Results for “Marc Brackett”

One is: Do I trust you with my feelings? Do I think that you're going to be a listener who is non-judgmental, or do I think you're going to judge me—'Marc is weak because he's anxious,' or 'Marc is a man and he's feeling sad; dudes don't feel sad.' So if I think you're going to judge me for my feelings, I'm going to be much more guarded about whether or not I express them.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

We tend to go deeper with that in terms of specific facial expressions, body language, and vocal tone. And I think what's important to know there is that we often make a lot of mistakes when we're reading other people's emotions because we bring in our own cultural values, our own belief systems, and we oftentimes project emotions onto people as opposed to really knowing how they're feeling.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

Depression is depression. Despair is despair. Disappointment is disappointment, and I think it's important for us to have that emotional granularity. Because if I just walk around like the world is right now, 'I'm anxious, I'm anxious,' but I have a hard time believing that everyone is that anxious. I think it's because we don't have granularity in our understanding of emotions, and so we're not communicating our true experiences accurately.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

Because it's giving us information about how we're feeling and what we need to do about those feelings. When I'm looking at your facial expressions, I get signals—like either you're interested or you're bored. Either you want me to keep going or not. And that's data for me. Because if I notice a shift in the way you're engaging with me while I'm speaking, I could either use that information, or I could keep going and going and going, and then lose my audience.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

I think this goes into the history of psychology; for example, 100 years ago, we couldn't even measure what an emotion is. It's something in your head and in your brain, and we were always used to measuring behaviour, not people's psychological experiences. So just from that alone, it became less important because it wasn't observable behaviour, as if what people are thinking and feeling doesn't matter—which is obviously crazy; it does matter.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

When we have the vocabulary to describe our feelings, we can create a mental model in our brains around our experiences. I'm feeling anxious because I'm uncertain about the outcome.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

We have an emotion categorization for a reason. Anger is about injustice, disappointment is about unmet expectations, and when you feel pride, it's because you've achieved some kind of goal you've been working hard for.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

Be a curious explorer of other people's emotions. Don't approach people as if you know how they're feeling. We often make mistakes when reading other people's emotions because we bring in our own cultural values and belief systems.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

It's awareness that leads to regulation—that's why it's information. Because it's giving us information about how we're feeling and what we need to do about those feelings.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

So emotional intelligence says no, that's incorrect. We used to see emotions as weak because when we think about feelings, we don't think about joy and contentment; we think about anger, anxiety, and depression. Most people think of those as bad feelings that we want to ignore, suppress, or deny.

Psychologist & Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence