What’s My Basic Personality?What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?

Reading Emotions

Understanding another person’s felt emotions is very difficult. But we can learn to read others’ displayed emotions.106 We do this by focusing on verbal, nonverbal, and paralanguage cues. The easiest way to find out what someone is feeling is to ask. Saying something as simple as “Are you OK? What’s the problem?” can often provide you with the information to assess an individual’s emotional state. But relying on a verbal response has two drawbacks. First, almost all of us conceal our emotions to some extent for privacy and to reflect social expectations. So we might be unwilling to share our true feelings. Second, even if we want to verbally convey our feelings, we may be unable to do so. As we noted earlier, some people have difficulty understanding their own emotions and, hence, are unable to express them verbally. So, at best, verbal responses provide only partial information. You are talking with a co-worker. Does the fact that his back is rigid, his teeth are clenched, and his facial muscles tight tell you something about his emotional state? It probably should. Facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and physical distance are nonverbal cues that can provide additional insights into what a person is feeling. The facial expressions shown in Exhibit 2-8, for instance, are a window into a person’s feelings. Notice the difference in facial features: the height of the cheeks, the raising or lowering of the brow, the turn of the mouth, the positioning of the lips, and the configuration of muscles around the eyes. Even something as subtle as the distance someone chooses to put between him- or herself and you can convey how much intimacy, aggressiveness, repugnance, or withdrawal that person feels. When you speak with someone, you may notice a sharp change in the tone of her voice and the speed at which she speaks. You are tapping into the third source of information on a person’s emotions—paralanguage. This is communication that goes beyond the specific spoken words. It includes pitch, amplitude, rate, and voice quality of speech. Paralanguage reminds us that people convey their feelings not only in what they say, but also in how they say it.

Assessing Skills

After you’ve read this chapter, take the following Self Assessments on your enclosed CD-ROM:

1. What’s My Basic Personality?

23. What’s My Emotional Intelligence Score?