Social Intelligence

The most fundamental discovery of this new science: We are wired to connect.

Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us impact the brain—and so the body—of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.

Even our most routine encounters act as regulators in the brain, priming emotions in us, some desirable, others not. The more strongly connected we are with someone emotionally, the greater the mutual force. The most potent exchanges occur with those people with whom we spend the greatest amount of time day in and day out, year after year—particularly those we care about the most.

During these neural linkups, our brains engage in an emotional tango, a dance of feelings. Our social interactions operate as modulators, something like interpersonal thermostats that continually reset key aspects of our brain function as they orchestrate our emotions.

The resulting feelings have far-reaching consequences, in turn rippling throughout our body, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate biological systems from our heart to immune cells. Perhaps most astonishing, science now tracks connections between the most stressful relationships and the very operation of specific genes that regulate the immune system.

To a surprising extent, then, our relationships mold not just our experience, but our biology. The brain-to-brain link allows our strongest relationships to shape us in ways as benign as whether we laugh at the same jokes or as profound as which genes are (or are not) activated in t-cells, the immune system’s foot soldiers in the constant battle against invading bacteria and viruses.

That represents a double-edged sword: nourishing relationships have a beneficial impact on our health, while toxic ones can act like slow poison in our bodies.

Virtually all the major scientific discoveries I draw on in this volume have emerged since Emotional Intelligence appeared in 1995, and they continue to surface at a quickening pace. I intend this book to be a companion volume to Emotional Intelligence, exploring the same terrain of human life from a different vantage point, one that allows a wider swath of understanding of our personal world.

When I wrote Emotional Intelligence, my focus was on a crucial set of human capacities within an individual, the ability to manage our own emotions and our inner potential for positive relationships. Here the picture enlarges beyond a one-person psychology—those capacities an individual has within—to a two-person psychology: what transpires as we connect.

Take, for example, empathy, the sensing of another person’s feelings that allows rapport. Empathy is an individual ability, one that resides inside the person. But rapport only arises between people, as a property that emerges from their interaction. Here the spotlight shifts to those ephemeral moments that emerge as we interact. These take on deep consequence as we realize how, through their sum total, we create one another.

— From the prologue to Social Intelligence

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: Social Intelligence

	“The consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening,” Daniel Goleman says in his book Social Intelligence. Photograph by : Peter Redman, National Post

Social circuitry: We can 'catch' other people's emotions the way we catch a cold, author says

Katie Rook, National Post

Published: Thursday, November 16, 2006

A parent's neglect, a stressful boss and day-to-day encounters with distracted strangers are shaping our brains and taxing our health in ways not previously known.

A new book explores what happens when two humans interact, giving a scientific underpinning to what most people know intuitively: Our interactions with others affect our health.

Daniel Goleman, a science writer who became a best-selling author when he wrote Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, has written a follow-up that attempts to explain what effect brain activities have on what he says is one of life's greatest mysteries – relationships.

In his new book, Social Intelligence, he looks at the activities taking place in the minds of people while they interact and finds our brain's neurons are in a constant dialogue with those of our friends, family, co-workers and even strangers.

The part of the brain that manages behaviour, which he defines as the social circuitry, attunes to that of others during an interaction. In other words, when two people are feeling rapport or a connection, it is because their physiologies are co-ordinating, their brains interlocking.

He says that while occasional stress, such as that between a boss and employee or within a marriage, can affect the social circuitry of the brain, sustained negativity over years will deplete health and exacerbate illness.

“We can 'catch' other people's emotions the way we catch a cold, and the consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening,” Mr. Goleman writes.

“Our reactions to others and theirs to us, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins and bad relationships like poisons.”

The social circuitry is “the only biological system we have that is designed to attune to … that identical system in someone else,” he says.

It is shaped not at birth, but throughout life by repeated interactions: “We can learn new ways of being if we have nurturing relationships later in life that are reparative in some way, that we didn't get in childhood…. The circuitry remains malleable.”

He defines a socially intelligent person as one who is naturally inclined towards empathy, co-operation and altruism – people who have an instinct for compassion.

“It means that we're doing something other than being nice, we're actually interacting with their physiology in a way that is helpful,” he said in a recent visit to Toronto to promote his book.

He worries that just as science is beginning to reveal the importance of human connections, technological progress is moving to further isolate people.

