Assignment 5

1. How do positive and negative emotions affect cognition (e.g., attention, focus, creativity, judgment, memory)?
According to research by Matthews and MacLeod, people who are more disposed to be anxious tend to focus more on negative stimuli and interpret ambiguous stimuli as negative. This has an impact on attention, focus and judgement. Also, according to research by Isen, it has been shown that creativity can be boosted by positive emotions.


2. How does EI help us engage others (e.g., be sensitive to our OWN emotions AND the emotions of OTHERS)?
By understanding how emotions better we are capable of recognizing emotions faster. Also, we would know how to respond to particular emotions better.

Consider mathematics as an analogy. You could (although difficult) solve each math problem by building up mathematics from its roots each time. This is inefficient and burdensome. Once we know how to solve certain problems we can apply either algorithms or heuristics to help us solve future problems.

Engaging with people works similarly. By being away of emotions (knowing what kind of math problems exist) and knowing how to respond to these emotions (using algorithms or heuristics in math) will help us better communicate and respond to others.

3. Integration:
a. Connect the readings to content: How does this information relate to or connect with other information? What additional previous content can be connect? How?


This reading is very connected to ideas about emotional development as well as origins of emotion.

Evolution - The positive, negative effects of emotion on our cognition could have developed to help our ancestors survive. Negative emotions such as fear or anger could have primed our ancestors to be more wary and careful in dangerous situations. Emotional intelligence could have developed to promote group affinity and synchronization. People fare better in groups after all.  

Development - It is interesting to watch children gain more emotional intelligence. In a previous article we saw how some kids who talked about their emotions more to their parents or siblings (ie developed a better emotional intelligence) were better able to tease (ie take advantage of) others because they could understand their emotions better.

b. Connect the readings to the world: How does what you read connect to the world outside of your formal education or professional practice? Why? What difference does it make? Who else needs to know this information? What are the potential implications?


These readings show us that emotions are not something that is tacked onto human beings. They are fully integrated into us and affect how we operate, do day to day activities, and engage with others. Emotions can have a tremendous impact on our activities. Imagine an Olympic athlete. They train daily and push their body to the limits just to improve their performance by fractions of units. According to these articles, athletes like this should put alot of consideration into how their emotions will impact their performance. By increasing their Emotional intelligence they will be more away of how different emotions will impact them and to optimize these impacts. The same generalizes to the public of course.

Again, please allow the readings to inform your responses.