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CHAPTER 4
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ATTITUDES, AND HAPPINESS
CHAPTER OUTLINE AND LECTURE NOTES
Emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, figures into success in business. Related
aspects of using emotion constructively are attitudes and happiness.
I. WHAT IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE?
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to accurately perceive emotions, to
understand the signals that emotions send about relationships, and to manage
emotions.
A. Key Components of Emotional Intelligence
The key components of emotional intelligence are:
1. Self-awareness. The ability to understand moods, emotions, and needs as well
2. Self-management. The ability to control one’s emotions and act with honesty
and integrity in a consistent and acceptable manner.
4. Relationship management. The interpersonal skills of being able to
communicate clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong
personal bonds.
Emotional intelligence thus incorporates many of the skills and attitudes
necessary to achieve effective interpersonal relations in organizations.
observes.
Studies suggest that low emotional employees are more likely than their high
emotional intelligence counterparts to experience negative emotional reactions to
job insecurity. Workers with low emotional intelligence are more likely to engage
in negative coping behaviors, such as expressing anger and verbally abusing the
it should take into account both the motivation of the individual and the setting, or
context For example, if you like someone you might react to him or her with a
higher degree of emotional intelligence.
Possible cross-cultural differences exist about what constitutes effective
emotional intelligence, such as British people being more emotionally reserved.
thing, or a situation). The feeling or affective component refers to the emotion
connected with an object or task. The behavioral component refers to how a
person acts, or the behavior taken on a subject.
Cognitive dissonance is the situation in which the pieces of knowledge,
information, attitudes, or beliefs held by an individual are contradictory. When a
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4-3
Attitudes are usually based on experience, and are formed in such ways as,
• Receiving direct instruction from another individual.
• Conditioning or making associations.
• The way we think about things – our cognitions.
• A person’s standing on the personality trait of optimism.
C. The Importance of Job Satisfaction and Positive Attitudes
Positive attitudes have always been the foundation of effective human relations.
The assumption is that when employees are in a positive mood, they are typically
more creative, better motivated to perform well, and more helpful toward
coworkers. Workers with genuine positive attitudes will accrue many benefits
such as being liked by customers, closing more sales, receiving good
performance reviews, receiving favorable work assignments, and being
choose to focus your attention.
E. How Companies Encourage Positive Attitudes and Job Satisfaction
Positive attitudes and job satisfaction contribute to better customer service, less
absenteeism and tardiness, less turnover, and often higher productivity. A Society
for Human Resources Management Survey indicates that the major drivers of
company, even if such act does not lead to an immediate reward. A key aspect of
organizational citizenship behavior is personal support—assisting others in the
workplace through the use of interpersonal skills. Personal support has four sub-
dimensions: helping, courtesy, cooperating, and motivating.
III. HAPPINESS AND HOW CAN IT BE ACQUIRED AND ENHANCED
(2) interpersonal life including loved ones, (3) physical and mental health, (4)
financial health, (5) interests and pastimes, and (6) spiritual life or belief system.
See Figure 4-5 for the Spheres-of-Life Model of Happiness.
For the long range, a state of happiness is dependent on all six spheres working in
harmony. This model is consistent with the theme of this text. People vary with
how much importance they attach to each sphere of life. Yet a gross deficiency in
any one sphere detracts from happiness. Life stage can also influence which
spheres are most important.
Have students visit the Psychology Today website to assess how happy they are at
http://psychologytoday.psychtests.com/cgi-
bin/health/transfer_health.cgi?partner=pt&test=happiness
1. Give High Priority to the Pursuit of Happiness.
3. Develop and Maintain Friendships with Happy People.
5. Appreciate the Joys of Day-to-Day Living. (A major obstacle to happiness is
6. Be Fair, Kind, Helpful, and Trust Others.
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4-5
7. Have Recreational Fun in your Life.
8. Learn to Cope with Grief, Disappointment, Setbacks, and Stress.
10. Satisfy your Most Important Values.
12. Lead a Meaningful Life.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW
4.1 What has one of your professors or instructors done recently to demonstrate good
emotional intelligence in dealing with students?
4.2 Describe what a business executive, entertainer, or well-known athlete has done recently
to demonstrate low emotional intelligence. Explain your reasoning.
Many NFL players continue to display low emotional intelligence in such matters as
4.3 Imagine yourself as a manager or team leader. What could you do to make positive use of
emotional intelligence contagion with the people in your group?
4.4 Imagine that a marketing specialist believes that his marketing vice president is an ideal
boss, and an honorable and ethical person. He finds out one morning that the boss has
been arrested for drunk driving and the possession of illegal drugs. How might the
marketing specialist reduce this situation of cognitive dissonance?
4.5 How is a person supposed to maintain a positive attitude when major things in life are
going wrong, such as a job loss, a personal bankruptcy, a broken relationship, or the
premature death of a loved one?
4.6 Why do people often feel better when working with coworkers and a supervisor who
have positive attitudes?
4.7 Not every human relations specialist is convinced that high job satisfaction leads to high
productivity. What is your experience about the relationship between enjoying your job
and your personal productivity?
4.8 Visualize yourself in your present or future job. How might you demonstrate
organizational citizenship behavior in such a way as not to appear too obvious that you
want to receive credit for being a good organizational citizen?
