Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we will also provide a glimpse
Speaker 1: into human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Mark Brackett on the podcast. Doctor
Speaker 1: Mark Brackett is founding director of the Yale Center for
Speaker 1: Emotional Intelligence and as Professor and the Child Study Center,
Speaker 1: Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. His research focuses
Speaker 1: on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence and learning,
Speaker 1: decision making, creativity, relationships, health and performance. Mark is the
Speaker 1: lead developer of rore in evidence based systemic approach to
Speaker 1: SEL that has been adopted by over two thousand preschool
Speaker 1: to high schools around the United States and in other countries.
Speaker 1: He has published one hundred and twenty five scholarly articles
Speaker 1: and received numerous awards, including the Joseph E. Zen's Award
Speaker 1: for his research and social emotional learning He is also
Speaker 1: on the board of directors for the Coaberative for Academic,
Speaker 1: Social and Emotional Learning KASSEL. For short. Mark consults regularly
Speaker 1: with corporations like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating emotional
Speaker 1: intelligence principles into employee training and product design, and as
Speaker 1: co founder of og life Lab, a digital emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: learning system for businesses. His research has been featured in
Speaker 1: popular media outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today,
Speaker 1: Good Morning America, and NPR. He's the author of Permission
Speaker 1: to Feel, Unlocking the Power of Emotions to help our kids, ourselves,
Speaker 1: and our society Thrive, which is published by Celadon Books,
Speaker 1: which is also a division of McMillan if you're curious
Speaker 1: about that, and it has been translated into fifteen language.
Speaker 1: Is doctor Brackett? So great to chat with you today?
Speaker 1: You too? Thank you? Scott. Well, we go way back,
Speaker 1: don't we we do? I was your tas that was
Speaker 1: the grand reveal. I thinkteen How many years ago? Is that? Oh?
Speaker 1: My god? Maybe fifteen years ago? It could have been. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I teaed for two of your classes, intern
Speaker 1: to Personality and intro to psych. I think it was interesting,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I remember just being in all of you,
Speaker 1: you know, like standing in the back of the classroom
Speaker 1: there as a ta be like, Oh, I hope I
Speaker 1: can be as funny as Mark someday you were. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, You've done pretty well. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're really funny and a good teacher. So congratulations on
Speaker 1: this book. We're all really proud of you. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to just open up by asking how are you
Speaker 1: feeling what? You know, The truth is, this is a
Speaker 1: weekend that I'm home, and I am feeling just great
Speaker 1: full to be in my own home. I have been
Speaker 1: traveling NonStop for three months, and I think I did
Speaker 1: my fifty fifth presentation on Friday out of you know,
Speaker 1: in the last three months. So I'm just like, it
Speaker 1: was nice to actually have set an alarm this morning
Speaker 1: for the first time in like three months. So I
Speaker 1: feel chill, which is atypical for me. That's great. Well,
Speaker 1: you can definitely chill on the Psychology podcast. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of vibe we go for here, none
Speaker 1: of this formal academic bs you know, very good so,
Speaker 1: and I also feel like that's very much in line
Speaker 1: with your book and the spirit of your book. Permission
Speaker 1: to feel. Yeah, So like, what's up with that title? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the title came from a variety of places.
Speaker 1: The first is my own life experiences. So I had
Speaker 1: a rough childhood that I never shared publicly, which was
Speaker 1: I was abuse as a child by a neighbor and
Speaker 1: you know, for many, many years he was actually a
Speaker 1: friend of the family, but you know, it was threatened
Speaker 1: that if I shared what was happening, you know, I
Speaker 1: would be harmed, My family would be harmed. And so
Speaker 1: you can imagine what it's like for a kid who
Speaker 1: is in that kind of circumstance. You know, you just
Speaker 1: you're trapped with your feelings. And so for many reasons,
Speaker 1: I argue that I just didn't have that permission to feel.
Speaker 1: I had a suppressed repress I didn't really know how
Speaker 1: I was feeling because I couldn't talk about it with anybody.
Speaker 1: And even as I got older, you know, I was
Speaker 1: bullied pretty badly in school. And I had two great parents,
Speaker 1: but neither one of them would get an A in
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence, so they just didn't know how to deal
Speaker 1: with their own feelings. And nevertheless, mine, you know, my
Speaker 1: mother had anxiety problems, so she'd have breakdowns all the time.
Speaker 1: My father was just a tough enough kind of guy.