“There's a paradox and that is that we have easier contact with more people that is more shallow than ever,” says Mr. Goleman, who describes this as a “creeping disconnection” that allows people to navigate their daily lives wearing headphones, talking online and with phones stuck to their ears.

“There's the illusion of having more relationships, but it actually diminishes the time that we have available for our actual flesh-and-blood relationships,” he says.

“The social brain, which is designed for relationships, has no channel online.”

He says the social brain “starves” in e-mail, for example, where there is no face, no voice, nothing to read.

As for managing those other relationships that may negatively influence our social circuitry, Mr. Goleman has some suggestions.

“We do best at moderate-to-challenging levels of stress, while the mind frazzles under extreme pressure,” he says, so how someone in charge treats the people who work for them, for example, turns out to be a very potent ingredient in how well they work.

“That gives any leader … some extra responsibility to behave in a way that helps other people be in their best neural state where they can work at their best…. That's when people can be stars, when people perform in the way that makes them the most productive.”

Mr. Goleman expects the field of social intelligence to be advanced as its implications are better understood.

Some school programs, teaching social and emotional development, have emerged in the United States since Mr. Goleman's first book.

He recalls the story of a student being harassed for poor soccer skills. The boy wins over his bully by pointing out he may not be agile on the field, but he excels at drawing. The boy offers to share his expertise.

“That was learned in a class called Social Development. Kids who get these programs not only get more socially and emotionally adept, but have less substance abuse, less violence at school and they score 15% better on academic acuity tests,” he says. “There is a movement both in the business world and the education world.”

krook@nationalpost.com

SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

Social intelligence is broken down into two key categories:

SOCIAL AWARENESS

Refers to a spectrum involving instantly sensing another's inner state to understanding feelings and complicated social situations. Includes:

- PRIMAL EMPATHY Feeling with others; sensing nonverbal emotional signals

- ATTUNEMENT Listening with full receptivity; attuning to a person.

- EMPATHIC ACCURACY Understanding another person's thoughts, feelings and intentions.

- SOCIAL COGNITION Knowing how the social world works.

SOCIAL FACILITY

Builds on social awareness to allow smooth, effective interactions. Includes:

- SYNCHRONY: Interacting smoothly at the non-verbal level.

- SELF-PRESENTATION: Presenting ourselves effectively.

- INFLUENCE Shaping the outcome of social interactions.

- CONCERN Caring about others' needs and acting accordingly.

© National Post 2006

Re: Social Intelligence

It [the social circuitry] is shaped not at birth, but throughout life by repeated interactions: “We can learn new ways of being if we have nurturing relationships later in life that are reparative in some way, that we didn't get in childhood…. The circuitry remains malleable.”

I've come across conflicting opinions on this, but this passage gives me some hope. I sometimes fear that there is something “missing” in my brain because I lived the first 14 months of my life in an institution for unwanted infants. I've heard stories about “the primal wound” and how institutionalized or neglected babies will eventually just stop crying, giving up after losing hope that their needs would be attended to. This, some say, can affect social and love relationships for the rest of one's life. A person who did not absorb social and nonverbal interactive cues early on, through a nurturing relationship with a readily available caregiver, may end up socially or emotionally  “disabled.”

I was lucky enough to be adopted by a loving family, so I did get that good reparative stuff later. Still, I feel like I don't always pick up on subtle nonverbal cues in the way I see others can – and it's like I'm interacting with this blindness that's never been named.

Re: Social Intelligence

Thank you for posting this Arthur. It is very informative.

I feel that I am fortunate in many ways to have entered a nursing career. I feel that my social intelligence has improved significantly because I have had to relate to , take care of  and work with so many different individuals for the past 10 years. For me this is the core of my profession and it is a very rich and rewarding.  Interestingly, there is a risk of loosing empathy if one has difficulty coping and not whole in there own lives. I have seen this happen many times.

