Dr. Marc Brackett: How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett is a professor of psychology at Yale University and the Director of the Yale center for Emotional Intelligence. He is one of the world's foremost experts on emotions, meaning what emotions are and how they regulate our relationship to ourself and others. Today's discussion gets heavily into how we should think about our emotions and the emotional expressions of others, and when and how we should regulate those emotions. This is a very important aspect of.

Our life because as we all know.

Emotions are present with us from the moment we are born until the moment we die. So much like having a body, we need to learn how to work with our emotions in order to have the best quality of life. We all know that we are supposed to pay attention to our emotions, but at the same time, we are often told that we shouldn't take all of our emotions seriously, nor should we react to all of our emotions with behaviors. And indeed, that is true. What's been lacking, however, and what Dr. Mark Brackett finally delivers to us is a roadmap to think about our emotions in a very structured way and thereby to engage with our emotions, sometimes shift our emotions, and certainly to understand the emotional expressions of others in ways that best serve our quality of life.

So.

So today's discussion centers very heavily on scientific data that plays out in the real world that we can all use. We talk about conflict resolution. We talk about how to think about and work with emotions. We talk about bullying, both in children and in adults, how to deal with that sort of thing effectively. And we talk about emotional intelligence, which it turns out, can be increased at any stage of life. So by the end of today's discussion, you will be armed with a tremendous amount of new knowledge and many new tools, many new protocols that you can immediately apply in your life in order to improve your relationship to yourself and to others. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about the issues that are.

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Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy should provide insights. Insights that are useful in allowing you not just to feel better in your emotional life and your relationship life, but of course to to be better. To be better in terms of the relationship to yourself, your professional life, and to others. And of course, to things like your career goals. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy for you to find an expert therapist with whom you have these critical components of therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into your busy schedule with no commuting to a therapist's office or looking for parking or.

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And now for my discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett.

Dr. Mark Brackett, welcome.

Thank you. Great to be here.

I'm excited to talk to you today about many things related to emotions. We hear the word emotions and we have all sorts of ideas about what they are, what they aren't. We also hear about emotional intelligence quite a lot these days and I have a feeling that the way it's discussed is often not the way it really is. So to just kick things off, could you clarify for me, for everyone, what is emotional intelligence? What does it pertain to? And then maybe we can use that as a way to drill into the deeper question of what are emotions?

Sure. I think at the simplest level it's how we reason with and about our emotions and feelings. That's like the simple definition. The way I talk about it is as a set of skills and we use the acronym ruler to describe those skills. The first is recognizing emotions. So I'm trying to read your facial expression right now. Are you interested or are you bored already? I'm trying to understand emotions. Where are they coming from? Like why am I feeling this way? What's the consequence of that feeling the third is labeling emotions, so being precise with the words that we use to describe our feelings. The fourth is expressing emotions, knowing how and when to express emotions with different people across context and culture. And then the big one is the final R which is regulating emotions. What are the strategies we use to help us deal with everyday emotions?

So if I were to take an emotional intelligence test, would it have me looking at pictures of facial expressions? Would it have me reading paragraphs about emotional exchanges and gauging who felt what and why and how, that sort of thing?

If you were to take a Test from like 20 years ago, yes. We try to be a little bit more innovative now in our measurement of the skills. So for example, I just finished with a bunch of colleagues publishing a test of emotion perception. But it's not static images, it's video clips that are around three to four seconds that show subtle emotions. It's about vocal tone, it's about body language. And we're trying to get people to accurately kind of label these emotions in faces, body and voice.

When I think about most uses of the words emotional intelligence, it seems to correlate again in a very non scientific way. Seems to correlate with one's ability to tolerate others emotions and make sense of the emotions of others. For instance, I've heard it said before, not about me, that so and so has high emotional intelligence because in the presence of their child or someone else's kid reacting in a certain way, they were able to see, ah, they just feel blank and therefore they are screaming. As opposed to defaulting to a, you know, a broad binning of what they were observing and saying, oh my goodness, that kid is a brat. For instance, you're describing emotional intelligence as a self perception as well.

Yes.

And so is our task therefore to do the equivalent of what in my little anecdote this other person was doing to be able to parse one's own emotions in a fine enough way to understand the experience in kind of a third person way that one can regulate their behavior, what they say, how they act, how much is recognition of others emotions and understanding of those as opposed to one's recognition and understanding of their own emotions factoring into this thing that we call emotional intelligence.