Speaker 1: So for most of my life until I turned into
Speaker 1: like until about thirteen or fourteen, I just really didn't
Speaker 1: anywhere to go with my feelings. When you feel like
Speaker 1: you were trapped in your feelings, do you feel like,
Speaker 1: can you describe that experience a little bit more of
Speaker 1: what that felt like? Yeah, you basically are living in
Speaker 1: a fight or flight kind of response, you know, on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, because you first you don't understand what's
Speaker 1: going on for you, especially when you're being abused, Like
Speaker 1: why is this happening to me? Am? I? Is this
Speaker 1: my fault? Am I? You know, there's so many kind
Speaker 1: of ways that your brain, you know, goes into fooling itself, fulling,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make meaning out of the world,
Speaker 1: knowing that the experiences are you know, awful, but yet
Speaker 1: you can't say anything about it, and you're wondering why
Speaker 1: it keeps happening. And that was most of my childhood. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I just didn't have anywhere to go with the feelings.
Speaker 1: And I ate my feelings, you know. I screamed my feelings,
Speaker 1: I was aggressive with people, I cried alone you know,
Speaker 1: they have to go somewhere, as we all know. Yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty rough. Well I'm really sorry to hear
Speaker 1: about that prior childhood. And it's good to see how
Speaker 1: you've put all integrated, become whole as an adult, or
Speaker 1: work towards wholeness as an adult, and have used this
Speaker 1: research to help others. As you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are abused and young end up becoming abusers,
Speaker 1: far far from most, but you know, it is a
Speaker 1: thing that happens sometimes. And you know, so you have
Speaker 1: this quote from your book. You said, when we deny
Speaker 1: ourselves the permission to feel, a long list of unwanted outcomes,
Speaker 1: outcomes ensues. What are some of those outcomes? Mark? I
Speaker 1: think those are the outcomes that I mentioned just a
Speaker 1: minute ago. It's eating disorders. It's which I had, by
Speaker 1: the way, as an adult. It is self harm in
Speaker 1: many ways, from cutting to whatever it might be. It's
Speaker 1: not knowing how to communicate, you know, with people around you.
Speaker 1: It's failing in school. I was a C and D
Speaker 1: student in school because certainly my brain wasn't in learning mode.
Speaker 1: I was in survival mode. It's a host. It just
Speaker 1: it's basically, you know, when you think about the emotion system,
Speaker 1: how it drives our attentional capacity, it drives our decision making,
Speaker 1: it drives the quality of our relationships, it drives our
Speaker 1: mental health, it drives our creativity, which you're interested in
Speaker 1: in our performance. You know, when you're feeling lots of
Speaker 1: different feelings and don't have strategies to regulate them, life
Speaker 1: is tough. Life is tough, Yes, So it would make
Speaker 1: sense that you'd be motivated to scientifically learn these tools. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you cite a whole bunch of harrowing statistics in your book,
Speaker 1: could you mention a couple about, you know, relate to
Speaker 1: how depression, anxiety and things of that nature on the rise. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to set that in context because
Speaker 1: I think for me, what's been so interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: with the release of my book and with the feel
Speaker 1: that I'm in, is that, you know, in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: the president of v L, Peter salave Back when he
Speaker 1: was a professor, and John Mayer published a theory of
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence in nineteen ninety five. You've got this big
Speaker 1: book by Goldman on emotional intelligence, and you've got the
Speaker 1: founding of Castle the collaborative academic social mocial learning, which
Speaker 1: leads to work in schools. Then you've gotten like ninety
Speaker 1: nine Seligman's you know, launch of positive psychology and happiness
Speaker 1: research and mindfulness research. And then obviously for the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, you've gotten you know, so many consultations and
Speaker 1: interventions and experiments, et cetera. But yet when you look
Speaker 1: at the data over the last twenty years, it seems
Speaker 1: like the world's getting worse, you know, even in the
Speaker 1: life two years, in the last two years for sure,
Speaker 1: I mean in the last two years in terms of
Speaker 1: bullying and hate crimes. I mean, it's just it's a
Speaker 1: horror show. In terms of for example, the Anti Defamation
Speaker 1: League has at one hundred percent increase per year in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years in terms of reports for
Speaker 1: you know, anti semitism and hate crimes. But then we
Speaker 1: go into anxiety. You know, at Yale and other universities,
Speaker 1: it's almost sixty percent of the undergrades who are reporting
Speaker 1: overwhelming anxiety, around forty percent of reporting depression. In my
Speaker 1: own research, what I've shown is that seventy seven percent
Speaker 1: of the feelings that adolescents use to describe their emotional
Speaker 1: lives are negative emotions, tired and bored and stressed, and
Speaker 1: the educators who are teaching are kids are feeling frustrated, overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: and stress. So there's a It's strange to me, right,
Speaker 1: how we've had so much focus on social emotional learning
Speaker 1: in schools and mindfulness and positive psychology, but yet you know,
Speaker 1: things look worse. Yeah, I hear you. You mentioned Daniel
Speaker 1: Goldman and that I remember when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: that book really inspired me quite a bit. How has
Speaker 1: Solivate like the original model emotional intelligence differed because I
Speaker 1: think it's a common misconception. You know, there's not understanding
Speaker 1: that his model in the present of that book was
Speaker 1: a broader model than the original model. Could you maybe
Speaker 1: unpack that for people who want to learn the truth? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the major difference is that you know, emotional
Speaker 1: intelligence if you think about it as a mental capacity
Speaker 1: or an ability, right, it has to do with the
Speaker 1: way your brain uses emotions wisely or not. So it's
Speaker 1: our We define it as the ability to use emotions wisely,
Speaker 1: to reason with and about your emotions to achieve goals.
