Emotional intelligence

After reading the “teaching emotional intelligence in the business school curriculum” article I learnt that having a high emotional intelligence (EI) you have more self-perspective to identify, asses, and control your own emotions and the others. As Frank Belizzi says “ emotions do matter in everyday living,and when recognized and used appropriate-ly can enrich our lives, our relationships and our performance at work. So, having a high emotional intelligence is the primary skill for success at work.

After doing the EIQ test I scored 95 of 115, this means that my emotional intelligence is more o less satisfactory. My scored is what I was expecting because I feel that my ability to understand and deal with my own emotions and the others are acceptable but could still use some improvements. I think I understand much better the other’s emotions than mine because sometime I care too much about people that I do not have time for my own needs. Moreover, I think I need to improve my self-awareness because sometimes I do not appreciate my work and I use to be really strike fulfilling my goals. Perhaps by working a bit more my own problems, I can become more confident in dealing with my own emotions and with the others. I think that developing a high EQ can be important not only for the work success if not for your own privacy live. You are able to know yourself better, exploring who you really are and how you deal with others. Improving your EQ we can improve not only our self-awareness and management but also to behave with better ethical reasoning in our lives.

self-disclosure and social Networking

Self-disclosure is personal information that you shared intentionally that another person would have problems finding out without being told. We negotiate between our privacy or not. You choose to tell another person something about yourself and we also choose how to tell it. However, our privacy and self-disclosure can change when the channel changes. We do not self-disclosure in the same way when we are talking face to face with someone than when we are using a social networking. Many people online are available and seeking companionships. You also have the power to secure a profile of the other person before you exchange personal information. When you are talking with someone on-line who you don’t know you can exchange e-mail and talk on the phone without ever revealing your identity. You are available to ignore a person on-line if you don’t feel like talking. You can know how a person thinks and writes just only checking her or his profile. In addition social Networking match people who have similar qualities, interest, and relationships goals, increasing the chances that you will meet someone with whom you are compatible.
However, Social networking has their disadvantages. the message could be misunderstood and also it could create a conflict. As the article ¨social networking: are we revealing too much” says, in face to face encounters, we regulate what we says according to the facial expressions, body I language and immediate replies we get. In cyberspace, we don’t see those visual cues. Moreover, we have to be careful in what we write in our social networking web because some people may be feigning intrest in you and your profile, manipulating you to gain information, or simply having a good time at your expense. Many people, as McMullen, Tyler from the article, are victims of psychopaths who use social networking pages to find their victims. The suicide of Tyler does not have to make us indifernet. We should be really carefully of what personal information we should or shouldn’t share to the world.

Interpesonal Comunication and Conflict

When I find myself in a conflicting situation I don’t always use the same style to solve it. I use different methods when facing conflicts with my family than my friends. If you ask someone from my family about how I deal with conflicts they will say “ she get’s mad easily, and blames us for everything. Moreover, she never listens to what we say and she always wants to have the last word.“ However if you ask some of my friends you will hear a completely different answer “she is always peaceful and an empathic person who rarely gets mad.” In any case, I make unhealthy choices when solving my problems with both of these behaviors. After reading the “Interpersonal conflict and effective communication” article I would say that I use the empathy approach to resolve my problems when I am dealing with my friends but the denying and blaming approach when I am dealing with my family.

When I have a conflict with a friend, I tend to place myself in his/her shoes to understand him/her. I also try to use the ‘I’ statement to show them that they may be right and that I was wrong. When I try to understand the conflict from my friend’s perspective it helps me to open my mind and to respect his/her point of view without getting angry. Sometimes I just let him/her “win” to avoid the situation, using the defusing technique. However, sometimes I just avoid or deny conflicts with them instead of trying to address them and that tends to create problems in the future. Most of my friends think I never get mad and that everything is fine because I always try to avoid conflict. However, the problem still exists and I just keep it bottled up until I explode and I become angry, sometimes blaming the wrong person.

Something really different happens when I am dealing with someone from my family. Believe it or not, sometimes my behavior is the opposite when I am dealing with a conflict within my family. With my family I use to be the person who never listens to anyone, always getting mad and blaming everyone else. I used to lose my temper with them more often than my friends.