So the whole set of skills are intra and interpersonal. That's really important. It's about self and others always. For example, right now we are co regulating each other's emotions, right? Our facial expressions, our vocal tones. We're influencing how we each other, how we feel. When you think about the recognition piece, we'll just start there, right there. Self awareness, like, Mark, how are you feeling right now? And I'm having mixed emotions. This is a great podcast. I want to be articulate. I'm excited, but I'm a little overwhelmed because I got so much I want to share, but I don't know how much I'm going to share. So there's all that awareness of my emotion. Sometimes I have language for it, sometimes I don't, like any of us. And that's why it starts off with kind of just a general awareness, like, am I pleasant, am I unpleasant, do I have a lot of energy or do I feel depleted? And we call that, you know, your core affect. And then I could start asking myself questions like, well, what are you doing right now, Mark? Well, I'm sitting across from Andrew, being interviewed. Okay, well how does that, what comes up for you with that? And then I try to label that feeling. So that's like the R, the U and the L of emotional intelligence for the self. And I'm doing the same thing for you. I'm looking at your facial expressions, your body language. I'm listening to you. I'm trying to understand. If I say something, do you shift? And I'm trying to put language to it. So it's self and other.

So given that we're both scientists interested in emotions, you're the expert. I'm also just the student today. I think it's worth pointing out to people that there isn't one location in the brain that governs this complex process that you just described. It's a network wide phenomenon. But you did mention the body. You mentioned feeling. How is one feeling both in brain and body? To what extent does somebody who has high emotional intelligence have more or less body awareness or somatic awareness as opposed to somebody who's quote unquote in their head? Put differently, can somebody who's very much in their head, who has very poor body awareness, have high emotional intelligence?

Well, I think another big deal about emotional intelligence is that we like to think of it as our people think of it as this construct. I don't think that's the best way to look at it. I think it's much more interesting to look at it as a set of discrete skills that come together. They're not that highly correlated. And so, you know, it's. I really like to think of them as emotion skills. And that within the R, the U, the L, the E and the R that I described there are sub skills. And so part of what you're talking about is the body awareness. Some people are more cognitive. You know, they're just very language oriented. Some people, you know, a lot of therapists, somatic, you know, talking about somatosensory things. All good. I think at the end, though, this is why I teach this stuff, is that we have to know how we feel. We got to know what we want to do with those feelings, and we have to know how the people we live with and love and work with and teach how they feel too. And so we need language in the end.

Some years ago, I went to this course. It was broadly could be described as personal development. It was interesting. It was grounded in science and psychology. And each day would start with going around the circle, as typically is done at these things. And you'd have to say how you feel, but you couldn't use evaluation. You couldn't say good or bad or so. So. And I found it very difficult. I found it difficult for a number of reasons. First of all, I don't think I was ever trained to use specific language for my feelings. In fact, I don't think I was ever trained to understand what feelings were. In fact, I know neuroscientists and psychologists.

Are still trying to figure out what.

Feelings and emotions really are. So a couple of questions. When it comes to using language to describe our emotions, how important do you feel it is to have a broad buffet of options? A previous guest on this podcast, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and I talked about this a bit, and she mentioned that in some cultures, there's very specific language for specific emotions. In fact, there's even a word to describe the feeling of sadness one has in a particular culture after getting a really bad haircut.

Yeah.

Which is incredible. When one thinks about it, we all.

Know what that feels like. Right?

We know what it feels like.

Right.

But there isn't, to my knowledge, we don't have the word a word for that in the English language. I mean, I'm sure there's a curse.

Word for it in the exact language.

But not necessarily for that specific feeling or unique to that specific feeling. So what is the relationship between language labels and emotion? And I ask that as a way to kind of wedge into the ruler approach, because as you pointed out, one recognizes, understands labels, but the label is central literally to the ruler approach.

It is, yeah. So I like. I'm very similar to Lisa in terms of there are emotion concepts or categories. Well, let's use the anger category. If you only have one word for anger, that means all you know is there's one form of anger. But if you start teaching people, well, there are other words that we could use, like peeved, irritated, angry, enraged, livid. And then you have rich conversations, which is what I do in schools with kids and teachers themselves. Like, what is when you're feeling peeved? Like, what. What are the things that make you feel peeved versus the things that make you feel enraged? What does it feel like in your body when you're feeling that way? Granted that everybody feels things differently in their bodies. That really doesn't matter. What matters is that we have a common language and a common understanding of what these emotions are, because otherwise we can't communicate. I'm really like, this is a big deal for me in terms of having a common language within a community to talk about emotion, because right now we're in a crisis of anxiety. I'm not 100% bought into that. I think that people use the word anxiety improperly. Anxiety is about uncertainty, about the future. If we're going to define it, it's different than stress. There's different forms of stress, as you know, but the distress is usually when you have too many demands and not enough resources, which is different than when you're overwhelmed, which is my emotion of the year, which is, I'm just saturated. I can't even figure out what's going on anymore. Which is also different from fear. And that's. We call that emotion differentiation or granularity. People call it. They're slightly different. The differentiation is, like, between emotions. And the granularity might be within the emotion. But from my work, just to go on about this for a moment, the best example I have is I do a lot of corporate training, and so I'm in a room filled with lawyers or executives, and I'm ask them how they're feeling. Nobody's really sure how they're feeling, like you were saying. And then I'll do these little kind of quizzes with them. Tell me the difference. You got three minutes in a group. Anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. And they come back, and the number one response is, they're all the same. And I'm like, really? Take another few minutes. Just try to define them. They can't even define them. They say things like, one is internal, one is external, one is higher energy and lower energy. I'm like, I get that, but what do these concepts mean to you? What do they mean to you? Anyhow, finally we get to the definitions, and then I say, who cares? Why am I asking you to understand these differences? Go back to your groups and talk about it. And then after, like this is like a 45 minute, like I thought this was going to be like a two minute activity, it turns into like a 45 minute to an hour exercise because they finally realize, oh, yeah, so if I'm anxious because I'm worrying about the future, you know, maybe the breathing exercise is not going to be as helpful because maybe I need a cognitive strategy to say, you know, Mark, stop worrying about the stock market. Mark, stop worrying about that. The university closed down because of the pandemic. You've got no control over the university's decisions. And so helping people make connections between the feeling and the reason for the feeling, from my perspective, has been very helpful to help them learn how to regulate the emotion.