Speaker 1: And I think when it got popularized, what happened is
Speaker 1: that everything that became we call non cognitive or non
Speaker 1: academic or soft skills got clumped, you know, into the
Speaker 1: space of emotional intelligence, things like optimism or motivation or
Speaker 1: self esteem. Everything good, everything good, and you know, they're
Speaker 1: all important constructs. It's good to be optimistic most of
Speaker 1: the time. It's self esteem is a good thing to have.
Speaker 1: But it's not about, for example, the skills of emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: like accurately reading people and accurately reading your own emotions,
Speaker 1: or understanding why we're having these feeling states, or having
Speaker 1: the labels for them, or knowing how and when to
Speaker 1: express and regulate them. Those are what we call emotion skills,
Speaker 1: and we like to keep them defined narrowly so that
Speaker 1: we can measure them, you know, accurately, and use them
Speaker 1: to make predictions about people's lives. Emotion skills good, so
Speaker 1: skills connotes this notion that you're not necessarily born with
Speaker 1: the with emotional intelligence, you know, right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: that that's something that can be developed. I assume that's
Speaker 1: my argument. You know, God only knows I was not
Speaker 1: born with, you know, a toolbag of effective emotion regulation strategies,
Speaker 1: you know, I learned, and I didn't have to get
Speaker 1: my doctorate to learn the bad ones, you know. Somehow
Speaker 1: another it's like you learn through your development all these
Speaker 1: unhelpful ones by observing the people that care for you
Speaker 1: in many ways, you know, like suppression and repression and
Speaker 1: hiding and secrecy and negative self talk. And when I
Speaker 1: argue vehemently is that we place very little attention in
Speaker 1: our families and in our schools and even in the
Speaker 1: workplaces later on on helping people to become emotion scientists,
Speaker 1: you know, around their emotional lives and other people's emotional lives.
Speaker 1: So that's a self scientist to be exploring, like what
Speaker 1: am I really feeling? And also are the strategies that
Speaker 1: I'm using helpful or and helpful for my well being,
Speaker 1: for my relationships, for my goals in life? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: like this emotion science. Do you have a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on that? Right? And that was a fun chapter. Could
Speaker 1: you maybe just talk a little bit more about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if I pretend, let's say I'm a teacher
Speaker 1: and I want to be an emotion scientist in my classroom,
Speaker 1: what does that really look like? So what I do
Speaker 1: in the book is I compare the emotion scientists to
Speaker 1: the emotion judge, you know, and you know in the
Speaker 1: courtroom's fine, we need judges, but when it comes to feelings,
Speaker 1: no judgment. And so the emotion scientist, as I see
Speaker 1: that person is open to emotions, is curious about emotions,
Speaker 1: wants to get granular about feelings. That doesn't just accept
Speaker 1: fine or okay, or like shit right or stressed. There's
Speaker 1: deeper meaning, you know, like Alisa Film and Barrett model
Speaker 1: of emotion granularity right there, am I stressed? Or am
Speaker 1: I overwhelmed? Or am I anxious? Or am I feeling fearful?
Speaker 1: Am I down? Or am I disappointed? Or am I hopeless?
Speaker 1: Am I jealous? Am I envious? And that granularity is
Speaker 1: important because the emotion scientists, then, who can help people
Speaker 1: understand their feelings, can then support people in thinking about
Speaker 1: how to regulate them. And I think importantly what the
Speaker 1: emotion scientist does is they're always in learning mode as
Speaker 1: opposed to know, they're in supportive mode as opposed to
Speaker 1: attributor or teller mode. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that you know, we all have biases, you know,
Speaker 1: we all have, for example, strategies that work best for us.
Speaker 1: You know, I prefer hot yoga as a way of
Speaker 1: decreasing stress. Some people hate hot yoga. It's not my
Speaker 1: job to tell somebody to do hot yoga to reduce
Speaker 1: their stress. It's my job to help you and people
Speaker 1: that care about find strategies that work best for them.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the way I see the emotion scientists
Speaker 1: as they explore the investigator the supporter as opposed to
Speaker 1: the emotion judge, who is you know why you're so angry?
Speaker 1: They tell people how they're feeling. Right, the emotion judge says,
Speaker 1: this is the way you should regulate, and that's going
Speaker 1: to work. Period. My father was that way, so my
Speaker 1: fatherhood a lot of anger problems. He'd say, So I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is why, this is how I deal with my emotions.
