Last week Ms Chen and I went to a lecture at Beijing University, delivered by Professor Mayers, of Yale University. Dr Mayers has been involved in the development of the idea of EQ: emotional intelligence. Ms Chen received the tickets to this lecture from her political party. She was told that the tickets had cost 2000 RMB each. When she asked me to join her at this lecture, I agreed because I felt that it would be nice to get out of the school for a morning, and spend some time with Ms Chen.
Sam collected me, and then we picked up Ms Chen, and were away out of Shijingshan by 7:00 am. As Sam drove the clunky school van, we sat in the back and discussed our overriding concern: how to develop a culture of courtesy, warm heartedness, mutual support and shared respect at our school. Chen Xi felt that she could glean ideas from Dr Mayers’ talk, and pass these on to our management in training. The management could then transmit these ideas to the staff and teachers, who would in turn transmit them to our students, and to the parents of our students.
There were a lot of people at the talk, but I was the only non-Chinese. Under each chair we found water, a bag, a notebook, and a flyer for an EQ summer camp for 10 to 12 year old children, to be led by Dr Mayers. When Dr Mayers entered the theatre, everyone stood, and would not sit until Dr Mayers had asked them to be seated. Dr Mayers was accompanied by a translator, who followed him sentence by sentence. The first thing he did was ask the audience how many people were in attendance as parents. Almost every hand was raised. He then asked how many were in attendance as business leaders. Perhaps 5% of the audience raised their hands.
Dr Mayers proceeded to claim that the conception of emotional intelligence was new, as new as 1990, and that in the history of thought, it had only been implied once, in the work of Darwin. He then showed a series of sketches of birds, seals and apes mouth feeding, and then a slide of a human couple kissing. He stressed that these slides were photos of sketches by Darwin, and that Darwin had interpreted this evolution of mouth feeding toward kissing as evidence of the development of emotional intelligence. I noted down in the notebook from under my chair that this seemed to be a misreading of Darwin. I also noted that the idea of strong and weak abilities to read and control emotions had existed throughout human thought, as notions of sensitivity, empathy, and awareness of others.
Dr Mayers then described how the EQ level of an individual could be measured through standard tests. He showed photos of faces, and asked the audience to rank the level of given emotions in the faces, for example sadness, from one to five. He showed that there was a general consensus in how people interpreted emotions in others. He described EQ as a measuring tool; one that might be useful to police, or HR departments. Again and again he stressed that EQ was based upon scientific principles. The equation of EQ with IQ, suggests that an innate quality is being measured; like the charisma ability, in Dungeons and Dragons.
In fairness, he did not pretend to be talking about ways of improving emotional intelligence. He made this clear in his replies to questions at the end. To the first question, what should a boss who has a low EQ do about this problem, he replied that the boss should identify an employee with high EQ, and work closely with him. The next question was “what should a parent do if children fight over their toys.” To this, he turned aside, blushed, and then laughed. He regained his composure and said: “Well, I’m no child psychologist, but I guess you should explain to the children that they should think about how the other child feels.”
The talk was about measuring EQ, and not developing EQ. Were Dr Mayers to have suggested that the principles of his work could be used to develop emotional intelligence, the fact that his theory is founded entirely on science and statistics, means that developing EQ in others could most readily be used to develop skills in emotional manipulation. EQ is not a theory of ethics: it does not provide guidance for how to interact effectively with others.
Many Chinese people are desperately seeking to create an ethical and courteous society. They recognize that crowded roads, crowded shops, one child families, and an exam focused educational system have created a public culture of bad manners and selfishness. Many Chinese people want to encourage courtesy and empathy in their children, in order that their children may set an an example that will contribute to the development of a better society. Dr Mayers and his audience were at cross purposes and somebody must have been aware of this. It seems not a little cynical to exploit the noble aspirations of Chinese parents who wish to see their children develop empathy and courtesy.
There were flowers and butterflies on the flyers for the expensive EQ summer camp, congregating around a photo of Dr Mayers’ head. The letters E and Q jumped out of a bright and bouncy alphabet.
There are ways to help young people develop courtesy and empathy, and ways to encourage these qualities to become contagious: Dr Mayers’ EQ measuring tool has no relation to such a project.