So connecting the feeling and the reason for the feeling.

Correct.

As opposed to just labeling the feeling.

Yeah, you need to know why. It's the why that you really have to deal with.

How do you feel about emojis from everything you're saying, they seem like more than benign to me. Yeah, I could imagine that. The emoji fication of culture, as I refer to it, I don't think that's a real word. Is now. Set up a Wikipedia page tomorrow. Emojification is a serious problem because it's what we call in science too much lumping. In science, you have lumpers and splitters.

Yeah, right.

And both can have fabulous careers. But if you lump too much or split too much, you create more confusion and you often create problems. And I just see emojis as lumping this incredible set of different continuums within us that we call emotions.

Exactly.

Into literally a small icon. And I can imagine this would lead to all sorts of problems, not just in communication, but in understanding our own emotions. Put differently, do you think that the use of emojis has degraded our level of emotional intelligence and processing?

I mean, I haven't done the research, but from my perspective, it's not helpful because the goal is to get granular, you know, think about the difference. And I'm not going to quiz you right now, but anger and disappointment. Do you know that 95% of the people that I asked to define those two things cannot do it?

Yeah. I mean, right off the cuff, I'll just say I'm familiar with both of those feelings. I know they're different, sense they're different. But the disappointment piece could be directed outward or inward. I'd have to work systematically through until I found a violation of one or the other. So where an example applied to one and not the other and it would take me a few minutes longer than I want this audience to have to wait.

There you go. Got an F. But you have a growth mindset, so you're okay.

There you go.

Yeah, but the, you know, so disappointment, unmet expectations, everything was legit. It just didn't work out. Anger, perceived injustice. And that's a really important distinction because if you're a parent or someone at work and someone is like yelling and screaming, firstly, we grossly, you know, make mistakes in terms of labeling emotion from behavior. We gotta just throw that out. There's no correlation really between behavior and emotion. I can stop my feet, you know, as a boy because I'm feeling sad. Just because it's more culturally acceptable for me to stomp than to cry. And so why are you so angry? Maybe I'm feeling shame, which is my experience. You know, I was yelling and screaming as a kid because I was being bullied so much. And then my mother would be like, who do you think you are talking to me that way? And then my father would say, go to your room. And I'd be like, is anybody reading my emotions properly or asking me how I'm feeling? Because you would know that I'm acting out because of fear. And shame never happened because a variety of reasons of triggering my parents and they didn't have such high emotional intelligence. They loved me, just didn't have high emotional intelligence. And so going back to the anger, disappointment, one, unmet expectations versus perceived injustice. And so when you think about it in terms of the strategy, like for example, my other career, Justina was as a martial arts teacher. So I have a 5th degree black belt and a Korean martial art called hapkido. So if this podcast doesn't go so well anyhow, the, you know, I was an awkward kid, had a very insecure, low self esteem. I got into the martial arts, I thought I'm going to get my yellow belt and I'm going to feel tough and proud. Failed my freaking yellow belt test. I mean, at 13 years old, you couldn't imagine there's nothing worse for a 13 year old kid who's feeling shame and being bullied to fail a yellow belt test. So what do I do? I go home. I hate karate. I'm never going back to karate. Everybody's in an uproar. I'm getting yelled at. I'm paying for your karate. You're going back to, you know, whatever. And the truth was like, let's think about that for a minute. So I go to take the test and I'VE got to do my blocks and my kicks, you know, my punches. I know there's five kicks, there's five punches, and let's say I do them the best I can. But the sensei just says, you know, mark, just not good enough. You're not ready yet. That's legitimate disappointment. I expected to pass. I didn't pass. I'm feeling disappointed. So the strategy for that is what, like tutor, help, show me what I have to do better. On the other hand, let's say, which was true for me, that some of the kids who were the bullies in my middle school also took karate. And let's imagine they're watching me take my test and they're giving me some dirty looks because they're going to threaten me, which did happen. Getting changed, going, wait till you see what it's going to be like for you tomorrow on the way to school. Now, how am I feeling? Terrorized, Fearful. And I failed my test because of that. You can see how I could show up with a particular behavior. People are attributing emotion to me. They're labeling my emotions for me because they don't have the skill to deactivate as a parent or a teacher or partner to be present to help me understand my experience, and then label my experience, understand where it's coming from, and then strategize accordingly.