Speaker 1: Get over it. Not a very not a growth mindset,
Speaker 1: you know, around emotional regulation, not at all. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that's not very very helpful of a response. And you know,
Speaker 1: your uncle was really someone who inspired you. I mean,
Speaker 1: didn't he literally say like you have the permission to
Speaker 1: feel like did he use that title of your book? No,
Speaker 1: he didn't use that, but I mean I got the
Speaker 1: title I can share that with you in a moment
Speaker 1: from a specific experience that I had teaching emotional intelligence. Okay,
Speaker 1: But what I argue in my book was that my
Speaker 1: uncle gave me the permission to feel I see, because
Speaker 1: he was my mother's brother and he was just an
Speaker 1: amazing human being. He was a band leader in the
Speaker 1: Catskill Mountain hotels by night and a middle school teacher
Speaker 1: by day. But Uncle Marvin was you know, way before
Speaker 1: there was a fear of emotional intelligence or the field
Speaker 1: of social emotional learning. He was developing a program literally
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty in nineteen seventies to teach kids about
Speaker 1: their feelings. He wanted to redefine the way we taught
Speaker 1: history through the lens of emotion. And it was amazing
Speaker 1: what he did. And he came at this idea because
Speaker 1: he said, you know, when I'm playing my trumpet in
Speaker 1: the evenings, you know everybody's feeling it. You know these gigs,
Speaker 1: everybody's dancing, their eyes are closed, and they're having a
Speaker 1: great time. And then I get up at seven in
Speaker 1: the morning and get up from my eight thirty social
Speaker 1: studies class, and all the kids are like and He's like,
Speaker 1: why is it you know, there's not feeling it in
Speaker 1: the classroom, and he thought that emotion was the missing link,
Speaker 1: that they just weren't being brought into the learning process
Speaker 1: through feeling. It was all through rote memorization. And so
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do was rewrite the curriculum to
Speaker 1: be based on the characters' emotions and then relate those
Speaker 1: experiences to the students to then get them involved in
Speaker 1: the learning process. And by some wave of a magic
Speaker 1: wand he was going for a master's degree, and I
Speaker 1: was going through all my trauma as a childhood and
Speaker 1: he would stay at my family's home and we'd have
Speaker 1: these just amazing conversations in the backyard, you know. And
Speaker 1: what I say in my book is that he was
Speaker 1: the first person to say, you know, Mark, you know,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? And he did it through the
Speaker 1: lens of the emotion scientist, not the emotion judge. He
Speaker 1: didn't say tough enough, or I'm gonna have a breakdown
Speaker 1: from what I'm hearing. He said, well, what can I
Speaker 1: do to support you? And you know, it changed my
Speaker 1: life forever. Yeah, I imagine I believe it. So thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing that. Maybe it's if you don't mind,
Speaker 1: we go into the specific ruler skills, sure, starting with
Speaker 1: recognizing emotion and also how do you like, how did
Speaker 1: ruler you know, like hit you like, did you come
Speaker 1: up with the ruler first and then fit everything into
Speaker 1: that framework or did you the other way around? I
Speaker 1: hope the other way around it. No. So, you know,
Speaker 1: as someone who was a student of the theory of
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence or a student of Peter Salava and Jack Meyer,
Speaker 1: who were the founders of the theory, you know, I
Speaker 1: read all the work and I you know, obviously spent
Speaker 1: my graduate school year studying these things. And you know,
Speaker 1: if they had a four part theory which was around perceiving,
Speaker 1: and using, understanding and regulating emotion, and I just realized,
Speaker 1: you know, through my work with that and through reading
Speaker 1: other theories, that maybe we could break it up a
Speaker 1: little bit more specifically. And so when you think about,
Speaker 1: you know, making sense out of your own and other emotions,
Speaker 1: oftentimes you don't. You can't label things immediately. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a tool like we have called the mood meter,
Speaker 1: you know, which is based on the Circumplex model of emotion,
Speaker 1: which you know says basically that you know, we can
Speaker 1: define our feelings through this pleasantness or valance or arousal
Speaker 1: or energy factors, and that you know, the first thing
Speaker 1: that happens is that we are in a room and
Speaker 1: we do I feel like approaching this or do I
Speaker 1: feel like avoiding this? Do I've got the do I
Speaker 1: feel like I can thrive here? Do I feel depleted?
