Chapter 1

Does Intelligence solve emotional problems?

By Ajay K Jain

The word emotional intelligence has been coined by two Yale University psychologists,
Peter Salovey and John Mayor in 1990. Later, Goleman (1995, 1998) has popularized this
concept with the publication of a book on emotional intelligence while Reuven BarOn (1997) has
developed the first psychometric test to measure emotional intelligence. Although the word EI
seems to be relatively new, however it has its existence in the literature on intelligence.
Researchers argued that the definition of intelligence, an ability to adapt with the one’s
environment (Wechsler, 1941), give space to the construct of emotional intelligence. Later on,
researchers have argued that there are multiple intelligence e.g., Practical, Social, moral,
spiritual etc. Since research papers are relatively difficult to understand for managers and
practitioners of management to make a good use of EI in their life, therefore I am aiming at
explaining the concept of emotional intelligence by adopting the following perspectives;

1. Introduction: Story and a real misunderstanding

2. Psychological Perspective
3. Evolutionary Perspective
4. Developmental and Sociological Perspective
5. Spiritual Perspectives
a. 14.1: From Hinduism
b. 14.2: From Jainism
c. 14.3: From Buddhism
d. 14.4: From Sikhism
6. Managerial Perspective and Laws of Decision Making
7. Dark Sides of Emotional Intelligence
8. Indian Studies on EI
9. Measurement of EI

The word emotional intelligence seems to be an oxymoron because if someone is

intelligent then s/he is not emotional and if s/he is emotional then not intelligent. Else, do
emotions have intelligence or intelligence has emotions (hot cognitions)? It is a long standing
belief held by behavioral scientist, researchers and practitioners of management that “intelligent
people should not be emotional and emotional people are lacking intelligence”. Nevertheless,

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Intelligence has evolved as the scientific construct (Binet, 1905) then research study on
emotions. Mostly researchers have ignored working on the concept of emotions at the work
place, except job satisfaction and work stress. Meanwhile several intelligence quotient (IQ) tests
were developed by psychologists to measure one’s IQ and it has become a major determinant of
one’s success in school education or at work place. However, not much tests were developed to
measure the role of emotions at the work.

What psychologists believe is that history of psychology is the history of cognitive

intelligence. Psychologists, teachers, and parents all got obsessed with the concept of IQ and
which they want to develop among their students and children. In schools, it has become the
criteria of admission in the schools/colleges/universities and for the selection at work place. Most
of the entrance tests (GRE, GMAT, JEE, CAT) are heavily inclined to measure one’s IQ or
memory. IQ has been defined as a ratio of mental age and chronological age multiplied by
100. If someone scores 110 unit of IQ then it means s/he is better than individuals who posses 90
units of IQ. Moreover, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Accounting etc have become the
parameters of someone’s IQ over those who study arts, games, painting, music, sculpture etc. All
parents want their children to focus on Math then on other subjects related to Arts, Sculpture,
Music, Paintings, Sports, etc. As most parents want their children to become either an engineer
or a Doctor. IQ has become a differentiating factor between successful and non successful
students or employees based on the normative structure of the society. Society defines a
successful person as who possesses high IQ and gets into top institutions or organizations. IQ
and social success were made to be related to each other.

However IQ does explain much variance in health, happiness, psychological well being,
satisfaction, commitment, loyalty, altruism and helping behavior, cooperative behavior,
kindness, ethics and transformational leadership behavior etc. Hence IQ model of human
development has got a few limitations whether high IQ person would be happier or high IQ
person are more motivated or high IQ persons have a better interpersonal relationship with
family, friends and colleagues or do they manage conflicts better. High IQ model does not
answer these questions satisfactorily.

Furthermore, Simon (1956) has proposed and popularized the concept of “bounded
rationality” to explain the decision making phenomena and suggested that human being look for

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a satisfying solution rather an optimal solution of any problem due to the limitations of their
intelligence, information and time. A satisfying solution is fundamentally based on heuristics
rather rational approaches. So one cannot be fully aware of all the facts and details required to
make a certain decision rather one look for an optimum solution based on limited facts and data.
Also, human mind has a limited capacity to processes the information available to it so it
depends on several heuristics model of decision making. The concept of “heuristics and decision
making” is popularized by Daniel Kahneman (2002) while working on models of human
irrationality. He claimed that “cognitive biases” (unconscious error of our reasoning) distort our
judgment of the world in which we live and operate. They have also used the word, “affect
heuristic” to explain why leaders frame their message to activate emotions than those framed in a
purely factual way. Therefore, psychologists started looking at the role of emotions with regard
to human decision making process. Once someone gets emotional, s/he loose rationality.
Practically it is impossible to distinguish between cognitive and affective bases of decision
making in a problem situation. Consequently, psychologists have shifted their attention to non-
IQ factors of success in life and to other attitudinal and dispositional variables which gets
regulated by affective processes.

