![]() ![]() What the amygdala does is scan every situation for trouble. The reason is the amygdala – a part of the brain that Goleman calls “the seat of all passion”. It can be an outburst of laughter or intense joy. They happen to us very often, not only with negative emotions involved. The Anatomy of an Emotional HijackingĮmotional hijackings are short periods of emotional explosions, like extreme rage, that happen before the neocortex, our thinking brain, gets a chance to analyze the situation. In “emotional emergencies”, it’s the limbic system that takes charge. However, the neocortex doesn’t govern our emotional life. Thanks to the neocortex, we can analyze our feelings and ideas – and we can have feelings about feelings. The reason is the neocortex, the center of thought, which is bigger in humans than in other species. People, however, have grown to have two minds – the emotional and the rational. As a result, Goleman explains, “We too often confront postmodern dilemmas with an emotional repertoire tailored to the urgencies of the Pleistocene”. Roughly speaking, the emotions we have now are the same emotions our very distant ancestors had. And even though the last 10,000 years were marked by a rapid rise of civilization, they didn’t impact our emotions that much. Our emotions have a very long history: we genetically inherited emotional neural circuits developed throughout the lives of 50,000 human generations. Emotions often overwhelm reason, and there is an evolutionary logic behind it. However, Goleman says the value of IQ is overrated in human life. The name “homo sapiens”, which is Latin for “wise man”, places an emphasis on our thinking abilities. ![]() So what is emotional intelligence and what’s its role in our lives? Let’s shortly go over each of the chapters of the book to learn about it. This book was written in 1995, and since then, the term “emotional intelligence” (as opposed to IQ, which stands for “intelligence quotient”) has become widely known and accepted, in academic circles in particular. In his book “Emotional Intelligence”, Daniel Goleman explains that emotions can be studied, and people can be taught how to understand and manage their own emotions. Sometimes, we act like blind kittens, and it doesn’t help us in life – with family and work, let alone with our health. However, it’s not always possible to explain why we feel in a certain way, and what we’re supposed to do about it. ![]() Yet, besides our rational side, there is one more part of us– illogical and even dark. We created science and art we learned to fly and reached the Moon we fought diseases. We, humans, are the smartest species on our planet. ![]()
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