Talk:Emotional intelligence

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Amitc008 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Glafl002.

POV? - Statement regarding IQ in the section titled "Mayer and Salovey's Four Branch Model of Emotional Intelligence"

I noticed the following sentence, and have a couple of NPOV concerns:

"It should however be noted that adult income, completion of high school, attainment of higher education, avoidance of dependence on welfare, avoidance of criminal conviction, and several other factors normally considered aspects of a "successful" life correlate very strongly with IQ"

The concerns are:

1) Is it a non-NPOV to suggest that the listed criteria are normally considered aspects of a "successful" life?

See above - General Concepts in Cognitive Ability

2) Is it a non-NPOV to suggest that the listed criteria have a strong correlation with IQ?

One thing I am not clear on is whether or not these are statements made in the referenced work or whether they are opinions of the contributor (they read like the latter).

Does anybody have any opinions on this? TigerShark 00:29, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All the phenomenon listed above have been shown to be correlated with IQ. I do think they are popularly considered to be indicators of success. But aren't there tests of EI, for example the marshmellow test, provided by Goleman, that have been shown to be predictive of future success indicators, such as standardized test scores?--Nectarflowed ^T 22:51, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Criticism section

Shouldn't the topic on "Nancy Gibbs on emotional intelligence" be moved to the criticism section?

Or, perhaps there should be a History section. here is a history with input from many of the leaders in the field. Or, here is a history from an interview with Daniel Goleman.

Article should be called Emotions and Intelligence

Emotional intelligence does not appear to be one thing, but rather it appears to be a combination of three things. Personality, General overall cognitive ability (IQ), specific socially oriented cognitive ability (Theory of mind). Coatchecker

Nope, the subject actually is "Emotional Intelligence" .. which in it's current form could almost be considered some type of holistic mental therapy that liberally incorporates random scientific facts to make it appear more authentic. Apparently a dynamic EQ was originally propose to be "the answer" to offset the fixed potentials of IQ to cash in on the stigmatic limelight surrounding 'The Bell Curve' (a hot topic at the time). I might go as far as to call EI a pseudoscience, but there is quite a few factual academic studies in the field. Although the peer reviewed journals in no way over glorify "emotional intelligence" in such an exaggerated manner as the New York Times bestseller that shares the same name. If anything the scholars have spent more time cleaning up the mess that Goleman made than making actual progress in this area. These views are my opinions. Anyways, the title is correct, the information does seem to be an odd amalgamation, but as one might say, "that is the nature of the beast." 74.97.109.162

Clean up

Hi, I'm trying to clean up this page.

It's the first time I've tried to clean up a wikipedia page, so have patience with me. It's just that there are a lot of areas that really need to be clarified, just on a grammatical / sentence-structure level. As someone familiar into EI, I'm also adding a bit of info here are there, although I'm trying to do this in separate entries. Chime in if there are any objections. -Kerrjac

--Ok, now I think that most of the article reads pretty well & objectively. I had edits for just about every section. Most of them were grammatical / styllistic bits (e.g., putting terms in italics rather than quotes), with a bunch of new internal links (among others, reliability, mediation, regression, confound, self-report, case study, social desirability). Most content changes were in the assessment / criticism section: For the former I rearranged the order, to take the emphasis off of the commercial scales, and also added info on the Schutte inventory; and for the latter, I further clarified the comparison to IQ, and I created a new section for criticism against Mayer. I also temporarly took out that section on neural circuits (see my note in text, I think the info doesn't below in the criticism section).

Perhaps we can take off the 'needs cleanup' tag in a few days. I think we just have to make sure that the reference section is updated with the content. We might also want to elaborate on some of the the information a bit, particularly the assessment area.

-Kerrjac

re: objective cleanup

I've changed those opening 2 ppgh's. There's such a variety of models of EI that it's difficult to talk about them all in one breath. I see how the words "this has left" is too negative. I also tried to change in to sound less like EI researchers are defending their construct, however it should be remembered that in a sense, whenever a new construct is introduced, it does need to be defended. And one way to defend it is by establishing such criteria.

As a "fan" of EI myself, so to speak, I was also surprised that the criticism section was so long. I thought a lot of the criticisms needed to modified, but I tried not to change too much material. However, I've read much of the scientific literature (especially regarding Mayer & Salovey's model), and the skepticism portrayed here really is reflected in the literature. EI does have a lot more speculative and unempirical articles, even within the scientific publications, than most constructs I've come across; its lack of empirical evidence has been critisized heavily. I would argue that downplaying the vast amount of skepticism would be unhealthy for the future growth of the construct.

Regarding Goleman, nothing in the article states that he's the "author of EI". I don't think that he is. In fact, it might even be worth it to elaborate on Goleman in the section, "Claims for the Predictive Power of Emotional Intelligence are too Extreme", because his references that EQ has more predictive power than intelligence have been heavily bombarded by scientists. I think I even heard that he published a correction on this statement.

But if you disagree, feel free to suggest / add more modifications.

One possibility would be to distinguish different models of EI more, and then elaborate on their pro's & con's within subsection. You can see that most of the criticisms are only aimed at specific models. However, I only have sufficient knowledge to do this for Mayer's model, I wouldn't be able parse the info for other models.

