Emotoinal Intelligence: Flaming

HOW OBNOXIOUS IS THAT??

MoneyLaw, the art of winning an unfair academic game, has a great post about emotional intelligence:

"Today's New York Times posits a scientific explanation for the difference in behavior of those who are civil in face-to-face encounters but brutally venomous in email or instant messaging exchanges. In Flame First, Think Later, New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior, Daniel Goleman (of Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence fame) explains that, in the absence of visual social cues, our brains no longer have that 'uh-oh' control that keeps us from inadvertently offending the person with whom we're electronically communicating. As Goleman puts it:

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

The blogger goes on to say that in face-to-face interatction, we get a continual barrage of emotional signs and cues which are missing, of course, in emails.

"Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy," says the blogger. "This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track."

The blog is about flaming and nasty emails.

Intentionality is an EQ competency that plays a part. Perhaps they are intentionally being insulting and inflammatory. If not, they are "clueless" -- and that's one way to describe email writing. The missing of social cues.

I could go on and write for another hour here, for instance, and I will never have a "clue" as to whether you, my reader, are bored or not.

Flaming - unless it's understood that's what's supposed to go on - is bad manners. The rules of etiquette exist, basically, to keep us form killing one another; particularly the strong impinging on the weak.

People have a lot more nerve behind the anonymity of an email and also operate without the clues of normal social interchange. It's not a good mix in the hands of someone who is also not intentional -- another EQ competency. Knowing what you intend to have happen (feelings and well as behavior). Flaming is like bad grammar. It reveals a lot about who you are.