Speaker 1: And that's when I talk about recognizing emotions. I mean
Speaker 1: it at that level of core. It's like this visceral
Speaker 1: sense in the moment. It's before you label, it is
Speaker 1: before you even know why you're having the feelings, and
Speaker 1: at that point in time, you can see, no, I
Speaker 1: feel energized and pleasant. What's going on? Oh, I'm on
Speaker 1: the podcast with Scott Kaufman. So I'm Scott Barry. I'm
Speaker 1: Scott Barry Kaufman. Now Scott Barry coffin, I'm sorry, You're
Speaker 1: right and right, there's another Scott Calvin, right, and so
Speaker 1: I'm feeling excited. So that process of recognizing, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of core affective state, to then attributing it
Speaker 1: to something that's happening or has happened in the past
Speaker 1: or will happen in the future, and then using that
Speaker 1: information to send okay, so I'm anticipating positive things. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm excited. Oh I'm anticipating I'm going to get hurt.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm fearful. Oh I'm anticipating. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: know what the heck's going on. Oh I'm anxious. And
Speaker 1: so that's the R. The U and the L a ruler.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning they're kind of separate constructs, but
Speaker 1: in the end, right they are, the U and the
Speaker 1: L kind of go together to help us identify our
Speaker 1: feeling states. The E and the R have to do
Speaker 1: with what we do with our feeling states. So what
Speaker 1: that means specifically is, firstly, you know, do I have
Speaker 1: the permission to express my true feelings with you? Do
Speaker 1: I feel safe? Do I feel supported? Do I feel
Speaker 1: value enough to do that work? And that's very contextual,
Speaker 1: meaning homes and schools and workplaces create different rules around expression.
Speaker 1: Expression is based on culture and race and power, gender,
Speaker 1: There's so many factors that influence whether or not we
Speaker 1: express our emotions authentically and honestly. And then I have
Speaker 1: to know how to do it. I have to learn
Speaker 1: how to communicate effectively to get my needs met. And
Speaker 1: then finally is the last R which is the regulation
Speaker 1: of emotion. So those are the strategies that we use
Speaker 1: to prevent unwanted emotions, to reduce difficult ones, to initiate
Speaker 1: ones that are going to be helpful, to maintain ones,
Speaker 1: or even to enhance or boost emotions. And so that's
Speaker 1: the rule of framework. Nice. I like it. I like it,
Speaker 1: like the mood meter. You have the mood meter in
Speaker 1: your book, and then when you open it up, I
Speaker 1: love that. Do you recommend that people like buy it?
Speaker 1: Do you sell like a mood meter poster that people
Speaker 1: can buy, you know, and like put in their white
Speaker 1: house fosters. You can photograph the book if you like.
Speaker 1: There's also a mood meter app Okay, it's downloadable that
Speaker 1: allows you to track your emotions over time and look
Speaker 1: at patterns, which is really cool. Well, that'd be a
Speaker 1: good sort of first date thing to pull out the
Speaker 1: mood meter app and a good starter icebreaker. I guess
Speaker 1: it depends how you're feeling, I guess so, or how
Speaker 1: you think the person you're dating is going to feel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really think that through. Yeah, that's that one.
Speaker 1: You need to ask you that one? Maybe a second date, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they know there's a there's an app for the
Speaker 1: ten questions or whatever is that to fall in love
Speaker 1: with each other. There's like escalating questions that the Errands
Speaker 1: came up with, and there's an app for that too,
Speaker 1: that might be more appropriate. Yeah, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: individual differences for a second. Is it harder for some people,
Speaker 1: you know, to develop this and others? I mean, surely
Speaker 1: some people start off already with a higher level. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is where it's you know this the
Speaker 1: construct clarity is important. So for example, I uh, in
Speaker 1: the personality literature would classify myself as someone who has
Speaker 1: high neuroticism. Even still, definitely, you know, I worry about
Speaker 1: everything I worry about why worry? Eve have I even
Speaker 1: worry about why I worry about why I worry? Even
Speaker 1: though I don't really have very much to worry about.
Speaker 1: I'm living a great life right now, but you are,
Speaker 1: you know, the default is you know something might go wrong.
Speaker 1: Thank you Grandpa for that that language. I had a
Speaker 1: grandfather who was like, you know, we'd smile like he
Speaker 1: goes your laugh now your cry late here, thanks grandpa.
Speaker 1: Optimistic Jewish heritage. But my point is that for years
Speaker 1: I I conflated my proclivity towards experiencing strong emotions with
Speaker 1: my skills at dealing with those experiences. And I think
Speaker 1: that what our research shows is that they're separable constructs. Right,
Speaker 1: just because you are someone like myself potentially who you know,
Speaker 1: is a little bit moody and you're easily startled and
Speaker 1: you know, ups and downs, that's your experience of emotion.
Speaker 1: It's not your skill, right, it's your temperament, your personality.
Speaker 1: And I think for a lot of people they think
Speaker 1: their temperament is their emotional intelligence. I see, and it's not.
