Recently in Emotions Category

BU Alumni Web - Bostonia - Winter 2007-2008

My alma mater's take on why the Muslim world is in the eye of virtually every storm. It strikes me that it is emotionally based. The article starts:

"Husain Haqqani recalls a Newsweek cover from October 2001: a Pakistani child brandishing a gun and the headline "Why They Hate Us." The photo is emblematic of a question that has haunted Haqqani, director of BU's Center for International Relations and a College of Arts and Sciences associate professor of international relations. "I have always wondered why the Muslim world is in the eye of virtually every storm, in my lifetime at least," he says. "The Middle East is a cauldron. The India-Pakistan conflict has a Muslim dimension. In Russia, there's Chechnya, another Muslim dimension." Why is the Muslim world plagued by instability, undemocratic governments, and sectarian violence?

Haqqani has set out to find answers."

Direct from the TED Conference, blogger Bruno Giussanitells us about Jonathan Harris, a 28 year-old Internet artist and designer who has created software that tries to capture "emotional footprints" happening as we speak.

What you see is the ultimate feeling words list that is happening now.

I know I'm failing miserably attempting to describe what that actually means, so go take a peek here right now (then click on Open We Feel Fine)

And that's nothing compared to his other site, Lovelines. This one displays feelings of love (or hate) as they happen now. Wow.

Click here to read Ethan Zuckerman's post on Harris' presentation. He doesn't fail miserably.

From the Ted Conference:

John Maeda is a graphic designer and visual artist, and computer scientist at MIT's MediaLab, and author of the book "The Laws of Simplicity". Maeda says "Simplicity is about living a life with more enjoyment and less pain". Here are the ten laws of simplicity:

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity
4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
7. Emotions: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The one: simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful

Click here for Maeda's blog and then click on Laws for his own words on each one.

Apparently it can. In fact, a diet rich in omega-3's.

Read about a study that showed a diet of salmon and spinach fed to prisoners led to a decrease in violence. (From the NYT Magazine, April 16th issue.)

I rush to imagine a future where a judge, fed up with a repeat offender, imposes anger management courses and a diet rich in omega-3's.

Kay Redfield Jamison, a Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry, is a manic depressive with first-hand experience on the highs and lows.

In this interview with Elle Magazine she talks about the positive mental qualities of exuberance, happiness and joy and her book, An Unquiet Mind.

Here's a 33-page ebook called "Understanding the Power of Feelings." You get your own copy for free when you register on their site as a user (registration is free, and they don't sell your email).

I love the way they tell you a story about how the brain works and how the heart gets involved too. It's got some great visuals, "fun facts" and even exercises if you are so inclined.

IHM is mostly dedicated to schools, educators and kids K-12. But there's still a lot of applicable stuff for addults. I especially like their blog.

It can be said that EQ is about becoming more emotion-sensitive.

Well, here's a firm that is ahead of the game and has brought emotional intelligence into artificial intelligence. NICE Systems of Isreal and NJ sells systems for call monitoring.

They're on to something. Their software tracks anger cues (like tone, pitch and number of interruptions) from incoming callers and receiving agents alike. Calls that match the algorithm are brought to a manager's attention, rather than fall through the cracks.

Next? Just imagine:

Emotion-sensitive software may be just a first step to broader monitoring. NICE's Veinstein says the same algorithms can be used to detect fraud. "You're calling your insurance company about a claim—say, that your car's been stolen, but it really hasn't been," he says. "A software agent could identify, in real time, an emotion that correlates with fraud."

Yikes. And after that? I can just imagine a future where individuals carry their own emotion sensitive monitoring devices. Just like disk drive space went from refrigerator-size units to thumb drives, perhaps emotion detection devices will ultimately be carried -- or implanted -- by you and me.

So, when you ask your kids where they've been, your husband why the business meeting lasted so long, or an applicant his education background, you'll be in the know.

Before you know it there'll be courses and chemicals that you can take that will inhibit emotions, so that we all will become a species superior at hiding emotions, fooling and yet confusing everyone. We'll all be like zombies or actors in a freak show.

Sounds like a bad science fiction plot; forgive my digression. Although I may not be far off: Fortune reports that NICE is used by the LAPD.

Read more about NICE systems.

A few students from my last EQ class gave me these wonderful rocks as gifts. Thanks Alicia, Connie, Ron, Jenn and Kevin!

Why rocks?

This quick read scares me.

