Questions of validity have come up in several episodes. I bet an episode on the different methods psychologists use to test validity would be helpful. It might be a dry topic, but I liked your significance testing episode, so I bet you could pull it off!
Some time ago I was interested in the work of Mayer et al here. He tried to develop a test but had very limited incremental value. Goleman muddied the field here!
Also I would be interested in any work, because autism was referred to, on Simon Baron-Cohen’s distinction between emotional & cognitive empathy —the latter concerning mind reading; the ability to read intentions. The research on EQ though “positive”? didn’t necessarily assist the self-esteem & beliefs, of autistic people.
For what it's worth, I liked the short dive into a single narrow topic.
Not that you guys asked for recommendations, but if love to hear something like this on ADHD medication. When I was in high school taking a psychology class I remember learning that stimulants worked differently for people with ADHD. That is, it had the opposite or calming effect.
Then I remember learning later that that wasn't really true, that stimulants just kind of help everybody focus. But I keep hearing the old version stated as fact. So at this point I'm not sure what to think.
There's a whole episode in that, I think - and maybe, if we wanted to be VERY controversial and potentially upset people, we could discuss the seemingly recent upsurge in diagnoses of Adult ADHD...
Thank you, that was a belter chaps! And the paper you referenced should be read by every corporate trainer/HR or L&D professional as part of the … ahem … rigorous research they do before waxing lyrical about ‘EI’ on LinkedIn. It’s always puzzled me that said trainer types and HR folks happily talk about ‘emotional intelligence’; in particular, how some people in their businesses lack it, but that they always seem to have plenty of it. 🤔
Thanks so much! And yes, it's surprisingly easy for HR people to talk about a concept that's ill-defined and totally fuzzy. Oh wait... it's not actually that surprising at all!
Is emotional intelligence the ability to be nice to people, or is it the ability to read other people's emotions? Because I'm certain you can have one without the other.
I guess the proponents would say they correlate positively but aren't one and the same? That would be my reading of the way they're discussed in the literature.
I like the new format, but I think you could do a better job distinguishing between the lay and scientific meanings of EQ. Most people don’t care whether EQ is an incremental predictor of some life outcome across the population. They care whether improving it can help them. You’re mostly discussing correlations; they’re interested in causality.
Stuart said at the end that we’re miles off that knowing whether EQ can be improved (because we have to find an incremental predictor first?), but I disagree. Good psychotherapy improves people’s social skills all the time just like it influences other aspects of a client’s personality (their neuroticism, their conscientiousness, their self-efficacy beliefs, etc). It’s less a question of correlations in the population than whether working on it helps a particular person build a more meaningful life.
I think that's the problem, though! If they just discussed the mushy non-scientific definitions that would be one thing, but in trying to scientifically define and study EI, they've ended up tripping over all the usual problems with low-quality research.
As an autistic person, emotional intelligence as an idea seems to be yet another way modern society celebrates incompetence. Whenever I meet someone who claims to have high emotional intelligence, I know I’m about to be made intensely uncomfortable by one of the most dysfunctional human beings I’ve ever met. Like a lot of things, real emotional intelligence, if it exists, is probably pretty closely related to general stability and consciousness. And anyone who walks around bragging about their emotional stability is a giant red flag, in the workplace and elsewhere.
Enjoyed the short episode (though it ended really abruptly, thought I’d accidentally turned it off). Happy to hear a mix of deep dives and quicker overviews, whatever you think a subject lends itself better to. Re emotional intelligence, in the media I agree it’s often used as a way to say there’s more to life than being smart, which is fair enough but maybe you don’t need a spurious sciency label to make that point
Apologies for the ending thing - we had a little glitch somewhere but it's fixed now!
Totally agree with the "beyond smartness" point- there's a whole list of concepts that people have used for that purpose, from emotional intelligence to multiple intelligences to rationality to mindset to grit and on and on...!
Questions of validity have come up in several episodes. I bet an episode on the different methods psychologists use to test validity would be helpful. It might be a dry topic, but I liked your significance testing episode, so I bet you could pull it off!
Very good idea - might be an idea to talk through the classic Paul Meehl "construct validity" paper (though try, as you say, to make it non-boring!).
