Emotional Intelligence Chapter Summary

The newest topic in modern day psychology is that of emotional intelligence. In the book Emotional Intelligence, the author Daniel Goleman discusses the multiple factors that determine each person’s emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions in order to promote emotional and intellectual growth. The three main factors that contribute to one’s emotional intelligence are motivation and persistence, self control, and empathy. Goleman also talks about 5 domains that can fall under these main factors. These domains include knowing one’s emotions,

This is a system in which teachers and parents consistently praise children and rarely, if ever, criticize them. I believe that this was a great idea in the beginning since every child needs to have some degree of encouragement. Since then it has morphed into a narcissism movement due to over glorification of the newer generation. Children who are always praised have an inflated sense of self causing an increase in their thoughts of superiority and entitlement when comparing themselves to other people their age. This also causes a lack in motivation because of kids thinking that everything should be given to them with little to no work on their part. This lack of motivation leads me to the first factor in emotional

Exploitativeness and authority are the narcissism subscores that fall under empathy, and I scored a 2 for each of them. These are my highest scores and I think that it’s good to have them under empathy. Since I want to be a social worker I will need a lot of empathy. I will also need to seem like the authority in situations as well as exploit certain people, such as neglectful parents, in order to get my job done. This also requires me to be good at handling relationships which is why I gave myself a 4 for this domain. I think that I am pretty good at adapting how I represent my emotions in different situations. The most often example that pops up is how I act when I am mad at my brother versus how I act when I am mad at my mother. With my brother I can yell at him, storm off, and not worry about how he will react. My mother, on the other hand, would be furious if I reacted to her this way and most likely ground me for the rest of my life. This is why I just keep quiet and avoid her because I don’t want her to get mad at me for being angry with her. I’m the type of person who will do just about anything to avoid conflict, so I try to anticipate how people will react to what I am about to say or do. For the last domain, recognizing emotions in others, I gave myself a 5 because I believe that this is my strongest one. From a young age I was very introverted due to the