The Nature of Emotional Intelligence
Debates still continue about why David Pologruto, a high school physics teacher, stabbed one of his best students with a kitchen knife. The well-known facts are as follows: Jason G., a self-assured straight-A student at a high school in Coral Springs, Florida, was obsessed with the idea of getting into medical school—not just any university, but Harvard. However, Pologruto, his physics teacher, gave Jason a score of 80 during a classroom quiz. Deciding that this grade—a B—put his dream at risk, Jason brought a butcher’s knife to school the next day. After arguing with Pologruto in the physics lab, he stabbed the teacher under the collarbone before being pulled away.
The judge found Jason not guilty, ruling that he was legally insane at the time of the incident. Four psychologists and psychiatrists on the panel stated that Jason had a psychotic episode during the conflict, and Jason himself claimed he intended to commit suicide over the test grade and went to Pologruto to tell him about it. Pologruto gave his perspective: “In my opinion, he tried to kill me with the knife simply because he lost it after finding out he got a bad grade.”
After transferring to a private school, Jason graduated two years later as valedictorian. His excellent performance in regular courses would have earned him a perfect 4.0 GPA, but Jason took enough advanced courses to raise his average to 4.614, far above an A+. Even after Jason graduated with top honors, his former physics teacher, David Pologruto, complained that Jason never apologized or took responsibility for the attack.
Academic Intelligence vs. Emotional Life
The question remains: how could such an obviously intelligent person commit such a reckless, utterly senseless act? The answer is that academic intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with emotional life. Even the most capable among us can run aground on the rocks of uncontrolled passions and impulsive outbursts; people with high IQs can be shockingly poor navigators of their private lives.
One of psychology’s open secrets is the relative impossibility of accurately predicting who will succeed in life based on grades, IQ scores, or academic aptitude test results, despite their hypnotic effect on people. Of course, there is some correlation between IQ and life outcomes for large groups: many people with very low IQs remain in menial jobs, while those with high IQs tend to seek high-paying positions—but it’s by no means a rule.
There are many exceptions to the idea that IQ determines success—far more exceptions than matches to the rule. At best, IQ accounts for about 20 percent of the factors determining life success, while the remaining 80 percent comes from other forces. As one observer noted, “In the vast majority of cases, a person’s ultimate place in society is determined by factors unrelated to IQ, ranging from social class to luck.”
Even Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, whose book The Bell Curve places primary importance on IQ, admit this when they write: “Perhaps a freshman who scores 500 on the math SAT shouldn’t dream of becoming a mathematician, but if instead he wants to run his own business, become a U.S. senator, or earn a million dollars, he shouldn’t give up his dreams… The connection between test scores and such achievements is overshadowed by the whole set of other characteristics he brings to life.”
The Role of Emotional Intelligence
I am interested in defining this set of “other characteristics”—that is, emotional intelligence: abilities such as motivating oneself and persisting in the face of setbacks, controlling impulses and delaying gratification, managing moods and keeping distress from interfering with thinking, empathizing, and hoping. Unlike IQ, which has nearly a century of history and has been measured in hundreds of thousands of people, emotional intelligence is a new concept. No one can yet say for sure how much it changes in different people over a lifetime. But existing data show that it can be as powerful a predictor as IQ, and sometimes even more so. And while some claim that neither experience nor education can significantly change IQ, I intend to show that even children can be taught to use their emotions to their advantage—if we make the effort.