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You said that disappointment is when one does everything essentially correctly, meaning gave the as much effort as they could, et cetera, and it didn't work out. Correct versus anger, which is perceived injustice.

Yeah.

Would you say that your response to not getting your yellow belt then? Because as a fifth degree black belt, now clearly you got that yellow belt eventually. I want to hear that part of the story too, that you were experiencing anger. In this case, could we even call it inappropriate anger? Simply inappropriate. Because what you really needed to understand was this notion of disappointment, but no one had taught it to you.

I think what you're getting at though is this like not knowing how you're feeling. Because I was never taught language right. And having an experience that is, you know, could be many feelings at once, which is, could be disappointment, could be anger, it could be embarrassment. But you got to unpack the situation, you know, what was the real event that happened, what really happened in that moment. And so if it were legitimate, like legitimate test, and I just, you know, I blocked the punch and I just didn't have the strength to block it, you know, like to really stand firm. It's disappointment, it's like it's sun, you know, like you thought your blocks were strong. Unfortunately, you need some work. Let's practice every day after school together. We're going to get these blocks down so you can get that yellow belt test. There's no other reason. If it's because the bullies are staring at me and I'm not capable of dealing with those piercing eyes that are at me and I'm feeling so anxious and overwhelmed and I just can't block because I'm just freaked out, that's a whole other story. Do you see how like a parent or a teacher would have to really differentiate their support? But you have to really get at the experience, which means we have to have relationships that are trustworthy, loving, caring, with all people because otherwise we don't build that connection to really understand how people are feeling, we just take the kind of behavior. We're like, why are you behaving that way? Go to your room or just practice. It's like, no, I've been bullied at school and now the bully is threatening me. That's serious stuff that needs to be.

Taken care of online. Emojis and downward facing thumbs versus upward facing thumbs and this kind of thing. And vomit emojis and things like that. Mind blown that. I'm starting to realize that these may be doing far more harm than we realize.

Yeah, I think it's fun, you know, and maybe it's just. If you want to just use it for fun, not a problem. If we're going to use it to really communicate, not so great.

I'm thinking of instances where people are just using these with the intention of expressing their dislike of something, but that the people on the receiving end experience a lot of self criticism as a consequence. Mostly kids, but adults too. And I know some adults that really can't handle somebody commenting on their Instagram posts like Big L or something like that.

It's devastating for people.

Nope. Or this kind of thing. It's also interesting because I see it even in the academic community, especially on Twitter.

X. Yeah.

Where I know that sure, people reject each other's papers, critique each other's papers, but they do that with a degree of intellectual nuance that transmits a sense of care. Right. If scientists really care, then they're going to do a careful review. As much as we would all love the this is a perfect paper. That's it.

No critique. Exactly.

When somebody critiques something that we do with an attention to detail, provided it's fair, we feel cared for. They care for the work and we care for the work. And so there's a relationship there, even if it's an anonymous review. But I'm shocked to see how scientific colleagues I've known for decades, really how they comport themselves online like it's. They'll swear they'll come out, you know, they won't bother to punctuate things. They'll just sort of behave in a very. What seems to be a very activated way. Not all of them, of course, but it's been very interesting. The words that come to mind are, I feel like online, especially on social media, the kids are acting like adults and the adults are acting like children. And so there seems to be a kind of regression toward what I'm calling the emoji fication or the kind of high amplitude expression with. With blunt Tools. I don't know what that is because I know these people. The reason I'm using the academic community as an example, by the way, it's cost some of these people their jobs. Chairs of departments. Not at Stanford or Yale, fortunately. But it's kind of striking to me the way that when we remove the face to face connection, when people will behave that way. And I use the parallel example of anonymous review because there it's anonymous. So in theory they could behave however they want. But there's an etiquette. So it seems like online etiquette is very deprived of many of the important features that you're starting to lay out for us here.

Anonymity causes challenges. It's funny because I gave a speech at Twitter, now known as X, about five years ago and had analyzed quite a lot of data. It was actually the year that Mariah Carey sang and it got messed up. It was like the week before. I was going in January, it was like New Year's Eve. And I just was curious and because it really was a mess up and I said, how are people going to respond? And it was 99.99% ripping this amazing diva to shreds.

So she, I don't recall this incident. So she's obviously phenomenally talented, but she made an error.

There was something.

She made an error.

Yeah, there was something else.

Oh, goodness.