Monica

Re: Social Intelligence

I've started reading this book at last, and finding it fascinating and entertaining.  Here's a section I read recently:

~~~~~~~~~

THE HAPPY FACE ADVANTAGE

When I first met Paul Ekman, in the 1980s, he had just spent a year gazing into a mirror while learning to voluntarily control each one of the close to two hundred muscles of the face.  This entailed some heroic scientific research: he had to apply a mild electrical shock to locate some hard-to-detect facial muscles.  Once he had mastered his feat of self-control, he was able to map precisely how different sets of these muscles move to exhibit each of the major emotions and their variations.

Ekman has identified eighteen kinds of smiles, all various permutations of the fifteen facial muscles involved.  To name but a few: A miserable smile pastes over an unhappy expression, like a grin-and-bear-it comment on feeling dismal.  A cruel smile shows that the person relishes being angry and mean.  And then there's the supercilious smile that was Charlie Chaplin's hallmark, which draws on a muscle most people can't move deliberately - a smile, as Ekman puts it, that “smiles at smiling.”

Of course there are also genuine smiles of spontaneous pleasure or amusement.  These are the smiles that are most likely to evoke one in return.  That action signals the work of mirror neurons dedicated to detecting smiles and triggering our own.  As a Tibetan saying has it, “when you smile at life, half the smile is for your face, the other half for somebody else's.”

Smiles have an edge over all other emotional expressions: the human brain prefers happy faces, recognizing them more readily and quickly than those with negative expressions - an effect known as the “happy face advantage.”  Some neuroscientists suggest that the brain has a system for positive feelings that stays primed for activity, causing people to be in upbeat moods more often than negative, and to have a more positive outlook on life.

That implies that Nature tends to foster positive relationships.  Despite the all-too-prominent place of aggression in human affairs, we are not innately primed to dislike people from the start.

Even among complete strangers, a moment of playfulness, even outright silliness, forms an instant resonance.  In what may be yet another instance of psychology trying to prove the obvious, pairs of strangers were assigned to play a series of silly games together.  During the games one person had to talk through a straw while directing the other, wearing a blindfold, to toss a Nerf ball back and forth.  The strangers invariably fell into guffaws at their haplessness.

When strangers played the same silly games without the blindfold and straw, however, they never cracked a smile.  Yet the laughing pairs felt a strong, immediate sense of closeness, even after spending just a few minutes together.

Indeed, laughter may be the shortest distance between two brains, an unstoppable infectious spread that builds an instant social bond.  Take two teenage girls giggling together.  The more giddily playful the two teen best friends become, the more synchronous, animated, and happy they feel together - in other words, they resonate.  What to a parent may seem an ungodly racket will be, for the teenagers making it, one of their most bonding moments.  - pp.44-45, Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

~~~~~~~~~

Re: Social Intelligence

Well, we definitely evolved to be social animals, even before we were humans, up to at least 1.8 million years ago. Thanks for the post adastra, very interesting info.
What implications do you think this has for our new, urban, don't-know-your-neighbors, my space, ipod culture? Do you think that this may be the fundamental reason for the rapid rise of so much mental illness such as ADD and clinical depression?

Re: Social Intelligence

holden: What implications do you think this has for our new, urban, don't-know-your-neighbors, my space, ipod culture? Do you think that this may be the fundamental reason for the rapid rise of so much mental illness such as ADD and clinical depression?

Daniel Goleman claims that a lot of the technologies we're using these days actually starve the social brain - email is a great example; people using it think they are connected to other people, and in an abstract sense they are, but they are missing a lot of stuff that comes with voice and body language communication that deeply feeds us on other levels.  I find that all too plausible, and I'm looking forward to reading more about that aspect.  People need “face time,” we need to be in each other's presence, to do things together.

BTW, here's something he has to say about memes (not to be confused with vMemes) which I find quite compelling:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rap lyrics, like any poem, essay, or news story, can be seen as delivery systems for “memes,” ideas that spread from mind to mind, much as emotions do.  The notion of a meme was modeled on that of a gene: an entity that replicates itself by getting passed on from person to person. 

Memes with particular power, like “democracy” or “cleanliness,” lead us to act in a specific way; they are ideas with impact.  Some memes naturally oppose others, and when they do, those memes are at war, a battle of ideas…

Memes may one day be understood as mirror neurons at work.  Their unconscious scripting steers much of what we do, particularly when we are on “automatic.”  But the subtle power of memes to make us act often eludes detection.