Speaker 1: You know, as a matter of fact, potentially, someone with
Speaker 1: my level of emotional volatility might even be have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to be higher in emotional intelligence because I have
Speaker 1: to be so self aware and regulating more frequently because
Speaker 1: of those ups and downs to you know, make sure
Speaker 1: that I'm you know, leading properly, or you know, dealing
Speaker 1: with my partner properly, or you know, achieving goals. So
Speaker 1: does that does that make sense to separate these two things? Well,
Speaker 1: it absolutely does make sense. But I think that even
Speaker 1: I could still come back at you and say, well, well,
Speaker 1: even if you separate the personality Big five domain from
Speaker 1: the emotional intelligence skills. There still are some people that
Speaker 1: are more intuitively higher on the emotional intelligence skills. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're surely not all one hundred percent developed. There's there's
Speaker 1: a genetic component and no doubt to even those skills, right.
Speaker 1: I would say that the genetic component comes in primarily
Speaker 1: in the perception area, right, because we know that people
Speaker 1: on the autism spectrum have more difficulty, for example, decoding
Speaker 1: facial expressions engaging in that awareness piece. But when you
Speaker 1: get into labeling, I mean, we have to be taught
Speaker 1: the feeling words, right you Just no one is born
Speaker 1: with like the granularity around anger, Like am I peeved?
Speaker 1: Am I irritated? Am I angry? Am I enraged? Am
Speaker 1: I livid? You know? Am I happy? Am I elated?
Speaker 1: Am I ecstatic? Or am I just calm, tranquil, peaceful, relaxed. Uh?
Speaker 1: No one is born knowing the nuances around expressing emotion
Speaker 1: right that you have to. It's like it's a real
Speaker 1: interesting discernment that you have to build over time to know.
Speaker 1: Like you ever notice that like with certain people you
Speaker 1: feel like you can just open up, you know, and
Speaker 1: with other people you're just like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: share anything. I hope you feel like you can open
Speaker 1: up with with Scottbury Coffin, Scott Barray, SBK. You know
Speaker 1: what you're getting everything today and so like that's a
Speaker 1: learned skill over time by you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: trust factor, it's a relationship factor. And then the regulation piece.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, we're born with some kind of innate
Speaker 1: desire to soothe oneself, you know, whether it be right
Speaker 1: the sucking the pacifier or breastfeeding, you know, or breathing.
Speaker 1: But the cognitive strategies, right, they it's it's they have
Speaker 1: to be learned and they're and they're really hard to
Speaker 1: learn because you know, we have a negativity bias, you know,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes our negative self views are defined by the
Speaker 1: people who are the closest to us, right like our
Speaker 1: parents or our peers when we're young. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I really push for the fact that, you know, the
Speaker 1: the skills really are primarily learned and developed through different contexts,
Speaker 1: and they have to be practiced and they have to
Speaker 1: be refined and they have to be evaluated over time. Well,
Speaker 1: that's great news for the work you do, or else
Speaker 1: no one would pay you money to do anything. Yeah, exactly. Well. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, if you have high trauma in
Speaker 1: your childhood and your stress response is so high because
Speaker 1: of a victimization and without intervention, right, it's going to
Speaker 1: be harder for you to regulate than other people. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, deny the fact that
Speaker 1: there are circumstances that certainly make it harder for certain
Speaker 1: people to learn these skills. But I do believe that
Speaker 1: with the right person and the right you know, the practice,
Speaker 1: you know, they really can be developed. Yeah, You've done
Speaker 1: a lot of work to bring emotional intelligence trainings to
Speaker 1: schools nationwide and even internationally. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what those program what are some of the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of those programs, and what you've learned
Speaker 1: in the process. Yeah. I think the number one thing
Speaker 1: that I've learned around teaching emotional intelligence is that the
Speaker 1: kids are mostly all right. It's the adults who are
Speaker 1: raising and teaching kids that have the issues are mess
Speaker 1: And I mean that seriously. You know, when I first
Speaker 1: started doing this work in the mid nineteen nineties was
Speaker 1: my uncle. Because what happened is that when I graduated
Speaker 1: from college, I was an anxious mess again, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was going to do with my life.
Speaker 1: And I was in therapy, and that's when Dan Golman's
Speaker 1: book came out, and that's when I learned about Peter
Speaker 1: Salavan Jack Meyer, and that's when I realized that everything
Speaker 1: my freaking uncle was doing back with me ten years prior,
Speaker 1: fifteen years prior, was actually this stuff. I called my uncle,
Speaker 1: who was then retired, and said, let's write a curriculum
Speaker 1: nice and we did, and that was back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, which then got me into grad school, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But what Uncle Morphn I did was we try to
Speaker 1: take everything that I kind of knew about psychology which
Speaker 1: didn't know, and everything he had done for many years
Speaker 1: as a teacher, and we tried to package it and
Speaker 1: we did it. Took us five six years to do it,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless we did it. And then we went out
Speaker 1: to schools and we try to deliver it, and we
Speaker 1: just had so much resistance. Like, my job is not
Speaker 1: to talk to students about my failings. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: do joy, jolly and cheerful, but I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: alien nation or despair. Principles would say things like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to do this until after the
Speaker 1: state tests, you know. I was like, well, we're doing
Speaker 1: the training in August, like the state tests are in April,
Speaker 1: So like what am I doing here right now? Because
Speaker 1: you're not going to even remember what I taught you.
