Emotional Intelligence
Jun. 19th, 2020 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingWhat with one thing and another, I’ve recently been wondering if I’m prone to misreading people. I was worried that I might have low emotional intelligence, so I took two online tests.
One test hosted by Berkeley shows you a picture of a model’s face and gives you a choice of four related emotions indicated by their expression. I scored 15/20, which is average. This makes sense to me in a roundabout way.
One image shows a woman blushing and looking down with a coy grin. She’s using her index finger to point at her cheek, and the only way she could be broadcasting “kiss me, you handsome devil” more strongly is if she were wearing the words on a t-shirt.
The emotion I’d assign to her pose and expression would be “flirtatious,” but apparently the answer is “embarrassment,” as people who are embarrassed often touch their faces. All right then.
In another image, there’s a man making a classic “oh no they didn’t” face by smiling with his lips closed and pulling his head back while looking sharply to the side with his eyebrows raised. The emotion his expression conveys is a very specific combination of secondhand cringe and prurient interest, which I might describe more generally as “amusement.” The correct answer is “guilt,” because guilty people won’t meet your eyes. Haha okay, sure thing detective.
So I guess this test proves that I have enough emotional intelligence to read people’s expressions but not enough emotional intelligence to understand what the people writing the test consider to be the correct answer, which was probably decided by committee vote.
An average level of emotional intelligence, in other words.
A longer test hosted by the website for Psychology Today magazine presents you with scenarios to imagine and a range of possible responses to choose from. I got a score of 86/100 on this one, which is average. This also makes sense.
One question asks what you would do if you went to your mother’s house for dinner and she made a snide remark about your table manners in front of her friends. I know the test wants you to say that you’ll talk about your feelings with your mom after the other guests have gone home, but that’s silly. If your mother is still talking shit about how you don’t use a napkin when you’re a grown-ass adult, that’s a manifestation of a long-term dysfunction in the relationship that is well beyond your ability to repair. Your job in this situation is to smile, make an equally snide but still loving joke at her expense, and then let the matter slide. Are you going to hang around the house and wait until you’re alone to say something? Fuck no, go home after dinner like an adult and let your mom have her wine time with her friends.
Another question asks what you would do if a friend just broke up with their partner and called to ask for your advice. The answer to this question is obviously “they’re not calling to ask you for advice, that’s just a hook to get you to hear their story, and you both know that, so just listen to what they say and ask considerate questions until they start winding down, by which point you should know what they want to hear, and that’s what you’re going to tell them, except that’s also what their mom would tell them, and you know they have a difficult relationship with their mother, who never approved of their partner to begin with, so you basically have to repeat what they told you back to them in a way that doesn’t sound like their mom.” This is clearly the correct answer, and I would gladly have chosen it, but it wasn’t an option for some reason.
Another question asks what you would do if you caught your boss embezzling pocket change. I think the answer is supposed to be “be a good citizen,” but let’s be real. You didn’t catch your boss embezzling pocket change. You didn’t see anything at all, in fact, and that’s why you’re not going to say anything. One day, when you do not embezzle pocket change, your boss will similarly not see or say anything. We do not hold moral responsibility toward corporations, Karen.
(I suppose this begs the question of whether I’ve ever stolen from a low-wage job. The answer is yes. Of course I have! Mostly toilet paper and food that was going in the trash anyway. I’ve also witnessed people shoplifting and done nothing to stop them. Do you want to be the monster restocking the shelves at Walmart who feels compelled to say something to the woman who comes in after midnight and gently nudges a pack of diapers into the back of a baby carriage containing an actual tiny living human being? Of course you don’t, and neither did I.)
(I also still have a boxcutter that I stole from the warehouse stockroom of a big chain bookstore. I used it just last week when I was unpacking from my recent move. It’s a good boxcutter, and I regret nothing.)
Anyway, my score on this test proves that I’m emotionally intelligent enough to know what the right answers to these questions are supposed to be, but I’m too lazy to bother lying on an online quiz administered by a pop psychology magazine. So, in other words – average.
I imagine that almost everyone thinks this of themselves, but I really do believe that I’m totally average, or at least within a normal range of standard deviation.
I don’t think this is a bad thing. I would actually argue that one of the most enjoyable elements of being a writer is having an intuitive perception of the emotional baseline of any given character and then pushing it as far as it will go just to see what happens, at least according to the specific parameters of your understanding of human behavior. If every character you write starts off and ends up as perfect and unique, that’s not much fun for anyone involved.