You know, and she just basically like the mic wasn't working the way she wanted it to work and she's like, like, I'm out of here. Just like, I'm not singing. And you should have seen how people just, I mean, millions and millions and millions of comments, you know, like, and I'm not going to repeat what people said because it was really disgusting. And I got really curious, like, what about things like, gosh, you've like won 15 Grammy awards. Like, this must really sting for you, maybe one post like that. And so it does make you wonder about a, the type of person who is interested in commenting. Like, we may have a bias there. I do think we have a bias there. You know, people who, you know, they feel protected by, you know something, if it's, you know, a more famous person. In politics, obviously people are very clear how they feel.

Politicians sort of open themselves up to it.

Yeah, they do.

Public facing people in general, I've heard, open themselves up to it. But politicians in particular, I think we sort of give the general public a pass to say almost anything about them. But it's not pretty.

It's not pretty and it's not Emotionally intelligent. To go back to the concept, right. It's like, what's your goal here? I always ask people that, what are you getting out of being nasty?

I perceive it as evacuative. I look at that and I think, gosh, what they must feel inside to be able to say those things can't be good, but maybe it feels good to them. I don't know. I don't think I've ever made a negative comment. If I have, someone can call me out on it. Hopefully it was in sarcasm with a friend as the target, and they were okay with it or happy with it. But I don't know what internal emotional or psychological state it would take to go say something cruel to somebody online.

In my earlier research with Facebook, we analyzed millions and millions of posts, and people can be intentionally mean and hurtful. Just people want to rip people to shreds, and they want to instill fear. And it's very hard to disentangle that too. Just to be honest, what we found in our research was that I could say, fear, Andrew's wearing a black shirt. You'll see that. I could say, like, nice shirt. And it might mean, nice shirt, or it might mean, I'm making fun of your shirt. And it's just hard. Like, that's. That's the problem, you know, with social media, in terms of posts, we don't really know because the person who's receiving it has a story. Right. That was one challenge we found around, like, getting posts taken down was that it was hard to have that objective criterion of what was, you know, painful to a person. Which is why what we tried to do was help the person who was receiving the content communicate in a way with the person who posted the content to get them to take it down. And what we found was that it actually worked really well. If you taught a teenager, for example, to say, hey, you know, hey, Andrew, like, that comment you made really was hurtful. Would you please take it down? We were more likely to get people to take it down. And what we found in experimental research was that if we just let people go on their own devices, it tended to be more retaliatory, like, who the heck do you think you are? You want to fight back? And that did not motivate the person to take it down. So even meeting gross behavior with compassion can be helpful.

Can we provide a counterexample for the anger versus disappointment? That's on the positive valence side. What's a positive set of feelings that.

People often conflate, like happiness and Contentment. Yeah.

That's a tough one for me. I'm getting Fs all around. Good thing I became a biologist.

Ecstatic and elated.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. This is, you know, this is why I do what I do. Yeah, I'm good at this.

Yeah. Yes, you are.

You know, when you think about happiness, you know, it's usually about, you know, when you're achieving something. Right. You're gonna, I'm gonna be happy when, you know, this will bring me happiness. Contentment is the opposite. Contentment is. Everything is just great as it is. I feel complete. I have enough. And part of my argument against the happiness research is that we don't spend enough time helping people strive for contentment. And we push people to strive for happiness, which there's research to show. Backfires. If you're waking up every day saying, what am I going to do to be happy? What am I going to do to be happy? Chances are it's not going to work out a lot. And that kind of backfires to create more despair.

Sorry to interrupt, but as soon as you describe contentment that way, and thank you for parsing those two, very useful to me. As soon as you describe contentment that way, I imagine waking up and rather than thinking about what needs to be done and the things I want to achieve, which I want to achieve, they bring me joy.

Yeah.

Throwing a third word there just to confuse myself. This notion of contentment, the way that you described, I could see, might lead me to pay attention to how good it feels to have gotten some sleep, to I sleep well most nights, but what a privilege that is. And to maybe feel the comfort of the comforter and the mattress for a moment before barging into the day. To chase happiness, as it were.

Exactly. I think the idea that we have to be happy all the time is also ridiculous. I mean, I'm a neurotic professor. I'm never happy. It's tough. And also, I don't know about you, but given that my dispositional affect, another term, is more on the lower energy, kind of contented with a little anxiety. When I'm around the people who are high energy and pleasant all the time, I have a difficult time.

It's like, because you somehow feel like you're not living up to some standard.

No, I just feel, like, overwhelmed and smothered by it. You know, it's like, stop being so happy all the time.