This article helped me understand a lot more about my behavior and how to deal with people in different situations. First of all I would try to balance my behavior between my family and friends. This way I will not bottle up my feelings and I will be able to solve conflicts in a peaceful way. One of the solutions I will try to use from the article is the mutually accord with the people I have a problem with. This would work well because I will try to trust and respect him/her, as well as have a positive, constructive attitude to be able to solve my problems in a peaceful way.

Styles of Listening

My primary approach in terms of styles of listening is a people centered because most of the time I tend to be sympathetic person. Every time someone come to me for advice or tell me their problems I always show interest for others and their feelings. I also considered myself a people centered because I tend to put others before myself in placing myself in their position. One day my friend came crying to my room because a bounch of strangers broke into her house with weapons. I was empathetic to her experiences and I also wanted to ensure her that I would be there for her.


Moreover, one of the drawbacks of being highly sympathetic is that I can find problems when it comes to judging and dealing with people because I believe that everyone has good intensions. This can impair my sense of judgments and ability to discriminate. My good belief in people has brought me to have had some negative experiences with others who unfortunately did not share the same views as me. I used to be associate so strongly with others I do not see limitations and faults,which sometimes can lead unwise relationships.

Technology and Interpersonal Communication.

With the advancements in technology we communicate by internet and we have so many ways to present ourself online. Most of us can be framed by signaling theory, which proposes that we have qualities that we wish to present to others. There are 4 assumptions associated with the way identities are managed online. I am gonna try to relate them to Facebook.

Assuption1: The computer screen can deceive.

As the assumption says, when people are online they often pretend to be someone or something they are not. This is also happening in Facebook. There are people who talk too much by Facebook chat and then when you see them around they don’t say to you a single word. They pretend to be social and open people but in reality when you talk to them they are shy and clouse. There are also people who pretend to be another people. There are people on Facebook that have a fake account just to spay people and to get information of them. Few murders took their victims through websites like Facebook. This can be dangerous and that is why it is very important not to show your real name or address online.

Assumption 2: Online Discussions Often Prompt Introspection.

This assumption applies through the privates messages on Facebook. You can communicate with people by private messages and this message also makes you analyze this messages and thing about it and about our response of that messages. For example my ex-boyfriend broke up with my through a private message. However he never explains himself to me. It makes me think he chose to send me a message because he was afraid to tell me this face to face, and maybe he thought it was better in this way. Even if it was not a good decision, this message makes me think about the past and trying to figure out what happened. Moreover, his message made me get to know him better.
Assumption 3: Online discussions promote self-orientation.
As this assumption says, people communicate at their own convenience, because we have no physical proximity, we are not compelled to interact. This is exactly what happens on facebook you are not interacting face to face with people, and you are able to block people that you don’t want them to communicate with you. You can also choose to ignore people by logging out from Facebook chat and instead choose who to you want to be friends with or read your comments.

Assumption 4; self-disclosure occurs online.

As I said in the assumption 3, you can choose who can see your posts and your information and you can choose how much information you want to make public. There are people who just only have their name on his profile. However, others can share their lives on Facebook, which can include knowing about their religion, relationship, hobbies, address, telephone…etc. As I said all the range of information displayed is dependent upon each individuals personal preferences and level of comfortability.


Other Concepts

Screen Names:

On facebook you can fing a gran variability of screen names. One of them with real names and others not. A screen names can portray an image of you and you desided how you want people perceive you. You can know about their religion, hobbies, music.etc through a simply screen names ( Homosexual32, JulioIglesias45 ,catholic34, MusicForEveR89). Moreover you have to be REALLY carefully with your screen name because it can be offensive for another person.

Abbreviated language:

The new internet language has spread all over the world. New words have appeared as “blog and blogging” and abbreviations like “ Lol (laughs) Omg (O my God) or IDK (I don’t know). However these words provoke problems in our grammatical skills. We have to know when we can or cannot communicate with these words. You cannot e-mail a professor with this vocabulary or write a message to your parents because it wouldn’t be appropriate. Moreover you cannot use it with foreign people because they have their own slang and they don’t understand the American one. For Example, when I came here, a friend texted my using this kind of jargon and I couldn’t understand anything. Nowadays I know almost every word and I also write in this way to my Americans friends.

