Your podcast discovery platform
Curious minds select the most fascinating podcasts from around the world. Discover hand-piqd audio recommendations on your favorite topics.
piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Time To Give Our Ideas Of Emotional Intelligence A Nice Shake-Up
The idea that emotions can be controlled (and manipulated) with logic and rationality is, as the author says, one of the most cherished beliefs of Western civilization. So much so that our legal systems make distinctions between crime passionnel and a premeditated crime, and our economic experts often distinguish between intellect and emotions while assessing investor behaviour.
And yet, the popular perception of emotional intelligence does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. What's more, Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) is fancy stuff; an “elusive construct” that became big because, well, it sounds pat and suits pop psychology tests very well. No matter how much we would like our brain to have neatly distinct processes for cognition and emotions, our brains don't. Hence, one cannot control the other. The reality is, our emotions, get this, do not “reflect the biology of what's happening inside us”.
Precisely why this insightful article argues that our conventional understanding of emotional intelligence needs a thorough shake-up. We are often told that by studying a face and body language, we can detect emotions in other people. A smile tells you something and a scowl something else; a weak handshake has a story as does a puffed-up chest. Right? Wrong. To assume that our bodily expressions are so linear and cartoonish is in itself a primary problem. A scowling person might be the happiest with a momentary bout of indigestion; that weak handshake might be the result of indifference and not low self-esteem as one might assume.
The point is neuroscience has taken large strides but our understanding of emotional intelligence has not kept pace. Since we now know that emotions are essentially "predictions" from our brains, how vocabulary affects our feelings and how, what the author calls "emotional granularity" can be employed to better understand ourselves and others, it is time we use this knowledge more judiciously than trying to guess EQs on online quizzes.
This is a very pertinent topic, thank you!