This was great! But then, I like all you two do, so the more the better.
Some time ago I was interested in the work of Mayer et al here. He tried to develop a test but had very limited incremental value. Goleman muddied the field here!
Also I would be interested in any work, because autism was referred to, on Simon Baron-Cohen’s distinction between emotional & cognitive empathy —the latter concerning mind reading; the ability to read intentions. The research on EQ though “positive”? didn’t necessarily assist the self-esteem & beliefs, of autistic people.
Interesting recent link for you on this: it seems that the classic "reading the mind in the eyes" task used by Baron-Cohen and many others is not actually a great measure... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735823001368
For what it's worth, I liked the short dive into a single narrow topic.
Not that you guys asked for recommendations, but if love to hear something like this on ADHD medication. When I was in high school taking a psychology class I remember learning that stimulants worked differently for people with ADHD. That is, it had the opposite or calming effect.
Then I remember learning later that that wasn't really true, that stimulants just kind of help everybody focus. But I keep hearing the old version stated as fact. So at this point I'm not sure what to think.
There's a whole episode in that, I think - and maybe, if we wanted to be VERY controversial and potentially upset people, we could discuss the seemingly recent upsurge in diagnoses of Adult ADHD...
Great podcast, enjoy the shorter format. Please do an episode on collider bias.
Also, there is more to life than being good at serving your boss.
Thank you, that was a belter chaps! And the paper you referenced should be read by every corporate trainer/HR or L&D professional as part of the … ahem … rigorous research they do before waxing lyrical about ‘EI’ on LinkedIn. It’s always puzzled me that said trainer types and HR folks happily talk about ‘emotional intelligence’; in particular, how some people in their businesses lack it, but that they always seem to have plenty of it. 🤔
Thanks so much! And yes, it's surprisingly easy for HR people to talk about a concept that's ill-defined and totally fuzzy. Oh wait... it's not actually that surprising at all!
Is emotional intelligence the ability to be nice to people, or is it the ability to read other people's emotions? Because I'm certain you can have one without the other.
I guess the proponents would say they correlate positively but aren't one and the same? That would be my reading of the way they're discussed in the literature.
I like the new format, but I think you could do a better job distinguishing between the lay and scientific meanings of EQ. Most people don’t care whether EQ is an incremental predictor of some life outcome across the population. They care whether improving it can help them. You’re mostly discussing correlations; they’re interested in causality.
Stuart said at the end that we’re miles off that knowing whether EQ can be improved (because we have to find an incremental predictor first?), but I disagree. Good psychotherapy improves people’s social skills all the time just like it influences other aspects of a client’s personality (their neuroticism, their conscientiousness, their self-efficacy beliefs, etc). It’s less a question of correlations in the population than whether working on it helps a particular person build a more meaningful life.
I think that's the problem, though! If they just discussed the mushy non-scientific definitions that would be one thing, but in trying to scientifically define and study EI, they've ended up tripping over all the usual problems with low-quality research.
As an autistic person, emotional intelligence as an idea seems to be yet another way modern society celebrates incompetence. Whenever I meet someone who claims to have high emotional intelligence, I know I’m about to be made intensely uncomfortable by one of the most dysfunctional human beings I’ve ever met. Like a lot of things, real emotional intelligence, if it exists, is probably pretty closely related to general stability and consciousness. And anyone who walks around bragging about their emotional stability is a giant red flag, in the workplace and elsewhere.
You should paywall show with a click-baiting headline about this nice woman who has some sort of amazing Buddha mutation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6676009/
https://faroutinitiative.com
Enjoyed the short episode (though it ended really abruptly, thought I’d accidentally turned it off). Happy to hear a mix of deep dives and quicker overviews, whatever you think a subject lends itself better to. Re emotional intelligence, in the media I agree it’s often used as a way to say there’s more to life than being smart, which is fair enough but maybe you don’t need a spurious sciency label to make that point
Apologies for the ending thing - we had a little glitch somewhere but it's fixed now!
Totally agree with the "beyond smartness" point- there's a whole list of concepts that people have used for that purpose, from emotional intelligence to multiple intelligences to rationality to mindset to grit and on and on...!