One test hosted by Berkeley shows you a picture of a model’s face and gives you a choice of four related emotions indicated by their expression. I scored 15/20, which is average. This makes sense to me in a roundabout way.
One image shows a woman blushing and looking down with a coy grin. She’s using her index finger to point at her cheek, and the only way she could be broadcasting “kiss me, you handsome devil” more strongly is if she were wearing the words on a t-shirt.
The emotion I’d assign to her pose and expression would be “flirtatious,” but apparently the answer is “embarrassment,” as people who are embarrassed often touch their faces. All right then.
In another image, there’s a man making a classic “oh no they didn’t” face by smiling with his lips closed and pulling his head back while looking sharply to the side with his eyebrows raised. The emotion his expression conveys is a very specific combination of secondhand cringe and prurient interest, which I might describe more generally as “amusement.” The correct answer is “guilt,” because guilty people won’t meet your eyes. Haha okay, sure thing detective.
So I guess this test proves that I have enough emotional intelligence to read people’s expressions but not enough emotional intelligence to understand what the people writing the test consider to be the correct answer, which was probably decided by committee vote.
An average level of emotional intelligence, in other words.
A longer test hosted by the website for Psychology Today magazine presents you with scenarios to imagine and a range of possible responses to choose from. I got a score of 86/100 on this one, which is average. This also makes sense.
One question asks what you would do if you went to your mother’s house for dinner and she made a snide remark about your table manners in front of her friends. I know the test wants you to say that you’ll talk about your feelings with your mom after the other guests have gone home, but that’s silly. If your mother is still talking shit about how you don’t use a napkin when you’re a grown-ass adult, that’s a manifestation of a long-term dysfunction in the relationship that is well beyond your ability to repair. Your job in this situation is to smile, make an equally snide but still loving joke at her expense, and then let the matter slide. Are you going to hang around the house and wait until you’re alone to say something? Fuck no, go home after dinner like an adult and let your mom have her wine time with her friends.
Another question asks what you would do if a friend just broke up with their partner and called to ask for your advice. The answer to this question is obviously “they’re not calling to ask you for advice, that’s just a hook to get you to hear their story, and you both know that, so just listen to what they say and ask considerate questions until they start winding down, by which point you should know what they want to hear, and that’s what you’re going to tell them, except that’s also what their mom would tell them, and you know they have a difficult relationship with their mother, who never approved of their partner to begin with, so you basically have to repeat what they told you back to them in a way that doesn’t sound like their mom.” This is clearly the correct answer, and I would gladly have chosen it, but it wasn’t an option for some reason.
Another question asks what you would do if you caught your boss embezzling pocket change. I think the answer is supposed to be “be a good citizen,” but let’s be real. You didn’t catch your boss embezzling pocket change. You didn’t see anything at all, in fact, and that’s why you’re not going to say anything. One day, when you do not embezzle pocket change, your boss will similarly not see or say anything. We do not hold moral responsibility toward corporations, Karen.
(I suppose this begs the question of whether I’ve ever stolen from a low-wage job. The answer is yes. Of course I have! Mostly toilet paper and food that was going in the trash anyway. I’ve also witnessed people shoplifting and done nothing to stop them. Do you want to be the monster restocking the shelves at Walmart who feels compelled to say something to the woman who comes in after midnight and gently nudges a pack of diapers into the back of a baby carriage containing an actual tiny living human being? Of course you don’t, and neither did I.)
(I also still have a boxcutter that I stole from the warehouse stockroom of a big chain bookstore. I used it just last week when I was unpacking from my recent move. It’s a good boxcutter, and I regret nothing.)
Anyway, my score on this test proves that I’m emotionally intelligent enough to know what the right answers to these questions are supposed to be, but I’m too lazy to bother lying on an online quiz administered by a pop psychology magazine. So, in other words – average.
I imagine that almost everyone thinks this of themselves, but I really do believe that I’m totally average, or at least within a normal range of standard deviation.