Speaker 1: And so I learned quickly that really the hard work
Speaker 1: was getting the adults to realize that this was really important.
Speaker 1: And then we had more success, But again we had
Speaker 1: to go even further up the leadership letter because what
Speaker 1: we learned was that principles of schools, if they weren't
Speaker 1: supportive of the teachers and doing the work, it would
Speaker 1: never get done. And then we were asked like in
Speaker 1: New York City, can you do the director or the
Speaker 1: superintendent of special education say, can you bring this to
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty of my sites across fifty seven schools.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, and how do you do that
Speaker 1: at a systemic level and have sustainability? So we learned
Speaker 1: that really, when you get down to it, if you
Speaker 1: want social and emotional learning or emotional intelligence to be
Speaker 1: in a school, it has to be weaved into the
Speaker 1: way leaders lead, the way teachers teach, the way students
Speaker 1: learn in the way family's parent and that's when we
Speaker 1: found great things happen. Well, that is easier said than done. Yes,
Speaker 1: you must have. I mean, it takes a whole you've
Speaker 1: it takes a team of a quite a big team.
Speaker 1: The Center of Promotional Intelligence. We are fifty six people.
Speaker 1: Fifty six I know, I'm friends with a lot of them,
Speaker 1: like Emma Ceppola and Zorana if Kevich Springle. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, you do you you have people have people
Speaker 1: who are training, like who focus primarily on the internationals.
Speaker 1: Do people living internationally that are part of the center.
Speaker 1: We do. They're mostly consultants, but we're now building a
Speaker 1: whole approach to ruler in China and Italy and Spain, Australia.
Speaker 1: We have lots of interests. World domination, no world permission
Speaker 1: to feel I know, I know. Remember the scientist doesn't
Speaker 1: want to dominate. The scientists want other people to develop
Speaker 1: m that's what the scientist says. I know, Well that's
Speaker 1: what I want. There's some scientists that we both know
Speaker 1: that maybe want the other I know that's a wink wink, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So it's exciting and obviously we have to
Speaker 1: be mindful that there are cultural differences, but we've got
Speaker 1: a great team who are doing everything from basic science
Speaker 1: and emotion to interventions to skill development and assessments and
Speaker 1: the list goes on. Yeah, you seem to just have
Speaker 1: this endless energy and enthusiasm around this like I mean,
Speaker 1: I it hasn't It hasn't changed since fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: when I knew you you were you had the same
Speaker 1: sort of like passion for this particular time. Do you
Speaker 1: ever get bored with it? Do you think you'll ever
Speaker 1: get bored with this big you know what, I'm over emotions.
Speaker 1: I'm going to move on to like something else. Well, no,
Speaker 1: because I'm just endlessly fascinated by how emotionally stuck people
Speaker 1: are and how much resistance there is to this work.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, I'm a proponent of of divergent
Speaker 1: thinking and creativity, so you know, I'm always exploring more
Speaker 1: innovative ways to get people to take this work seriously,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's why I wrote the book, because
Speaker 1: I needed to just like sit with the material for
Speaker 1: a little while on my own, as opposed to be
Speaker 1: running around. And now that I have this thing, I'm
Speaker 1: going out there and I've done fifty five presentations, I said,
Speaker 1: in the last couple of months, and just bringing this
Speaker 1: out into the world, I start thinking about like an
Speaker 1: emotions scientist piece a little bit differently. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in why why there's so much resistance to emotions,
Speaker 1: you know, in the workplace. For example, I do presentations
Speaker 1: for big you know companies, pharmaceutical companies or healthcare companies
Speaker 1: or you know, the investment world, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the prevailing notion that emotions are weak is
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. You know that people don't realize that
Speaker 1: everybody comes to work with feelings. But yet it seems
Speaker 1: that the more money you make, the more you think
Speaker 1: that you can just suppress them, because you know, money talks.
Speaker 1: But yet, why are so many people getting divorced and
Speaker 1: why are so many people you know so unhappy? Well
Speaker 1: that's that right, there is a very good question anything.
Speaker 1: A big part of it is this, they're not giving
Speaker 1: themselves and others permission to feel. So you have this,
Speaker 1: I mean, you really do think that the permission to
Speaker 1: feel is is going to is a game changer, you think,
Speaker 1: you say, they're the less stigma racism and a third
Speaker 1: grader said to you that there would be world peace.
Speaker 1: That's right. Wow. I mean, I'm you know, I am.