Images

Hi! I'm opening up a discussion on behalf of my student Amitc008. She's been trying to add images and they've been repeatedly removed from the page. I was wondering if there were any suggestions for the images or for potential captions that would help show how they pertain to the article. Here are the images with my thoughts for the captions:

Possible captions

• 
  Emotional intelligence also reflects abilities to join intelligence, empathy and emotions to enhance thought and understanding of interpersonal dynamics.
• 
  The ability to perceive emotions of oneself and others is often seen as a part of emotional intelligence.

What does everyone think? I wanted to discuss this here and get some advice - I think that the images are good, but could use better captions to show where they specifically relate to emotional intelligence. If the student is willing, ideas for other images is also very welcome. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:32, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• Rather than use typical image formats, I tried using the gallery template - it's not really working for some reason. I'm also going to ping Jytdog and Natureium since they removed the images, to get their input and advice. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:34, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I am just sincerely confused as to why these were taken off. When I made them, I tried hard to display the meaning of emotional intelligence. I am just trying to contribute..Amitc008 (talk) 20:46, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• I am sincerely confused why you think that such images add anything to a encyclopedic article. The topic under discussion simply has no image that would add any kind of clarity because it is not physical. BTW, I am curious of you explained to your student that EI essentially does not exist and was promoted by fraudsters? The first few lines of the article should make that clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 20:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• I removed them because they don't add anything to the article. One is a photo of a man's face and the other is objects strangely photoshopped over a woman's breasts. What are they demonstrating that can provide clarity on the subject of emotional intelligence? Maybe this subject would benefit more from a chart of some kind rather than a photo. Natureium (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• Paulsheer is wrong to say that images in general don't add anything to a encyclopedic article. In fact, the presence of images is one of the six good article criteria, but the images must be relevant to the topic and have suitable captions. The manual of style section on image relevance states: Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative. They are often an important illustrative aid to understanding. When possible, try to find better images and improve captions instead of simply removing poor or inappropriate ones, especially on pages with few visuals. However, not every article needs images, and too many can be distracting. I agree with Natureium that the two images displayed above do not add anything to the article. More relevant images would include, for example, a photo of Daniel Goleman in the "History" section and illustrations of the phenomena in the "Interactions with other phenomena" section. Biogeographist (talk) 12:43, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Biogeographist i am talking about these kind of "middle school interest images". Obviously i do not mean ALL images. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 14:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

@Paulsheer: If it was so "obvious" that you do not mean ALL images then why did you revise your comment by inserting the word "such" after I responded, as if you needed to clarify your meaning? If it were so obvious, you should not need to edit your comment. By editing your comment, you validated my interpretation of your original comment. Thanks for correcting your comment after I pointed out that it was incorrect. Also, please consider signing your comments in the future. Biogeographist (talk) 15:08, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

it was obvious that i had left out "such" by accident, because i excluded physical things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 15:12, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

@Paulsheer: Your intended meaning was "obvious" to you because you knew what you wanted to say but you didn't say it clearly (see Curse of knowledge). It was not obvious to everyone else because your first sentence was stating an opinion not explicitly connected to your subsequent sentences. Mere proximity of one sentence to another does not logically connect them. When you comment on a talk page, you should sign your comments by ending your comment with four tildes: ~~~~. See WP:Signatures. Biogeographist (talk) 15:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

over analyzing mr bio. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 16:24, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Not "overanalyzing", Paulsheer, simply refuting your false statements. Don't claim that something is "obvious" when it is not—when, in fact, exactly the opposite is true. Biogeographist (talk) 12:09, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

• Thanks for these suggestions! Pinging Amitc008 - here are some good suggestions for images you could add. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:18, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
• MOS:LEADIMAGE is relevant. As that says and as others have noted, there might be no appropriate image for an abstract topic like this. Diagreements about lead images are common as dirt and the student should not be disappointed that the suggestions so far have been rejected. Jytdog (talk) 14:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Need for expert/scholarly attention

This article’s lede and History section poorly represent scholarly views of this subject, overstating the intellectual contribution of the journalist and popularizer Goleman, ignoring the origin in the Social Intelligence concept of Thorndike (1920s), shortshrifting the antecedent and seminal Salovey and Mayer, misrepresenting the contribution of Gardner and the Harvard School (in the lede, first published in 1983 and not 2004), etc. Please have someone with academic understanding review this content, so that it might be accurate to the social science, rather thsn to the web’s bias toward the popular and self-promoted. A poor web source presenting these accurate underpinnings is here [1]; better sources are available to anyone with university social science library access. Leprof 7272 (talk) 14:36, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

You seem to be implying that the people that edit this article are a group, and that you are not part of it. Both those sentiments are wrong. Note that ultimately EI is not an academic subject since EI does not actually exist; much in the same way that N_rays don't exist. Those who understand that EI is a scientific fraud tolerate the bulk of the article as long as it is generally clear that EI is merely a popular fashion that has been scientifically debunked. I think the article does make this clear, mostly. If I were to rewrite this article I would put in only a very long history section and a debunking section, and leave out all the rest.