I don’t think this is a bad thing. I would actually argue that one of the most enjoyable elements of being a writer is having an intuitive perception of the emotional baseline of any given character and then pushing it as far as it will go just to see what happens, at least according to the specific parameters of your understanding of human behavior. If every character you write starts off and ends up as perfect and unique, that’s not much fun for anyone involved.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-24 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-24 09:09 pm (UTC)(a) stepping away and eating a food
(b) stepping away and letting the other person eat a food
(c) stepping away and getting a good night's sleep
(d) stepping away and letting the other person get a good night's sleep
(e) mutually agreeing to disagree and letting the matter drop
(f) saying "fuck this" and quietly walking away
Like, no one wants to get an email written at four in the morning containing six paragraphs of feelings. It's strange, but every semester I have to sit down with one or more of my students to explain this. In addition, every time I explain the concept of "emotional labor" in class, these kids get this look on their faces like a light bulb has just been turned on. I wonder what sort of life advice their generation has been getting in secondary education...?
no subject
Date: 2020-06-24 09:20 pm (UTC)I don't know what life advice they're getting in secondary school, but I certainly never got any of that kind of useful information when I was there. I had to piece it together from discussions with friends and reading (because I was curious) in college and beyond. I might know this sort of stuff now, but it took years to figure out!
no subject
Date: 2020-06-28 09:06 pm (UTC)Same. The assholes at my high school didn't teach me how to cook, how to change my car oil, or even basic HTML. And I still resent them to this day.
I don't want to echo the "fiction=reality" and "WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" people I keep having to block on Tumblr, but it's probably fair to say that a moderate amount of cultural norms are communicated through media. And I wonder if the message that's gone out to kids growing up in the 2010s has anything to do with the culture of talk therapy in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the world was a different place. It's been kind of nice, in recent years, to see shows like Steven Universe and She-Ra tell stories about how there are some problems that can't be solved by talking about your feelings. And maybe that's a solid response to a lot of trouble created by the rise of social media, as well as the fact that recent developments in low-wage work are making a lot of people hungry-angry-lonely-tired more or less all the time.
Sorry, just thinking out loud...
...and vaguely wishing my professional training had included maybe a seminar or two in the fundamentals of social work.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-29 04:13 pm (UTC)But at the same time, it's part of that trend where we keep piling more and more tasks onto teachers (at all levels) because they're there, and that concerns me.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-29 05:02 pm (UTC)Even at "teaching schools" (a derogatory term for small liberal arts colleges), a professor's job is to produce original research while engaging in "service" (unpaid labor) to the university and their disciplinary field, such as serving on committees, writing peer reviews, organizing conferences and workshops, and so on. People whose job it is "just" to teach or otherwise interact with undergraduates (through advising or admin) are poorly paid contract workers who can and are hired and terminated from semester to semester.
If we do have human-related obligations, such as the "responsible reporter" obligation mandated by many U.S. states concerning sexual assault, we receive little to no training, as such obligations exist solely to transfer legal blame from the institution onto individuals. At state-funded universities where compliance training is mandatory, it usually takes the form of a ten-minute online quiz.
I know I sound like a disaffected radical when I say this, but this is just another one of those weird things (like academic publishing) that everyone inside academia takes for granted.
Speaking from personal experience, I was more than ten years into academia before I started to realize how absurd and counterproductive this attitude is. It's thoroughly baked into the culture of higher education and extremely difficult to challenge. Universities spend millions of dollars on marketing, but "students come first" is not and has never been how the actual economic model operates.
TLDR: Higher education sucks and I hate it.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-03 02:23 am (UTC)I understand that research = prestige, but it's a weird way that academia does parallel the non-academic world, insisting that the high producers do more and more (unpaid) in order to let the school
save moneyspend all its money on athletics (I'm not bitter--wait)* when they would have much better results all the way around if they paid people to do all that side work.* My alma mater is not as guilty of this as big state schools, but Jesus Christ.
"exists solely to transfer legal blame from the institution onto individuals" I hissed when I read this because it tracks exactly with retirement planning. Pensions used to be a thing (still are in some fields, that happens to be where I work) but the entire concept of retirement planning has been dumped onto individuals who have neither the resources nor the knowledge to advocate for themselves but lol here's your petty 401k now die in a ditch. I hate it. I fucking hate it! A pension is a much better thing for everyone in the long run because pensioners spend money in downturns, because They have income, instead of freezing everything because the Dow took a shit. It's literally social insurance and--aaaaaah I need to stop. (This one is my radical soapbox.)