in ecology and environmentalism that has caused us to recognize, acknowledge and even celebrate our links with the rest of creation rather than our differences.

This shift of perspective is suggesting that our emotions are perhaps the most fundamental part of what it is to be human.

We have come to recognize that the root emotions, such as fear, anger, or joy, are instinctive, biological responses, which have been essential to the survival and progress of the human race to outside events.

Feminist thinking has contributed to this change as feminist thinkers have found it easier to acknowledge the importance of instinct and emotion to human life.

As society has changed, the intensity of the negative emotions, especially anger and fear, is now not so useful and our basic physiological response to threat of ‘fight or flight’ is no longer an appropriate response to most modern problems.

Without the physical challenges that allowed our ancestors to discharge strong emotions we are often left in a state of stress and tension, which causes us to be depressed, anxious or hostile.
The New Biology

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of intelligence

2017-10-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

Sternberg’s pioneering efforts in information processing and a resultant theory of intelligence emphasize thinking processes common to everyone.

He defines intelligence as ‘mental activity directed toward the purposive adaptation to and selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life.’ Sternberg asserts that intelligence is malleable, and a s such he posits that psychologists and educators can, to some extent, remediate deficits in cognitive skills and abilities.

New perceptions of what intelligence means have begun to emerge from his work, Sternberg has developed what he calls a “Triarchic theory of intelligence,” which breaks down cognitive behavior into thinking, adapting and problem solving.

Sternberg theory identifies a three part (Triarchic) description of mental abilities: contextual intelligence, experiential intelligence and componential intelligence.

Contextual-practical intelligence is demonstrated by positive adaption to real-world environments. According to the theory, individuals may possess strengths in one or more aspects of intelligence.

Experiential-creative intelligence is represented in behaviors and strategies employed when a person is faced with an unfamiliar tasks or situation.

Componential – analytical consist of executive processes, knowledge and performance.
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of intelligence

What are signs and symptoms of empty nest syndrome?

2017-10-02T01:33:00.002-07:00

Empty nest syndrome refers to feelings of depression, sadness, and/or grief experienced by parents and caregivers after children come of age and leaves their childhood homes. This may occur when children go to college or get married.

Research suggests that an “empty nest” can be psychologically disruptive for some women.

The empty nest years often represent a period of major adjustment as the woman strives to refine her life and her activities. Among the symptoms of empty nest syndrome are anxiety, feelings of loss of control, depression, loneliness, wistfulness, boredom and low self esteem, found among mothers whose last child had recently moved of the family home.

It may occur during a major transition, such as menopause, or in crucial years when the woman is dealing with aging and care duties warranted by her own parent. Working women seem to experience a milder form of empty nest syndrome than stay-home mothers although the closeness of the child to the parent seems to be the greatest indicator of severity.
What are signs and symptoms of empty nest syndrome?

Categories of Emotion

2017-10-02T00:23:00.001-07:00

Categories of Emotion
It might seem that there were two quite clear cut categories of emotion. On the one hand, there are basic emotions, which are universal and innate.

On the other hand, there are culturally specific emotions such as ‘being a wild pig’.

However things are not really this simple. Innateness is not an all-or-nothing thing, but a question of degree.

When investigating emotions or any other biological or psychological trait it should not really ask whether it is innate or not, but rather how innate it is.

The more special conditions; over and above the basic necessities of survival that are required for development of a trait, the les innate it is.

Learning a language is less innate than growing legs, since growing legs requires lonely normal genome, basic nutrition, and the luck to escape nasty accidents, whereas learning a language requires all these things plus interaction with other speaking humans.

So rather than thinking of basic and culturally specific emotions as two completely different kinds of thing, the people can see them as sitting at opposite ends of a single spectrum.

Depending on how many special condition are required for a given emotion to develop, and on how special they are, the emotion would be located more towards the “basic” end of the spectrum or more towards the ‘culturally specific’ end.

Basic emotions are much more innate than culturally specific emotions, but they still require some minimal conditions to develop.
Categories of Emotion

Physical exercise to reduce emotional stress

2017-09-05T18:51:00.002-07:00

Physical exercise is one of the stress management techniques. In addition to improving cardiovascular function and decreasing the risk of heart disease, type2 diabetes and obesity, physical exercise can reduce emotional distress.

Stress manifests itself in emotional states, as well as physiological, psychological and behavioral responses. Physical exercise is necessary to keep the body healthy both physically and mentally and is the best antidote for stress. Emotional strength is a by-product of regular exercise and self-confidence is a natural consequence.

Regular and regulated physical exercise includes, walking, jogging, swimming, aerobics, riding bicycle, playing outdoor games etc.
Physical exercise to reduce emotional stress

Associational flexibility

2017-07-18T00:30:00.002-07:00

Associational flexibility is the ability to have a certain object evoke a desired dynamic referent (i.e. association): to associate red with a rose rather than with blood, or a car with the idea of joyfully moving through space rather than with a specter of an accident.

Creative thinking often requires that a person be able to see multiple possible associations between ideas and concepts. There are exact and fixed formulas and meanings in the internal order of each discussion and in the usage of words within the discussions.
Associational flexibility

Leader with emotional flexibility

2017-06-19T00:28:00.003-07:00

Emotion flexibility can be defined broadly as the ability to respond to shifting emotional contexts, including environmental contexts as well as internally elicited emotion with appropriate modulation of emotional responses, encompassing automatic, implicit as well as deliberate processing.

Emotional flexibility requires the ability to distance from an emotional state in order to analyze its appropriateness and consequences, given the current context and to consider and to be able to age in, other emotional responses. The person should have strong and solid self-identity, he can see how others perceive him and he can move into positive action rather than get side tracked by politics or other people’s emotional responses.

An emotional flexible leader is comfortable with the process of transition, including the grieving, complaining and resistance. Adapting to change requires give-and-take between the leader and those experiencing the change. A leader without emotional flexibility is dismissive of others’ concerns or emotions and shuts down discussion.
Leader with emotional flexibility

What is the meaning of social intelligence?

2017-05-16T17:02:00.002-07:00

Edward Thorndike, the Columbia University psychologist who first proposed the concept of social intelligence in a 1920 article in Harper’s Monthly Magazine: observed that social intelligence shows itself abundantly in the nursery, on the playground, in barracks and factories and salerooms, but it eludes the formal standardized conditions of the testing laboratory.

Thorndike noted that such interpersonal effectiveness was a vital importance for success in mnay field, particularly leadership.

A study published in 2003 by Riggio and colleagues found that social skills and social intelligence have been related to leadership success. Their study showed the social intelligence of frontline supervisors did not predict either their performance or how satisfied their subordinates were with them. However, there was a much stronger leader performance and follower satisfaction in higher level managers and leaders.

This makes sense because the complexity of the leadership situation increases as one moves up the chain of command, and it is social intelligence that helps the leader read and interpret the complex social situation and enact the complex roles and behaviors needed to be successful. Leader social intelligence refers to the ability to identify and interpret social cues and be able to adjust one’s response to the cues needed to facilitate the group effectively.
What is the meaning of social intelligence?