Speaker 1: I'm still a professor, so I can't I'm not just
Speaker 1: a journalist, so I can't make those ladacious claims. But
Speaker 1: a third grader again, exactly. But I do really believe,
Speaker 1: you know, from both the science that I've done and
Speaker 1: honestly I've done. You know, I've been in the real
Speaker 1: world quite a bit. You know, I'm not a traditional scientist,
Speaker 1: you know that locks themself up in the Ivory Tower.
Speaker 1: You know. I spend a good half of my life,
Speaker 1: you know, with people, with kids, with teachers, with leaders,
Speaker 1: kind of seeing how this, you know, plays out in
Speaker 1: the real world, you know, and we, unfortunately, have created
Speaker 1: a society where there is tremendous amount of angst, where
Speaker 1: people think that talking about feelings is weak, and where
Speaker 1: people are not learning strategies and how to deal with
Speaker 1: their feelings. And it's not a good sign. It's is
Speaker 1: not And even in my own organization, I see it,
Speaker 1: you know, at the university, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: it's because you know, this is one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: is that when I teach my course, you know, students
Speaker 1: come in thinking they're gonna have to memorize the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety theory or the Bracket paper in two thousand and
Speaker 1: three that showed the correlation coefficient between emotional intelligence and
Speaker 1: satisfaction is point three to five. And I tell them like, honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even remember those coefficients and I
Speaker 1: wrote the freaking papers. But what I want you to
Speaker 1: do is learn the skills. And they're like, but that's
Speaker 1: not that's how do I get an A in that,
Speaker 1: you know? And I said, well, don't worry about the grade, like,
Speaker 1: this is not a course about grades. This is a
Speaker 1: course about building awareness and you know. And then they
Speaker 1: start pushing back and saying things like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Professor Brackett, I didn't need emotional intelligence to get into Yale.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, probably, And then I say, well, and it
Speaker 1: is true. But then I say to them, well, you're
Speaker 1: going to need it to get out. And I mean
Speaker 1: that seriously, because I mean most parents when they are
Speaker 1: thinking about their kid at twenty five and thirty years old,
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, I hope my kid graduates. Yeahe
Speaker 1: with a four point zero, right, They're saying, I hope
Speaker 1: my son or daughter has purpose in life, you know,
Speaker 1: it's passionate about something, find someone to love, you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But yet we spend no time cultivating that.
Speaker 1: And you really can say from the front lines that
Speaker 1: you see notable changes, really substantive, large effects that give
Speaker 1: you hope that we can change. Well. I see that
Speaker 1: there's a stronger desire than ever before to do this
Speaker 1: work that people are finally recognizing, Like, if we don't
Speaker 1: do this, I don't know what's going to happen. However,
Speaker 1: because we are a nation and just a species who
Speaker 1: wants quick fixes, I think we're going to continuously fail
Speaker 1: until we understand that this has to be a strong
Speaker 1: part of the way we develop children. And you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, what makes me annoyed is everybody now
Speaker 1: thinks mindfulness is the answer. You do, Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: it's the answer everything. You just breathe you know, everything,
Speaker 1: you just breathe it out. And I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've been going to yoga for fifteen years and now
Speaker 1: twenty years. It hasn't changed my you know, like my
Speaker 1: envy of certain people, or my feelings of being overwhelmed
Speaker 1: half the time, and does it help me kind of
Speaker 1: like be more present, Yeah for sure. Does it help
Speaker 1: me kind of reduce a little bit of my stress? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right afterwards I feel fabulous. But the point is is
Speaker 1: that that's a that's like a one shot wonder kind
Speaker 1: of strategy, right Yeah, And same thing with the yoga.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks like yoga, right, you know, is the answer.
Speaker 1: I'm guess what, downward dog doesn't solve all your problems.
Speaker 1: I've said that too. It's funny, and you know, and
Speaker 1: just so like there's exercise that you have to do,
Speaker 1: there's a good eating you have to do, there's good
Speaker 1: sleep you have to do. And I think so much
Speaker 1: of it has to do with more top down strategies,
Speaker 1: which are these more cognitive strategies. You know that we
Speaker 1: have to change the way we view ourselves and view
Speaker 1: the world, and that takes enormous practice. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So I want to end this interview with this quote
Speaker 1: from your book. We need to launch an emotion revolution
Speaker 1: in which the permission to feel moves us and ways
Speaker 1: we have yet to imagine dot dot dot. Emotional skills
Speaker 1: are the key to unlocking the potential inside each of us,
Speaker 1: and in the process of developing those skills, we each
Speaker 1: heart by heart, mind by mind create a culture in
Speaker 1: society unlike anything we've experienced us far, and very much
Speaker 1: like the one we might dare to imagine. Mark, you
Speaker 1: still got it, and you still got it. You still
Speaker 1: got the humor, the sensitivity, the compassion and the passion.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for finally being on my
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. I'm excited to be part of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you thanks for listening to this episode of the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 1: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
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