Nice Guys

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

   NY Times, Sept. 10, 1995.

   The Decline of the Nice-Guy Quotient

   By Daniel Goleman


   Contrary to conventional wisdom, nice guys do finish first.
   The trouble is, nice guys are harder and harder to find.

   Amid the agonizing over standardized intelligence tests
   comes a new problem to worry about. Psychologists seeking
   a broader measure of intelligence, one that accounts for
   the personality traits that seem to predict success better
   than IQ alone, have discovered that a newly minted virtue
   they call "emotional intelligence" is declining as well.

   A recent study done at Bell Laboratories the high-tech
   think tank near Princeton N.J., found that the most valued
   and productive engineers -- at least among electrical
   engineers working in teams of up to 150 people -- were not
   those with the highest IQs, the highest academic
   credentials or the best scores on achievement tests.

   Instead, the stars were those whose congeniality put them
   at the heart of the informal communication networks that
   would spring up during times of crisis or innovation.

   When these likeable engineers hit a snag and E-mailed for
   help, they got an answer instantly; when others less gifted
   in interpersonal realms sent similar messages, they
   sometimes waited days or weeks for a reply.

   The standouts excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation,
   persuasion and the ability to build consensus among people.

   The new term for these traits is emotional intelligence,
   which, in addition to the social graces, includes the
   ability to read one's own feelings, to control one's own
   impulses and anger, to calm oneself down and to maintain
   resolve and hope in the face of setbacks.

   To predict the success of a financial analyst or
   geophysicist, IQ is still crucial. But within a pool of
   high-lQ people, those with high emotional intelligence will
   have an extra competitive edge.

   Emotional intelligence, like self-knowledge and personal
   charisma, has long been seen as ineffable, more the stuff
   of poets and philosophers than psychometricians. And yet,
   despite all that, the measuring has begun.

   In the mid-1970s, and again in the late 1980s, Thomas
   Achenbach, a psychologist at the University of Vermont, had
   thousands of American children assessed by their parents
   and teachers on a behavioral checklist. He found that over
   the course of that decade and a half, America's children,
   on average, had become more anxious and depressed, more
   impulsive and mean, more demanding and disobedient, more
   hot-tempered and aggressive -- and not just in beleaguered
   urban neighborhoods.

   The study found growing emotional deficits even among the
   children of the wealthiest suburbs. Although the scores
   were worst for the poorest children, the rate of decline
   was the same for all, privileged and impoverished alike.

   Apparently, students continue to be receptive even into
   their teen years. Neuroscientists have found that the
   centers in the prefrontal lobes that control emotional
   impulse are among the last parts of the brain to reach full
   maturity, sometime in mid- to late adolescence.

   Now, at last, from the emotional literacy front there is
   some promising news: Children in the courses show marked
   improvements in the ability to control their impulses, show
   empathy, cooperate with others, manage anger and anxiety,
   focus on a task, pursue goals and resolve conflicts.
   Delinquency, fights and drug use drop.

   And there is an added bonus: achievement test scores rise
   too.

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