Consider their surprising power to prime social interactions.  In an experiment one group of volunteers heard a list of cue words that referred to impoliteness, such as “rude” and “obnoxious,” while another group heard cue words like “considerate” and “polite.”  They then were put in a situation where they had to deliver a message to someone who was talking with another person.  Two out of three of those primed for rudeness butted in to interrupt, while eight of ten primed for politeness waited the full ten minutes for the conversation to end before speaking up.  -pp. 45-46, Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: Social Intelligence

Very interesting. It goes along with what the Buddha said about the unawakened mind; that it is comparable to a prison. I popped my head in one of my physical anthro. profs. offices today to talk about this. He teaches a class on this kind of thing and the evolutionary processes leading to it. He didn't go along with my idea that while we all normally operate via conditioned, both psychologically and evolutionarily, we can, through meditation and practice, get over this more base way of being. “The whole thing sounds like it's getting to close to the spiritual to me,” he said. I wasn't gonna push the issue, due to the fact that he has to like an upcomming grant proposal I'm working on.
Anyway, he told me that there was a recent article in Discovery about this.
I've been saying for years that depression is a very normal and healthy reaction to the cultural processes that are unfolding in the last 15 years. For everyone born after GenX, it is so much worse. The kids are so addicted and conditioned by technology that many spend their day in social bubbles of ipods and text messages. I wonder what is gonna happen when they grow up.

Re: Social Intelligence

holden: For everyone born after GenX, it is so much worse. The kids are so addicted and conditioned by technology that many spend their day in social bubbles of ipods and text messages. I wonder what is gonna happen when they grow up.

~~~~~~~

It's not all bad.  For example, the same technology is being used in ways that brings people more into contact than ever before.  Consider the age-old phenomenon of children moving with their families to a new neighborhood and going through the difficult “new kid” phenomenon.  These days often such children often forge connections with other children in the new school and neighborhood they are moving into - using the 'net - and slot right into a new social scene when they show up physically. Also people who are quite different from those around them may find a distributed social group through online communication.

The problems that are cropping up with the dehumanizing aspects of the new technology are also being identified and will be increasingly deal with.

A couple more brief quotes:

“Simply paying attention allows us to build an emotional connection.  Lacking attention, empathy hasn't a chance.” - Daniel Goleman, p.51, Social Intelligence

“…self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion.  When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large.  But when we focus on others, our world expands.  Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” -Daniel Goleman, p.54, Social Intelligence

Re: Social Intelligence

I'm not ready (yet) to add much in terms of content to this thread, but I want to thank you, Arthur, for highlighting this book and posting some excerpts from it.  I had some Christmas money a few months ago and sat in the bookstore trying to choose between Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence.  I chose the former, since it's the first; but eventually I'll pick up this other book too.  Both books seem like they're important contributions to current thinking about consciousness and intersubjectivity.

Re: Social Intelligence

I've just been garnering some quotes from EI for another project. I've yet to pick up SI. Goleman is really a marvelous zone#1 illuminator (who, of course, draws upon extant knowledge from zone#5) and so I suspect is it the same with his zone#4 thesis.

Umm, sorry, can't help the AQAL orienting!

The world owes him much. I would consider EI a “must read” for anyone.

Peace!

Re: Social Intelligence

timelody: I've just been garnering some quotes from EI for another project.

~~~~~

Grooviness.  :)  Would you consider adding at least some of them to the great zaadz quote repository?   I've been adding some to the Daniel Goleman section lately, not to mention the Robert Augustus Masters section.  This is yet another extremely cool feature of zaadz.  wheeeeeeeeee!

arthur

Re: Social Intelligence

Hey Arthur,

Actually my direction was a bit different -having to do with comparatively orienting Howard Gardner vs. Daniel Goleman on the AQAL map. Goleman dedicates a few pages to Gardner in EI, noting, among other things, the fact that the inspiration to even look into and/or use the term Emotional Intelligence was inspired largely by Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, which despite including interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences, remains a little (if not a lot) scant emotionally.

Anyway, the end result is that Gardner takes a primarily zone#2 perspective, Goleman, zone#1 -while both look to zone#5-brain, etc. for supporting evidence.  (SI, as I said, is zone#4 and how important, no? Gardner's Interpersonal Intelligence is still a look at how zone#2 cognitively relates to zone#4, not zone#4 itself.)

What's so beautiful is that any confusion between the two, or any potential devaluing of one over the other is so quickly solved using AQAL and we see how they are two different but wholly complimentary perspectives. From there, however, it also becomes clear how much more the two could be thoroughly integrated fo a lot of different reasons.