Adaption Theory

ADAPTION THEORY

People are in continuous interaction with others, and we also receive feedbacks from them. We all begin an interaction with a combination of expectations, requirements and desires. A person’s expectations refer to how they assume another will respond in a given situation. A person’s requirements are how they need the other person to respond; and a person’s desires are how they want the other person to respond. During this week I tried to focus in how this theory works.

Example 1:

Two weeks ago my friend met a guy. We started to hang out with him because she likes him. They were making eye contact all the time and their gestures (smiles, laughs) becoming more intense. When someone wants the the attention of another person keeping the eye contact is really important. As I know my friend well I could perceived that that they like each other. However they were still keeping their distance. This week they started dating each other. At this point they became more affectionate towards each other in public. They were in intimate distance (touching each other, kissing) making obvious that they were together. The distance you keep with someone is really important.You don’t keep the same distance when you are talking with a professor ( long distance) or with a friend or couple (middle-clouse distance).

Example 2:

When my relative told us that she had cancer. Her expression on her face communicated us sadness and her low and shaky voice communicated fair. All of us reacted in a similar way. We were worried about what could be seen in our expressions. One of us was covering his mouth with his hands, while another was biting his nails. We all were upsets and were speechless. We also have the same common thoughts; is she going to get better? What kind of cancer does she has?..etc. Our feelings, thought and actions mirrored each other. We all had a pessimist reaction to our relative’s illness. However, few weeks after my relative was over her illness and she adopted a positive attitude. This positive environment was also transmitted to everyone around her. I remember that a random people ask her about her illness and she was talking about it as it would be a simply cold. The reaction of this person was very different that the reaction that we have at the beginning. He wasn’t as worried as us because she looked healthier and more vital than before. She was able to talk without problems about it and she had no concern about it. This is exactly what she wanted to communicate people: that cancer, a taboo word for many people, shouldn’t transmit fear but hope and strong to get over it.
The way we communicate with people, through words and nonverbal words, can give us different reactions depending on how we speak and on our facial expressions. Words and nonverbal communication are really powerful and they can manipulate people in a good or bad way. My relative, as Mr.Paush, were strong people with the purpose to communicate a positive environment to everyone. Showing that even if they had an illness they could live and be happy as normal people do.

Example 3;

This week I talked with my mother through Skipe. We are really close and my mother can tell quickly if there is something wrong just by observing my gestures. I used to talk to with my mother a lot and tell her everything that is happening here. However, this time I didn’t tell her anything or make eye contact. During the conversation, I covered my eyes with my hands and most of the time I was quiet. After a while my mother started to ask me if I was okey. At the end I told her it was only an experiment to figure out if people can perceive how a person is feeling through gestures.

Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors

I got a score of 108. I am 6 points above than the average score of Women College.It doesn’t surprise me because I am talkative and sociable and I use to express myself through a lot of nonverbal behaviors. I am really expressive and people quickly perceive when something is bothering me or not. Moreover, I come from another country where culture is quite different of the American’s one .
I think my results are related to my Spanish culture. People in Spain have a different culture. We are friendly and sociable,that’s why I think my results are above the normal. For example, we use to kiss each other when we meet some random people. Something unusual in the USA. When I came here, my friend introduced me a guy and when I went to kiss him he avoided me and he gave me his hand instead. Moreover, we use to say “hi” “bye” “good morning” and “good afternoon” to everyone and everywhere you go. It’s something impolite for Spanish people if you go somewhere and you don’t say anything. However here is completely different. One day I was washing my hands in the bathroom when one girl came. Unconsciously I said “good morning” and she responded “Do I know you??” . I was freaking out. At the beginning I though she just was weird because her behavior didn’t fit on my way to think. However after a while here in the USA I realized that everyone acts like this, it’s just their culture.

In conclusion, I think this test is useful to describe your personality and your way to communicate with people. Obviously if you are shy your results would be lower than if you are not. Moreover, I think that my results say a lot about my Spanish culture and I am pretty sure that they would be different If I would have grown up in an American culture.