An anecdote

Thus IQ does not remain an absolute concept rather becomes a relative concept. It means that
IQ becomes ratio between “how much IQ someone possesses” and “how much IQ someone
uses” for practical purposes under emotional and other situational constraints. To explain this
logic, I will narrate an incident that took place with me.

I, along with my family, shifted to Aarhus University Denmark on a post doctoral assignment
for a period of two years. The event took place with me on 3rd September 2013 that is my wife’s
birthday and I am always under some psychological pressure with a thought of how to celebrate
to please her. On that day, I bought a gift, flowers and a cake and reached to VRI football club in
Risskov by six pm, where my 6-year old son was going to play football. The idea was to cut a
cake and go for dining somewhere in the main town by a local bus scheduled at 6.10 PM from
the VRI club. When I reached the playground, my wife did not like the cake and gift and started
arguing with me and uttering the same sentences, “you will never learn how to celebrate wife’s
birthday.” I become upset and started defending myself. Meanwhile we walked to the bus stand
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to catch the bus and started changing the clothes of my son to put some normal dress in place of
football uniform.

What went wrong during this period while we were arguing is that we were standing on the
wrong side to catch the bus rather than standing on the side where the bus will go toward the
town? Since we were arguing and did not realize our mistake that we are waiting on the wrong
side. We saw that bus is leaving and next one is scheduled after an hour. You can imagine my
plight what would have happened afterwards. Still I have not forgotten while writing this chapter
in 2020.

This story clearly indicates that I might be high in IQ but it did help me take a rational
decision of choosing the right side to wait for the bus. Thus having IQ is not enough rather how
much we use under difficult conditions is a relative IQ available with us for all practical
purposes. IQ is not a fixed concept, “one time high on IQ, all time high on IQ”, rather it varies
due to the impact of emotional and situational reasons.

A real misunderstanding

Since most parents want their children to possess high IQ and for all practical reasons the
examination scores, especially in math and science, as they are considered to be an indicator of
their high IQ. In India, many students score 100 percent during their 10th and 12th standard.
According to data shared by CBSE (2018), 1,99,884 students scored 90 and above marks in the
Mathematics paper. “The number of students with 100 marks in Mathematics is 3,131. The
highest number of perfect scorers is for Social Science, in which 6,469 students secured 100
marks. Of total number of students from 12th Grades in 2018, 1,818 candidates scored a perfect
100 in economics, while in psychology and political science the same feat was achieved by 659
and 660 candidates, respectively. A total of 726 candidates scored 100 in mathematics.

However, according to the data compiled by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), “Every
hour one student commits suicide in India, with about 28 such suicides reported every day and
the NCRB data shows that 10,159 students died by suicide in 2018, an increase from 9,905 in
2017, and 9,478 in 2016. According to Lancet report (2012), suicide rates in India are highest in
the 15-29 age group — the youth population.

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The question is if the students have received very high marks in 10th and 12th standard and that is
an indicator of his/her superior mental capacities, so why do such students commit suicide? So
what goes wrong with those students who committed suicide or suffer with psychological
disorders, despite very high marks, but they might be failed in some entrance test even after
scoring good marks. So can we argue that they were unable to control their negative affective
state and are not ready to accept the situation of a failure because they were consistently getting
good marks since their childhood days? So they were not prepared to meet with such a sudden
failure as they have never seen high protective and supportive environment in their family and
schools. It is also possible that cognitive skills are easier to teach than emotional skills or
development of emotional skills is compromised over cognitive skills.

According to an estimate, a pool of 13376 seats were available across all IITs for the population
of 9, 41,000 applicants. So it means 1.4% students have chance to get into a top ranked
engineering institutes. How to cope and what to do under the situation of failure due to high
parental expectations or peer pressure or social status.

Now I switch to understanding the relevance of emotional intelligence perspectives to solve our
real life problems. How different perspectives can be used to understand the concept of
emotional intelligence?