Here's where I get to appropriately make a joke about. Because before we started, we were talking about east coast schools versus west coast schools. I was like, maybe you come west and that'll change. Or maybe you're right where you belong there at the also phenomenal university that is Yale. But anyway, that's kind of inside ball stuff. East Coast University is amazing. Midwest University is amazing. West Coast University is amazing. Different perceived temperaments, but for sure. And styles. Just look at the walking speeds, for instance, not just the weather. But, yeah, you raise a very important point. We have a member of our podcast team that is, like, always in a great mood. He's always in a great mood. And it is, for me, a reminder to be in a better mood. I'm not somebody that I would say gets. I'm not moody. I don't change moods quickly, but I wouldn't say that. My disposition is to be like Tigger, like, and just happy all the time. But his energy around that doesn't drain me, but it makes me wish I was him.

That's okay. That's you. You know what I mean? Like, the part of. I mean, part of being emotionally intelligent with colleagues, romantic partners with children, whoever is picking up on that, like, now that I know that about you, it makes me think differently about you in terms of what your needs are. That's emotional intelligence. And for me, I am, like, I wake up every morning, like, having an existential crisis. I'm like, what am I doing with my life? And, you know, what am I doing this today for? And then I got to publish this paper. I got to finish my book. I got to run my team. Like, what do I want to do? And then I'm doing it, and then I'm like, when I'm doing one thing, I think I should be doing the other thing. That's just who I am. And I've tried everything, and that's my operating system. I'm more aware when I'm working on another book. And as I was working on it, I'm in a chapter, and all I could think about is the next chapter. And I started like, mark, give yourself permission to be with this freaking chapter. It's okay. You can focus on one thing and not worry about the future. And I had to literally kind of do that for myself. That's. That's how I am, you know? And so knowing that about myself is useful because it helps me find the strategies that work for me. And going back to the happiness thing, it's because I'm also introverted. And so when I'm around extroverts a lot, I'm drained. You know, I just, like, after something like this. This is an intense conversation. I'm not going to go to a sports bar, you know, like, have a beer and, like, watch the game. I would never do that anyway. But anyway, that's just not my thing, you know, like, that would make me. I would, like, my brain would be burnt. Like, my dream would be to leave here, go take a hot yoga class and take a walk, have a glass of wine, maybe by myself or with a friend, and then end the day.

All those things are readily available within less than a mile of here. We can point you in the right direction. It sounds lovely. The introversion, extroversion bit is going to prick up people's ears. It certainly did mine. I like time alone. I also like time alone in the presence of many people. In fact, I get my best work done always either alone in nature or in Manhattan where there are people around me, but I'm completely isolated.

I love that too.

So how should we think about introversion and extroversion? These things get thrown around so much in popular culture. Are there some solid scientific studies that support that? Introversion can best be defined as blank and extroversion as blank. And I'm guessing there's a range there. It's got to be on a continuum. It can't be two bins.

I mean, for some people it's very clear, you know, they are a clear traded introvert. And for some people, they're just like endlessly extroverted. No matter. They wake up wanting to be with people. They, the end of the day, they want to go out with people more. And so what research shows, for example, with creative people is they tend to be both. They tend to be high introverts and high extroverts, which is interesting, right? They're introverts when they're doing their art, and then they're extroverts when they're out there selling their art. Which is hard for some artists, right? Because a lot of artists are kind of introspective and they're creative types, but they really struggle with getting out there and being that extroverted. Like, look at my art. And so you're the lucky artist if you are treated in both directions. I think the easiest way to think about it is just it's a proclivity, right? It's a proclivity to how you want to use your energy. And the introvert is more a container, you know, wants to contain their energy. They want to be in small groups. They want kind of less frenetic environments. And the extrovert just has A proclivity for more sensation seeking, larger social groups. And again, it's a preference. I always say I'm an introvert with pretty good social skills. I can appear to be extroverted. Most people think I'm outgoing. I always tell I don't even like people that much.

You seem very outgoing.

Yeah, I'm not, you know, it's just not, it's not my, my natural, like if I'm at a party, I struggle with like, like what am I going to do here?

When you say you don't necessarily like people, I'm joking much. I realize you're joking, but. And I was just going to make sure to ask because I can't presume that doesn't mean that you dislike people. It's just that being in the presence of a lot of people doesn't draw you out to want to be closer to or get to know all these people simply because they're there. Whereas an extrovert seems to really like forming and engaging in new, new relationships, old relationships, all relationships relating.

Exactly. If you're like running a campaign to run for, you know, mayor of your town, like you're gonna, you want to hire an extroverted PR person, right? An extroverted person do marketing because they're like gonna be out there like banging on the door. Is not very comfortable talking to people. The introvert is going to be better at doing the accounting and doing the planning. And we've done this research actually even fun with my students. I would have them take measures of their valid measures of introversion and extroversion. I would score them into groups like it's a really extroverted group and a really introverted group. And I'd have them plan a party. Just go plan a party. And the group of extroverts. There's bonfires, there's beer there, loud music on the beach. And the introverts are like, we have to make sure we have good napkins. We want to, you know, we're going to have four people. You know, it's going to be quiet music. That's just, you know, how we're built.

