Book review: SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

The New Science of Human Relationships

by Daniel Goleman

Genres:

Psychology
Social Science

Review posted on:

13.02.2017

The number of pages:

416 pages

Book rating:

3/5

Year the book was published:

First edition published 2006

Who should read this book:

Anyone who is interested in learning why they behave as they do and what has the most effect on them.

Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:

At this point in life, I want to know what is the science behind relationships. How are they formed and why do we need some of them? Why do people stay in bad relationships and why do they sometimes cut the good ones? And how do our relationships affect us as a person, our habits, our personality, and our reactions? And is there a difference between close and superficial relationships? How does each type of relationship shape us as a person? These are some of the reasons why I picked up this book and I hope to get at least some answers to the questions mentioned before. If possible not just theory but also some case studies to back it up. And if possible I hope the author won’t use too much of an academic approach (language) explaining things.

My thoughts about the book:

Social Intelligence takes you on a journey on which you learn how you are currently affected by your past, by the people around you, and by the thoughts you consciously keep going through in your mind. The foundation of our actions/reactions is our brain (the neurons, and their connections…). Your brain changes during your life, based on what you do, with who you do it, what you think, how you feel, and how old you are. During your life you lose neurons you do not use and you gain new ones by activating new neural pathways (this is called Neuroplasticity). So if you want to change your life, you first need to change your brain/mind. You do that by consciously repeating your wanted reactions to certain situations, and by doing so creating new neural pathways. So that the next time when you are under stress or in a state of fear the amygdala (which is a small primal part of your brain) does not take control over your prefrontal cortex which is responsible for decision-making and you end up reacting to certain situations the way you trained yourself to. For example: when something bad happened at work you used to panic “Oh sh#t what now” and you froze, but after some mental training you now react “ok, this happened how do I solve it?”

The good news is that by creating the right neural pathways and training your brain you can conquer fear. All you need to accept is that it takes time and mental work. It takes around 5-6 months for a neuron to be created, “find its place” and fully develop all connections in the brain. In the meantime, everything you do affects the development of the neuron and its connections. That is why you must let go of certain things and repeatedly do new things for them to become something normal for you. Everything that is normal for you today was once new to you.

I found the book very interesting, but in the end, a little bit “too long”. The first 80% of the book was great, developing the topic at hand and giving the reader “food for thought” chapter after chapter. In the end, Daniel Goleman tried to make the same point over again, but with different cases. Maybe he thought he was just elaborating and “cementing” the point of his book into the reader’s mind, but for me, it was a bad finish to a good book. Otherwise, I loved the topic, I loved that the author included cases and examples that supported his findings and conclusions in a simple way, but sometimes he went too deep into biology.

The most important takeaway from the book is that who you are today is a result of your past relationships, environment, and way of thinking, and who you will be “tomorrow” depends on what you do and with who you do it “today”.

My notes from the book:

Even our most routine encounters act as regulators in the brain, priming our emotions, some desirable, others not.
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 that ripple throughout our body, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate biological systems from our heart to our immune cells.
Nourishing relationships have a beneficial impact on our health, while toxic ones can act like slow poison in our bodies.
Our social brain represents the only biological system in our bodies that continually attunes us to, and in turn becomes influenced by, the internal state of people we’re with.
Our social interactions even play a role in reshaping our brain through “neuroplasticity”, which means that repeated experiences sculpt the shape, size, and number of neurons and their synaptic connections.
By repeatedly driving our brain into a given register, our key relationships can gradually mold certain neural circuitry. In effect, being chronically hurt and angered, or being emotionally nourished, by someone we spend time with daily over the course of years can refashion our brain. These discoveries reveal that our relationships have subtle, yet powerful, lifelong impacts on us.
An emotional economy is a net of inner gains and losses we experience with a given person or on any given day. By evening the net balance of feelings we have exchanged largely determines what kind of day we feel we’ve had.
An emotion can pass from person to person silently, without anyone consciously noticing. At an unconscious level, we are in constant dialogue with anyone we interact with.
Mirror neurons make emotions contagious and they ensure that the moment someone sees an emotion expressed on your face, they will at once sense that same feeling within themselves. For example, when someone sees an act of kindness, it typically stirs in them the impulse to perform one too.
Reappraisal alters our emotional response. Just naming for ourselves the emotions we feel can calm the amygdala.
Our memories are in part reconstructions. Whenever we retrieve a memory, the brain rewrites it a bit, updating the past according to our present concerns and understandings.
Microexpressions reveal how a person truly feels at a certain moment. That is why it is important to train yourself to detect them. These automatic and fleeting emotional expressions operate via low-road circuitry, which is distinguished by its automaticity and its quickness.
Our brain registers social rejection in the very area that activates when we are hurt physically.
Social rejection or fear of it is one of the most common causes of anxiety feelings and it depends not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.
When trying to understand and get to know other people we must be aware of the projections we make from ourselves. Projection ignores the other person’s inner reality. when we are projecting, we assume that others feel and think as we do.
There is a remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on other people “the same emotions we observe in ourselves, and to find everywhere those ideas which are most present to us in our own minds.” In full-fledged projection, we simply map our world onto someone else’s, with no fit or attunement whatsoever.
Genes are designed to be regulated by signals from their immediate surroundings, including hormones from the endocrine system and neurotransmitters in the brain – some of which, in turn, are profoundly influenced by our social interactions. Just as our diet regulates certain genes, our social experiences also determine a distinct batch of such on-off switches.
Because the human brain packs so much circuitry (neural pathways) in so little space, it creates continuous pressure to extinguish connections the brain no longer needs, to make space for those it must have.
Over the course of childhood and the teen years the brain will selectively lose half those overabundant neurons, keeping the ones that are used and dropping those that are neglected.
The brain and spinal cord contain stem cells that turn into new neurons at the rate of thousands a day. The pace of neuron creation peaks during childhood but continues into old age.
Once a new neuron has come into being it migrates to its position in the brain and, over the course of a month, develops to the point where it makes about ten thousand connections to other neurons dispersed throughout the brain. Over the next four months or so, the neuron refines its connections. During this 5-6 month period, personal experience dictates which neurons the newborn cell will connect with. The more often an experience repeats, the stronger the habit becomes, and the denser the resulting neural connectivity.
The longest window for shaping occurs with the prefrontal cortex, which continues to be molded anatomically into early adulthood.
Spindle cells help us orchestrate our emotions with our responses. How richly these cells connect scientists propose it depends on influences like family stress or a warm and loving atmosphere.
Nurturing relationships later in life can to some extent rewrite the neural scripts that were encrypted in the brain during childhood.
How couples work out their disagreements predicts their children’s conduct.
Activity in the prefrontal area alone tracks our moods: The right side activates when we are upset, and the left when we are in good spirits. People with more right-side activity are particularly prone to down or upsetting moments, while those with more activity on the left generally have happier days.
Given how the brain masters social resilience (through challenges, and small amounts of stress….), children need to rehearse for the ups and downs of social life, not experience a steady monotone of delight.
Neuroscientists conclude, that if youngsters are exposed to stress in small enough amounts they learn to handle it. This mastery becomes imprinted in their neural circuitry, leaving them more resilient when facing stress as adults. Repeating, that sequence of fear-turning-into-calm apparently shapes the neural circuitry for resilience, building an essential emotional capacity.
While perpetual arguments are bad for our health, isolating ourselves is worse. Compared to those with a rich web of social connections, those with the fewest close relationships were 4.2 times more likely to come down with the cold.
Our social brain makes a crucial distinction between accidental and intentional harm, and it reacts more strongly if it seems malevolent.
Recalling a conflict can trigger the biological shifts that accompanied it, the tendency to mull over one’s troubles takes a physical toll.
Skin-on-skin touch is particularly soothing because it primes oxytocin, as do warmth and vibration. Oxytocin acts as a stress hormone “don-regulator”.
People whose work made them more upset lost track of their sense of mission and had poorer physical health – and most strongly wanted to leave their jobs.
Cortisol (stress, anxiety) stimulates the amygdala while it impairs the hippocampus forcing our attention onto the emotions we feel while restricting our ability to take in new information. A small increase in cortisol enhances learning capabilities, but too much of it impairs recall.
Leadership boils down to a series of social exchanges in which the leader can drive the other person’s emotions into a better or worse state.
Another powerful reason for leaders to be mindful of what they say to employees: People recall negative interactions with a boss with more intensity, in more detail, and more often than they do positive ones.
A leader should not protect employees from every tension or stress. Resilience grows from a modicum of discomfort generated by necessary pressure at work. But since too much stress overwhelms, an astute leader acts as a secure base by lessening overwhelming pressure if possible or at least not making it worse.
When dealing with angry or distressed people, the leader need not necessarily agree with the person’s position or reaction. But simply acknowledging their point of view, then apologizing if necessary or otherwise seeking a remedy, defuses some of the toxicity, rendering destructive emotions less harmful.
Because emotions are so contagious, every boss at every level needs to remember he or she can make matters either worse or better.