Emotional Intelligence and the Emotion of Jealousy

From Yale, experiments about emotional intelligence, and the emotion of jealousy. Dr. Peter Salovey is a professor at Yale (or was at the time of the news release). Says the news release:

Peter Salovey ... is an expert on the psychological consequences of mood and emotion, which he views as organizing processes that enable individuals to think and behave adaptively, contrasted with the traditional view that sees mood and emotion as disorganized interruptions of mental activity that must be minimized or controlled.

According to the news release Office of Public Affairs at Yale - News Release Yale Psychologists Challenge Experiments Stressing Evolution As Primary Cause of Gender Differences in Feelings of Jealousy.

From the news release:

Add jealousy to the long list of emotions men and women seem to approach from different perspectives. When forced to choose between sexual and emotional infidelity, men are more upset by thoughts of a partner's sexual infidelity while women fear emotional infidelity more, according to several recent scientific studies.

Researchers disagree, however, about whether this dichotomy is due primarily to genetic factors -- differences in hard-wired
responses attributable to millennia of evolution -- or whether the main causes are cultural. This nature-nurture debate surfaced in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science in an exchange among three groups of researchers.

Interesting point:

Men, however, tended to view the two types of infidelity independently or only weakly linked, while women were inclined to believe that sexual infidelity could occur without emotional infidelity, but not the reverse. In other words, women saw the loss of emotional fidelity as representing a double loss -- the loss of both emotional and sexual fidelity, Professor Salovey said.

QUESTION: Is this because when a man has an emotion he tends to take action on it?

Learn more about Emotional Intelligence ... "the organizing processes that enable individuals to think and behave adaptively." Emotions are more than "a disorganized interruption of mental activity."

High EQ gives you more choices! Take the EQ course. Get some insight! Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for more information.