Interesting. When I think of throwing a great party and I've thrown a few, what I like to think were great parties, it involves inviting a bunch of people over and then being able to stand back from a lot of it and not have to participate in all of it. I just like seeing friends that didn't know each other start to interact. That's cool, that's fun for me. And then if I Have to communicate directly with too many people at the party. I would definitely feel drained. I'm known to retreat to a room and take a nap or.

Yeah, so maybe you are more introverted.

Yeah, I think so. Rick Rubin, who's world renowned for his creative insights and creativity and for being Rick, I think once said on a podcast perhaps, or maybe he said this to me, that Tom Petty was the sort of person that basically didn't do anything besides write music and read books and interact with the small number of people in his inner circle. And the idea of leaving the house was just completely overwhelming to him. Now, of course, people were always approaching him, but like really, really extreme introvert. Whereas Rick has described, and I won't name names here, other famous people, musicians and otherwise, that go out specifically to try and get the attention of fame.

Yeah.

And if they don't, they feel absolutely isolated.

Makes sense.

Even though they have people in their private life, it's sort of like it becomes a kind of extroversion requirement. I would imagine life is much harder for the extrovert in the long run.

Because there's so much research shows that the extroverts tend to do, you know, have a little bit more success because they're more willing to get out there and ask for it. You know, they get higher, they get raises more quickly.

I see.

And you know, in my work in schools, you know, I always ask teachers to pay attention to the personality of their students because the introvert has a lot of great ideas. They're just not dying to raise their hand and get the attention. So don't just call on the kids who are raising their hands because you're missing out on getting some great information.

In that case, do you cold call on people? Whenever I'm teaching, I'm somewhat reluctant to cold call on people because I recall it can be terrifying when suddenly you're sitting there taking notes, trying to organize your thoughts around the material, and then suddenly the whole room's looking at you.

I mean, I set expectations around that because I'm really particular about that because, you know, it drives me crazy when the, you know, the talkative extrovert is always, you know, getting their thing said. I think there's ways there's this good instructional practices that can help with that. One thing I'm thinking about, though, is this intersection of personality and emotional intelligence. You just kind of brought that up for me, which is. And people confuse those a lot. So, for example, I even confused it when I was younger, before I studied it, because I'm High also in neuroticism, meaning I am more mercurial in terms of I worry about things and I'm fine, then I worry again, that's who I am. And I just always assumed that someone who is high in neuroticism or you know, more, as I said, kind of volatile emotionally, that was this low emotional intelligence because like how could you be emotionally intelligent if you're emotionally volatile? And then I did all this research and found there's pretty much no correlation between personality traits and emotional intelligence. And why is that? Well, think about it. If you are someone who is more even keeled, maybe you don't even have that much of an opportunity to regulate your emotions, right? But then if you get like triggered, you've never had experience, so it's actually harder for you. Someone like me, I'm practicing it all the time. I'm always like, I'm in a bad mood, I got to give a meeting, I'm irritable, I got to give a presentation. So I'm constantly figuring out how to deal with my emotions and that's why they're separate concepts. And in addition to it, just to build on this, knowing your personality traits can be extraordinarily helpful for choosing the best strategies to regulate your emotions. Why is that? I was traveling in Australia recently and I gave this speech to a group of people. The person who was the person in charge of the speech, it was about an hour from Melbourne and I took the train because I preferred to stay in the city. Took the train out. I had bought my train ticket back. The convener said, you know, Mark, I just really would love to be with you and can we just, can I drive you back to your hotel? And I'm thinking to myself like, that is the worst thing you could ever ask me.

Then on the wrong side of the road.

Yeah. And I had my train ticket. I really, it was a full day of presentations and stuff. I really wanted to be by myself, to decompress, but I felt bad and I said, sure. The guy talked to me for an hour. Like he just non stop talk to me. I got back to my hotel, I was like, I am going to have a nervous breakdown. Like I need another day to recover because. And it just annoyed me about myself not practicing what I teach, which was, mark, know thyself, you're drained. Be polite. You know, it was my insecurity of just saying, you know, I really appreciate you wanting to drive me back, but you know, I really have a lot to do tomorrow. I need to rest My voice. I need to, you know, do some prep. Instead, I just sat there, like, you know, shaking and, like, you know, having, like, just went crazy. So do you see what I'm getting at? Like, really knowing yourself in terms of, like, what drives you and what your, you know, your personality traits, just introversion, extraversion alone and how that relates to, like, your selection of strategies is so important.

Super important. And by the way, my joke about driving on the wrong side of the road, I do realize that we drive on the wrong side of the road for Australians and those in the uk, so I'll do the touche for you.

