The Dark Side of Emotional IQ?

Daniel Goleman popularized the term emotional intelligence in his book "Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ". Apparently people are just now realizing that emotional intelligence is basically a prerequisite for effective manipulation and emotional deceit? Adam Grant writes for The Atlantic about "The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence":

In some jobs, being in touch with emotions is essential. In others, it seems to be a detriment. And like any skill, being able to read people can be used for good or evil.

Since the 1995 publication of Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, emotional intelligence has been touted by leaders, policymakers, and educators as the solution to a wide range of social problems. If we can teach our children to manage emotions, the argument goes, we’ll have less bullying and more cooperation. If we can cultivate emotional intelligence among leaders and doctors, we’ll have more caring workplaces and more compassionate healthcare. As a result, emotional intelligence is now taught widely in secondary schools, business schools, and medical schools.

Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.

[…]

Shining a light on this dark side of emotional intelligence is one mission of a research team led by University College London professor Martin Kilduff. According to these experts, emotional intelligence helps people disguise one set of emotions while expressing another for personal gain. Emotionally intelligent people “intentionally shape their emotions to fabricate favorable impressions of themselves,” Professor Kilduff’s team writes. “The strategic disguise of one’s own emotions and the manipulation of others’ emotions for strategic ends are behaviors evident not only on Shakespeare’s stage but also in the offices and corridors where power and influence are traded.”

Dark side? Saying emotional intelligence has a dark side because it makes you better at influencing people to act and choose in ways that they might not otherwise have chosen is sort of like saying intelligence has a dark side because frequently people who make smart choices also happen to foreclose opportunities for other people. Not everything in life is a zero sum game, but often when there are winners there are also losers, e.g. most stock trades. And isn't the ability to persuade and even manipulate people one of the carrots for learning emotional intelligence in the first place? The same way that the ability to earn more and engage in more of life is an incentive to cultivate ones' other intelligences? Are we trying to defang nature?

How sociopaths are made?

I've been reading Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and thinking about how and why I became a high functioning sociopath. Psychologists and scientists believe sociopthy is some combination of genes and environment, which makes sense, particularly in light of recent research suggesting that not only do genes matter, but that the body's varying expression of the genes appears in response to environmental or other factors. As Dr. Goleman says:

If a gene never expresses the proteins that could direct the body's functioning in a given way, then we may as well not possess that gene at all.

If there were some triggering event or environmental force that triggered my sociopathy, I think it was just as likely something that happened to me as a baby than something within my conscious memory. For instance, when I was an infant I had a particularly bad case of colic, a poorly understood condition affecting infants whose main symptom is "frequent, inconsolable crying." According to my parents, I cried incessantly, and according to my medical records I had to go to the doctor for a ruptured navel due to excessive crying. I'm sure my parents did as well as they could, but it no doubt must have been difficult to tolerate such a child, much less nurture it.

Dr. Goleman says that although the brain doesn't reach maturity until 20, the biggest growth spurt is in the first 24 months of life. He also cites a study regarding the importance of the very beginning of a mammal's existence in brain programming:

[A]t least for mice, a vital way that parenting can change the very chemistry of a youngster's genes. [A] singular window in development [is] the first twelve hours after a rodent's birth--during which a crucial methyl process occurs. How much a mother rat licks and grooms her pups during this window actually determines how brain chemicals that respond to stress will be made in that pup's brain for the rest of its life.

The more nurturing the mother, the more quick-witted, confident, and fearless the pup will become; the less nurturing she is, the slower to learn and more overwhelmed by threats the pup will be.

The human equivalents of licking and grooming seem to be empathy, attunement, and touch. If [this research] translates to humans . . . then how our parents treated us has left its genetic imprint over and above the set of DNA they passed down to us. And how we treat our children will, in turn, set levels of activity in their genes. (pp. 152-54)

The book is not all that helpful for sociopaths, and has a low opinion of us generally, so I wouldn't recommend taking the time to read it. But maybe I'll post some other sociopath-specific information I find.

Relationship with a sociopath: breaking up is hard to do

A(nother) reason that many sociopaths like to be around people, have friends, be in relationships, etc.:

Rejection resonates with a primal threat, one the brain seems designed to highlight. [I]n human prehistory being part of a band was essential for survival; exclusion could be a death sentence, as is still true today for infant mammals in the wild. The pain center [that triggers actual physical pain at real or impending social isolation] may have evolved this sensitivity to social exclusion as an alarm signal to warn of potntial banishment--and presumably to prompt us to repair the threatened relationship.

When our need for closeness goes unmet, emotional disorders can result. . . . Social rejection--or fearing it--is one of the most common causes of anxiety. Feelings of inclusion depend not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.

Also from Social Intelligence. This interesting because I can feel severe anxiety at the prospect of a break up, resulting in nausea, headaches, and other intense physical pain. A relative of mine (also sociopath) gets the same -- always in the toilet vomiting when his girlfriend threatens to leave him. I don't know whether all socios are that way, but I imagine that they at least find isolation or abandonment to be unpleasant.