Emotional intelligence, or healthy emotional development, “is ‘the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth.’”
One requirement to having emotional intelligence is to have empathy, or the ability to empathize. Empathy, as defined in the text, is “the ability to enter into and understand the experiences and emotions of others.” This is the well-known idea of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Empathy is more complex than sympathy; sympathy is feeling sad or sorrow for someone but not truly feeling their pain or understanding what they are going through.
Emotional intelligence allows us to be caring, empathetic, and aware of ourselves and others around us. One’s inability to communicate or recognize these emotions negatively affects his/her behavior and decisions. “Until we can tap into our moral indignation and empathy for victims – including our own victimization – we’re unlikely to be motivated to use our reason to come up with plans for taking action towards stopping… mistreatment.”
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ReplyDeleteI thought that the section on emotional intelligence was very informative. Before reading the section, I believed that sympathy and empathy were the same thing so I thought it was interesting that empathy was more complex than sympathy. After reading this section, I felt that I related to what it was saying and believe I am an empathetic person. The text also says that “An empathetic person is more flexible and open to other’s perspectives and is motivated to use critical analysis, important skills in forming a satisfactory logical argument regarding a plan of action.” (43) I thought that quote was very interesting.