Emotional intelligence: the art of tuning into other hearts

Traditionally, Emotional intelligence has been related to cognitive abilities such as memory or problem solving in everyday life.. However, this has been more easily related to aspects such as empathy, motivation, mood… thus, there are numerous studies that have been carried out from the area of ​​psychology to better understand this intelligence that It also allows you to put yourself in the other’s shoes.

Studies on emotional intelligence

The studies carried out point in one direction: Emotional intelligence not only constitutes the human being but conditions it in a very important way and is related to your level of well-being. The first to directly investigate this intelligence and its repercussions were: John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey.

We find an earlier indirect precedent in the figure of Thorndikewho in 1920 used the term social intelligence to describe the ability to understand and motivate other people.

Same as him, David Wechsler in 1940 described the influence of non-intellectual factors on intelligent behavior. and he also argued that our intelligence models would not be complete until they could adequately describe these new capabilities. His studies indicated that many times a person’s intellectual performance is not the factor most closely associated with their success or failure.

During the eighties, Mayer and Salovey continued their research, realizing that traditional models were insufficient., since they did not consider the multiple skills and abilities of human intelligence. It was then that they first coined the term “emotional intelligence.”

Many years later, already in 1995, Daniel Goleman made this concept popular through his journalistic columns. After having disseminated it through the press, he published the very famous book “Emotional Intelligence”, in which he made a compendium of existing research and approaches, expanding the definition with new features and qualities that gave rise to new models.

Emotional intelligence: putting yourself in someone else’s shoes

But… What really is emotional intelligence? What is it for? Is this one of our most powerful capabilities? One of his definitions refers to the fact that It is the ability to understand emotions and balance themso that we can use them to guide our behavior and our thought processes, with the aim of obtaining better results.

However, I believe that emotional intelligence is something more. A much deeper capacity than allows us to connect with others in a special way and that allows you to put yourself in the other’s shoes. I believe that this type of intelligence takes precedence over the others since without it the others would not act with the same lightness.
It is said that feeling is another art. However, anyone can feel. Anyone can get burned and feel pain, anyone can be sensitive to any type of temperature change. But putting yourself in someone else’s shoes? That’s another story.

Well precisely, Thanks to emotional intelligence we are able to identify our emotions and those of others. Thanks to it we are able to put ourselves in the place of another and share their joy or sorrow, thanks to this innately human capacity we are able to tune into the most intimate part of another human being.

If this intelligence were exercised much more in the world, things would probably be different.

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