A passionate and richly readable plan for extending the reach of emotional intelligence.
A psychotherapist calls for heightening the social equity elements of emotional intelligence.
“Emotional intelligence is a vital muscle that needs continuous strength training,” writes Harris in her nonfiction book, referring to the concept first popularized by Daniel Goleman in his 2006 bestseller, Emotional Intelligence. “Yet we consistently miss how this skill set is much deeper, broader, and richer than how it has been taught.” Harris contends that one of the main ways the concept of emotional intelligence can be enhanced is to make it more responsive to elements of race and diversity. From her point of view as a psychotherapist and counselor, she sees the typical presentation of emotional intelligence as incomplete. “The techniques taught to us are of limited use or inefficient for clients we serve who aren’t White,” she writes. “Can we actively serve our clients well when we try to make them fit into a box that was never designed for them?” At the core of this broader awareness is of course empathy, which the author views as “an emotional intelligence competency.” She uses empathy to skillfully ground the helpful “EQ-Tips” and “EQ Review” sections that fill her chapters on expanding emotional intelligence and social awareness considerations to include disabled, neurodivergent, and marginalized people of all kinds. Harris is a tremendously engaging guide to all this, always managing to strike a well-balanced tone between fervent optimism and tough realism. “Healthy” doesn’t always mean “happy,” she reminds her readers. They might not like working out or reviewing their monthly budgets, but it’s certainly healthy do so. And although her diversity points are well made, her underlying message of empathy and greater understanding will be applicable to readers in all situations.
A passionate and richly readable plan for extending the reach of emotional intelligence.Pub Date: April 26, 2023
ISBN: 9798987763902
Page Count: 238
Publisher: WorkingWell Daily, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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