Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Bradberry and Greaves use this chapter to explain why a broad understanding of EQ is necessary before exploring its four component skills. Based on testing data from over 500,000 people, they identify a major gap: Only 36% can accurately identify their emotions as they occur, meaning most people are controlled by feelings they fail to recognize. They condense the full range of human emotion into five core categories—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and shame—and show, through an intensity table, how each can manifest differently in strength. The earlier shark attack story reappears to illustrate “emotional hijackings,” when intense feelings override rational thought. While the brain’s wiring ensures emotion comes first, the authors argue that awareness and deliberate thinking can limit the damage.

They also introduce the idea of “trigger events,” situations that provoke strong, prolonged emotional reactions shaped by past experiences, and present EQ growth as the process of spotting these triggers and responding productively. Whereas IQ is fixed from birth, and personality remains stable over a lifetime, EQ is flexible and can be intentionally developed. This framing of emotional intelligence differs from that of many works; for instance, Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind treats propensity for various kinds of intelligence, including the “personal intelligences,” as at least partly innate.