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Text messaging is an interesting example of communication that nowadays, depending on how many people have access to your phone number, can either feel like a wonderful source of filling the gaps, you know, on trains and while in transit and while walking to the car, perhaps hopefully not while driving, although people seem to do that. And yet for the introvert, I can imagine that it might feel inundating, it might feel kind of overwhelming. How do you feel about text messages? Because it's just yet another form of communication. I asked this for a very particular reason. I could imagine that extroverts love to text message. They love to receive and send text messages that they can't stand a moment of downtime before boarding a plane. They're excited that there's yet another form of communication at all hours of the day and night, whereas introverts would be less excited to text message. I also asked this in part because I want to protect the variable latency to respond to text option that I've tried to exercise in my life, but that seems to. Doesn't really seem to work. I think most people assume, you know, if I walk up to you and I say hello and you wait 10 minutes to say hello back, I'm. I'll first think you're a little bit rude and then think you're a little strange. Whereas if I text you hello and I don't hear back right away, I might think you're busy. There's some, you know, there's some wiggle room for interpretation. But I think what I'm really getting at here is do we tend to project the same latency expectation on texts that we ourselves embrace? This seems like an important source of potential miscommunication, misunderstanding, and maybe worse.

Yeah, I mean, certainly you could imagine also, though, that the introvert might be more comfortable texting because it's, it's less stimulation. So it could work. I think it could work in both directions. I think the problem with text messaging is that it's decreasing emotional intelligence because you really can't communicate the same way through a text message.

Thank you. Can you repeat both those things?

I'm happy to say it a hundred times.

No, because, I mean, I feel this wash of, like, relief. And now I'm looking for the appropriate word because I'm talking to you, so I feel like I have to use the exact appropriate word. I feel like I feel emancipated.

There you go.

Because I also feel that as texting has become more routine and has crossed a number of different lines of formality and informality. Right. Not just with family members, but with coworkers and people we do and don't know and just met and have known for ages, you know, the jargon that we use with one group is different than the jargon we use with another. But I feel that texting in general has really degraded our ability to communicate verbally and in writing elsewhere.

There's good research on even, like, teens right now prefer to text than to be face to face, which is not helpful to building, like Good relationships.

Forgive me. I'm going to interrupt you too. I have no idea what it's like to be a teenager in 2024. So I've caught myself. I have no place saying weird because there were things that I was doing as a teenager that I'm sure adults were like, that's weird.

So I take that back.

But if you're back, if you think about how disconnected and alienated and lonely people feel these days, that's not necessarily going to help make things better. I have an example. You know, when my father passed away a number of years ago, I got all these text messages. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry. From people who I thought were really good friends of mine, like 20, 30 year friends. I'm like, you're not going to pick up the phone and listen to my voice and ask me what can I do to support you right now? It's so strange. And actually one of my closest friends didn't even text me. She texted my assistant and said, please go into Mark's office and tell him that I love him. I'm like, this is really weird. I picked up the phone, I'm like, what is happening? What is happening right now? And people have preconceived notions. Maybe she thought I was overwhelmed and devastated and needed space, but at the same time, make a phone call, leave me a voice message and give me some options. I had one friend, she's like, mark, I know you're going through a lot right now. I just want you to know, if you want to talk, anytime you want to call me, call me. If you want to text, text. If you want me to come out and stay with you for a couple of days, I'm there.

That's an awesome friend.

Yeah, that was exactly what I needed to hear. I wanted someone to offer, provide options or just do. But we're so hesitant these days. It's kind of scary to me and it makes me fearful about the future of our relationships in general.

I think this is such an important topic, I think because texting is so common and has been used to, you know, communicate so many different forms of human emotion in this broad bin format. I mean, how much can you really put into a text? I have some friends and colleagues and you can voice text, which is like.

Then it's like, right, right.

As long and sometimes. Well, there are issues with that too. I feel like it's, it's enriched compared to texting. Unless the text is carefully Written out, punctuated. I mean, we can see the care that people put into certain texts or emails that they tip. And most people, including myself, don't. Right. Texting is a short form. Communication. Audio notes, voice memos seem like a step up. I think what this has probably done is that it's made the phone call or the goodness, the handwritten card or letter, it's kind of raised that to the pinnacle of care of expression completely.

And by the way, text messaging, it's fine. I'll be home in a little while. Can you please pick this up? Whatever. Great. Nothing wrong with text messaging, but when it replaces intimacy, when it replaces building strong bonds, that's where I see the largest problem.

Yeah, I didn't outright set this rule in my relationships, but I would say with my co workers, family members, and in other kinds of relationships, there's a rule which is that we don't argue over text. Yeah, it's not cool, but people do it a lot.

It's easier because you don't have to feel the feelings. That's what it is. You know, it's. I can be psychologically distant from that person and say what I want to say, where if I have to say it face to face, I'm going to have to face a response. And that response may be very uncomfortable for me. And I probably don't have the strategies to deal with it because I never learned them.

You and I are both aware that there is neural real estate specifically dedicated to the processing of faces and specifically to the processing of human faces and specifically to the processing of the emotions carried in human facial expressions. So this is.