4.9 Assume that you are a business owner who is granted $20,000 to improve company
productivity, and you are given two alternatives: software to improve operating efficiency
or happiness training for employees. Make a choice and explain your reasoning.
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A key issue in answering this question is whether the software and the happiness training
both produce the intended results. A frequent problem with software for improving
operating efficiency is that is not implemented well or used frequently enough. A
frequent problem with happiness training is that the participants do not practice the
principles they learn. If the happiness training is truly effective, it might have more far-
reaching impact on business results than would the software. Customers would be more
satisfied, turnover would be reduced, and employees would be frequently on the alert to
find ways of improving operating efficiencies.
4.10 Happiness researchers agree that having a high income is not necessarily associated with
happiness. Yet at the same time, activities that bring happiness, such as dining in
restaurants, or taking vacations with family and friends, require considerable money.
How does a person resolve this conflict?
A practical way to resolve this conflict if a person lacks a high income (or inherited
wealth) is to look for low-price substitutes for such activities as dining in restaurants and
taking vacations. Many people now dine in family restaurants and diners as a substitute
for high-price restaurants. And camping surges in popularity with each recession. Also,
people can lower the frequency with which they dine in restaurants and take travel
vacations.
COMMENTS ON EXERCISES AND CASES
Self-Assessment Quiz 4-1: My Tendencies toward Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Taking this scale will give the serious student an opportunity to think through his or her
tendencies toward organizational citizenship behavior. Recognizing the importance of becoming
a good organizational citizen could have a major impact on a person’s career.
Self-Assessment Quiz 4-2: The Happiness Checklist
Whether or not the Happiness Checklist is a highly valid measure of happiness it does get at
basic aspects of happiness. Again, we strongly emphasize the importance of students using some
of the statements as a call to action. For example, if a person agrees with item 3 about having no
interests outside of work or school, his or her happiness will probably be blocked until at least
one intense interest is found.
Self-Assessment Quiz 4-3: My Decision Outcome and Happiness
This quiz provides an interesting twist on happiness. Many aggressive people want to maximize
gain when they make decisions, yet Schwartz et al have found that the satisfiers tend to be
happier with the decisions they have made. Could this mean that celebrity trial lawyers tend to be
an unhappy a lot because they attempt to maximize gains for their clients?
Applying Human Relations Exercise 4.1: Enhancing Your Emotional Intelligence
A key assumption underlying this exercise is that a substantial part of emotional intelligence is
based on learning rather than genetics. The exercise also assumes than long-standing habits and
other patterns of behaviors can be modified during adulthood. The steps involved in improving
emotional intelligence include the key components of obtaining feedback on a particular
behavior, consciously attempting to adjust the behavior, and then receiving feedback about how
well the changes went.
The documentation part of improving emotional intelligence is a good procedure to follow
for the development of other human relation skills also. Recording how people react to the
“changed you” is particularly valuable.
Applying Human Relations Exercise 4.2: Achieving Happiness
The dividend for successfully implementing this exercise is a lifetime of happiness, assuming the
exercise is valid. An important feature of the exercise is demonstrating that happiness is under
one’s control. The results obtained from this exercise will vary somewhat depending on the
person’s current level of satisfaction with life. People who are not chronically dissatisfied will
get the most leverage from this exercise.
All the steps in this exercise are realistic to implement. Step 1 is feasible because most
people can find five minutes in the morning for positive thought and visualization. Step 2,
making a list of five virtues, is doable for most people. Step 3, about incorporating the new virtue
into your life, will take a little more time. Step 4 about looking for three positive qualities about
contacts, should flow smoothly. Step 5, listing positive qualities about people one dislikes, takes
some work at first, but is a wonderful perception to develop. Step 6 requires the same type of
effort as the previous step. Step 7 about looking at problems as opportunities can also be done
with practice and only requires a few minutes of reflective thought.
Human Relations Class Activity: The World’s Happiest Person
Perhaps this exercise will help answer the question on many people’s mind, “Why is this person
so happy?” People are happy for many different reasons, yet the reasons will almost always fit
4.11 How should Miguel respond to the comments from Bart?
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Miguel might point out that he is trying to do whatever he can to help the organization,
but also explain the he will take the feedback seriously that should be more careful about
how much time this activity is detracting from his own work.
4.12 What is your evaluation of Miguel’s efforts to be a good organizational citizen?
4.13 What do you recommend that Miguel do to balance the demands of this job with his
desire to be a good organizational citizen?
4.14 What is your evaluation of Margot’s plan for attaining happiness on the job?
4.15 Give Margot two more suggestions for attaining happiness through her work.
Margot is on the right track in her plan for happiness with her statement, “Each month,
think through all the good a property and casual insurance company does for society.” This
is true because the statement focuses on finding meaning in life. Two more suggestions: (a)
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Prior to this class, break students into groups of 2-3 students. Prepare 3 X 5 cards with each of
the following topics on it:
• Emotional Intelligence
• Positive Attitudes
• Negative Attitudes
• Organizational Citizenship Behavior
• Happiness
• (Make more than one card per topic until there are enough for each group)
Have the student groups bring in brief video clips to demonstrate the topic on their card. Groups
should also be prepared to explain why they selected the clips they show.
.