And while we are at it, here are Dr. Phil's strategies for managing anger and frustration he calls Anger Manageemt 101 from his October 2004 magazine "The Next Level." The mag is free; sign up on Drphil.com.

Helen Fisher, Ph.D., is one of this country's most prominent anthropologists. She has conducted extensive research on the evolution, expression, and chemistry of love. Her two most recent books, The First Sex and Anatomy of Love, were New York Times Notable Books. Here, in an interview from Elle Magazine, she explains what goes on in the brain when you are in love, and the differences between men and women.

And while she's measuring love in the brain, Fast Company writes how marketers have figured out a way to measure how consumers really feel about brands. And they note that rsearch suggests that brands that engage people emotinoally (as in "To Google is to love") can command prices as much as 20% to 200% higher than competitors', and sell in far higher volumes.

Dopamine frenzy.

In an article I read recently about Kabbalah, it mentioned that the study and practice of reading faces is a part of this ancient religion. What a fascinating fact. What made it more fascinating to me was that I had just recently posted an entry on this blog entitled Reading Faces. (I sense the beginning of a triangulation here.)

I had to find out more. My internet research discovered that the science of reading faces is called physiognomy, and that it's actually a psuedo-science because of some dangerous premises.

I wonder if Ekman would call himself a physiognomist? Here's someone who does call herself one, and she's read the faces of both the incumbent and candidate first ladies and gives her interpretation. Fun read!

What do you think? Psuedo-science? An EQ skill? (Accurately identifying an emotion in others is often a visual clue.)

By the way, do you see an old woman or a young woman in the picture above? Or something else?

Great book Emotions Revealed, by Paul Ekman, (download the preface for free at this link) explains there are seven core emotions and that a face has 43 muscles that can make more than 10,000 expressions.

Most expressions last about two seconds; some as short as a half second, but rarely are they shorter or longer. The core emotions are:

- sadness
- anger (most dangerous of all emotions because of its' potential for violence)
- happiness
- fear
- disgust
- contempt
- surprise (because surprise is so short-lived, doesn't linger, is often identified as fear by others, Ekman wonders if surprise isn't really fear, but he includes it in his list anyway)

You might ask why love or hate aren't on the list?

I just came back from seeing Terminator 3. (Thumbs up, by the way, but then again, I am a Terminator groupie.) In any case, there's a scene in the movie where (of course) the Terminator and John Connor (the human he's programmed to protect) are in a pickle. John Connor's destiny -- we know as die-hard devotees -- is to be the leader of a human resistance group that saves the human race from machines after an apocolypse kills 3 billion people (hooray, John!). Except at this tense moment he doubts that he can fulfill this fate, doubts he even has leadership abilities and that he's always felt overwhelmed, and afraid, and blah, blah, blah (would you like some cheese with that whine, Johnny?).

The terminator comes up to him and picks him up by the neck with his strong hands, and as John hovers over the terminator, he wells up in anger (and confusion too, but the poor acting makes us see mostly anger). He spits out something like: "fuck you, you asshole."

The terminator let's go. "Thaaht's more like eet" he says. "You mean you were messing with me?" John asks. "Anger is more productive than dispair. Basic psychology is in my subroutines."

Classic.

And he couldn't be more right. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is managing others emotions, and this is difficult. Now try managing emotions in a highly stressful situation. And even though the terminator is on a life or death mission, he stops to manage emotions, because it's the smart thing to do.

It's a learnable skill, managing yours and others emotions. It's so important it helps you survive in this dog-eat-dog world. Have you ever tried to manage your own emotions? These are a couple of things I've tried and the research urges you do. You might try tuning into your body -- do you feel heat, prickly feeling, hair stand on end, something in your gut? You might try asking your self some questions, after taking one or more deep breaths: What's going on here? Where am I feeling this in my body? What body signals am I seeing in the other? What can I predict will happen if we continue on this emotional path?

Emotions are signals, and in the terminator's case, so were John's words and demeanor. We can predict the result of an emotion. Despair leads to something......what? Giving up, wild and unpredictable behavior? Yes, quite possibly. What if that would not be conducive to the situation...be it saving the world, or just getting through a negotiation with a client, co-worker, boss, spouse or child.

Learning and discovery are emotion-based. The terminator knew this. He's programmed. How do we get programmed so that our response isn't to tell the other "shut up, and get a grip", or choose to leave the room, or throw our hands up in the air and saying you don't have a clue what fear is, look at what happened to me, I don't want ot hear your griping.

Emotional intelligence is a choice. Just becoming aware of that concept has helped me a great deal. What do you think?