Okay, hopefully that's my mind module for today.

Peace, Tim

Re: Social Intelligence

timelody: Anyway, the end result is that Gardner takes a primarily zone#2 perspective, Goleman, zone#1 -while both look to zone#5-brain, etc. for supporting evidence.  (SI, as I said, is zone#4 and how important, no? Gardner's Interpersonal Intelligence is still a look at how zone#2 cognitively relates to zone#4, not zone#4 itself.)

Yo, Tim.  Here's the thing: I've read through most of Integral Spirituality once, but don't yet have all the zone definitions memorized; I'd say for most people that's still true for this new, specialized jargon.  Just so you know, that paragraph parses in my brain like so: “blah blah zone blah blah zone” - at least when I first get up in the morning.  :P

arthur

Re: Social Intelligence

Sorry. I actually had a dream the other night that I was the “ultimate thread killer.” Hope it's not true!  :-#

Re: Social Intelligence

timelody: Sorry. I actually had a dream the other night that I was the “ultimate thread killer.” Hope it's not true!  :-#

Hopefully it would take more than a little gratuitious jargon to kill a thread.  :p  I think you just get charmingly gung-ho about the integral stuff, and occasionally lapse into unnecessary bursts of jargon.  It can on occasion make what you're saying less accessible, is all.

BTW I added your quote to the zaadz Quotes Library; good stuff.

spirals,
arthur

Re: Social Intelligence

Hi Balder

You're welcome.  :)  I read some of EI a long time ago, but got distracted or something. :P  I fully intend to read it but SI drew me more lately as I find myself more involved in various social groupings; feeding my social brain and working more on that whole intersubjective aspect of life seems more on my plate.   However, the two books are quite complementary, as the following quote illustrates:

~~~~~~~~~

Virtually all the major scientific discoveries I draw on in this volume have emerged since Emotional Intelligence appeared in 1995, and they continue to surface at a quickening pace.  When I wrote Emotional Intelligence,  my focus was on a crucial set of human capacities within us as individuals, our ability to manage our own emotions and our inner potential for positive relationships.  Here the picture enlarges beyond a one-person psychology - those capacities an individual has within - to a two-person psychology: what transpires as we connect.

I intend this book to be a companion volume to Emotional Intelligence, exploring the same terrain of human life from a different vantage point, one that allows a wider swath of understanding of our personal world.  The spotlight shifts to those ephemeral moments that emerge as we interact.  These take on deep consequence as we realize how, through their sum total, we create one another.  -,p4. Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

~~~~~~~~~

Re: Social Intelligence

Incidentally, here's the particular quote I pulled out:

“While there is ample room in Gardner's descriptions of the personal intelligences for insight into the play of emotions and mastery in managing them, Gardner and those who work with him have not pursued in great detail the role of feeling in these intelligences, focusing more on cognitions about feeling. This focus, perhaps unintentional, leaves unexplored the rich sea of emotions that makes the inner life and relationships so complex, so compelling and so often puzzling. And it leaves yet to be plumbed both the sense in which there is intelligence in emotions and the sense in which intelligence can be brought to emotions.”  -Goleman, Emotional Intelligence

That last sentence really states the great value of his work:

the sense in which there is intelligence in emotions and the sense in which intelligence can be brought to emotions.”

I am interested, Arthur, or anyone else outside the US but still “Western”: EI was like a landmark in this culture -even read some of the reviews on Amazon and they tell the story. The idea of equating emotions with “smart” was massive and still continues to be. EI remains one of the most successful theoretical/academic books ever written. There was such a repression of the idea before … Was it so in other places?

Re: Social Intelligence

I posted an article which ties into this topic nicely: Give Us a Smile.  :)

arthur

Re: Social Intelligence

I picked up a copy of the book today.

Highly synergetic affair, actually. A friend, who is studying to be a cat therapist, bought a cat encyclopdia yesterday. While visiting another book store a little while later, she found a more extended version of the same book. Not needing the first one anymore, she liked to return it, but the store requires books to be returned within 24 hours. Since she's going to France for the weekend, she asked me to return to book today. Which I did.

You don't get your money back at that store, but you can get another book instead. So when I was looking around if they had something interesting, I found Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss, which I planned getting some day anyhow, in a Dutch translation. That book, however, was heavily discounted and a bit cheaper than the book I was returning. Resolution: I needed to find a second book. That's when I found Social Intelligence, also a translated version. Remembering this thread and Arthur recommending the book, my search was over. (They also had Emotional Intelligence, but I already have that book.)

So I get home, sit down in the garden, and start reading the intros of the books, only to realise that they actually provide answers to a big personal issue I'm wrestling with. And, to top it off, the friend who asked me to return her book is a key player in that issue.

A quote from Sacred Contracts:

“When I interpret somebody symbolically, I see his energy flow out of him and around him – in all his individual roles. But at the same time, I see him as the sum of his parts. And I see him as one single cell connected to a larger energy matrix. The person I interpret, becomes a human hologram. His global energy pattern is mirrored in each of his cells, just like our individual souls buzz within a world soul which contains all live here on Earth. Our words, thoughts, actions and images affect our individual health just as much as the health of everyone around us.”

While Goleman writes from a psychological/neurological perspective, Myss mainly uses an energetic/symbolic perspective (using archetypes), each covering different aspects of the AQAL framework. However, they seem to be drawing the same basic conclusions, at least in the observation that bad relationships can seriously damage your health.


Peter

Re: Social Intelligence

Coolness on the synergy of the two books, Peter, and I'm glad to hear I helped inspire you to buy this book!  :)

Here's another great quote from this book, one that I find to be a great antidote to the prevalence of depressing and discouraging news.

~~~~~

The preference for helping those similar to ourselves washes away when we are face-to-face with someone in agony or dire straits.  In a direct encounter with such a person the primal brain-to-brain link makes us experience their suffering as our own – and to immediately prepare to help.  And that direct confrontation with suffering was once the rule in human affairs.  In the vast period when encounters were always within feet or yards, rather than at the artificial removes of modern life.

Back to that quandary of why – if the human brain contains a system designed to attune us to someone else's distress and prepare us to act to help – we don't always help.  The possible answers are manifold, enumerated by countless experiments in social psychology.  But the simplest answer may be that modern life militates against it: we largely relate to those in need at a distance.  That separation means we experience “cognitive” empathy rather than the immediacy of direct emotional contagion.  Or worse, we have mere sympathy, where we feel sorry for the person but do not taste their distress in the least.  This more removed relationship weakens the innate impulse to help.

As Preston and de Waal note, “In today's era of e-mail, commuting, frequent moves, and bedroom communities, the scales are increasingly tipped against the automatic and accurate perception of others' emotional state, without which empathy is impossible.”  Modern-day social and virtual distances have created an anomaly in human living, though one we now take to be the norm.  This separation mutes empathy, absent which altruism falters.

The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it.  But try this thought experiment.  Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty.  Make that number the bottom of a fraction.  Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today. 

That ratio of potential to enacted meanness holds at close to zero any day of the year.  And if for the top value you put the number of benevolent acts performed in a given day, the ratio of kindness to cruelty will always be positive.  (The news, however, comes to us as though that ratio was reversed.)

Harvard's Jerome Kagan proposes this mental exercise to make a simple point about human nature: the sum total of goodness vastly outweighs that of meanness.  “Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,” Kagan notes, “they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need.”  This inbuilt ethical sense, he adds, “is a biological feature of our species.”

[clarification of terminology in the above quote is found in footnote 32 (chapter 4), p. 348]: Preston and de Waal, “Communication of Emotions,” propose an emotional gradient in relating to someone else's distress.  Emotional contagion elicits the same intense state in the observer as in the distressed person, softening the boundary between self and other.  In empathy the observer takes on a similar – though weaker – emotional state but maintains a clear self-other boundary.  In cognitive empathy the observer arrives at a shared state through thinking about the predicament of the one in distress at a distance.  And sympathy is a sense of the other's distress, with little or no sharing of that state.  The likelihood of helping increases with the strength of the emotional sharing.

Re: Social Intelligence

Are YOU Socially Intelligent?  (4:10) (good brief intro)

Daniel Goleman on Compassion (9:25)

author@Google: Daniel Goleman (55:52)

~~~

Re: Social Intelligence

Thanks Arthur for your post that included the link to the Daniel Goleman video on compassion. It inspired a blog post - The Simple Act of Noticing - if anyone is interested.

Many blessings…
Jayne