Homework Week 5

1. How do positive and negative emotions affect cognition (e.g., attention, focus, creativity, judgment, memory)?

The article written by Isen et al. mainly explains the link between positive or negative emotions and creativity.  As a result of the Duncker's Candle Test and the Remote Associates Test both show that positive emotions enhance creativity.  The experiments cited in this paper also show that induced negative emotions do not affect on the participants ability to respond creatively.  However, on page 1129 of the article it does mention that negative affect was only induced in one of the experiments and only by one method.  There may have just been something about that particular method that brought about the observed results.  There is a possibility that another method for inducing negative emotions could have more of an impact on the participants creativity.

2. How does EI help us engage others (e.g., be sensitive to our OWN emotions AND the emotions of OTHERS)?

Emotional Intelligence helps us engage others in multiple ways.  From the paper, three aspects of emotional intelligence stood out to me as being the most helpful in these.  First off, the article mentions that EI enables one to monitor emotions in relation to oneself and others.  This in itself is making people more aware of other people's emotions.  By monitoring your surroundings you are being more sensitive and observant of them.  Second, EI enables one to manage emotions in oneself and others.  This ability allows us to respond to other people's emotions more appropriately.  We are able to monitor their emotions and manage our own so that we can react respectively and appropriately.  Lastly,EI allows us to express our emotions accurately.  This is a very simple concept but by being able to do this, we can express our needs and feelings to one another.  This makes it easier for us to engage people because we better understand what they want or need.  When their needs or wants are made more clear it is that much easier to be sensitive to them.

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?

Both the Isen and Matthew/McLeod articles reminded me of the article discussing activity in the different sides of the frontal lobe and its impact on affective style.  While reading this week's papers, I found myself occasionally wondering if these different ideas were connected.  For example, while reading about the biases towards anxiety I wondered if that was potentially linked with people who had a negative affective style.

Also, the paper written on emotional intelligence made me think of Lazarus.  This is because, the article explains that EI gives us the ability to monitor emotions of other people where as Lazarus wrote about how monitoring our situation (cognitive appraisal) gave rise to our emotions.  I found myself, while reading this paper, wondering if these concepts are contradictory or similar.  Potentially cognitive appraisal is just another way of describing an aspect of emotional intelligence.

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?

The paper on creativity most clearly connects to my outside world.  I feel that this article had some information that is very beneficial to know.  If it is possible to control one's ability to solve problems creatively, I think it is important to harness that capability and take advantage of it.  I think it would be helpful for everyone to know about this because it can help them be more effectively and efficient in problem solving and decision making.

The information about emotional intelligence also connects well to the outside world.  It is interesting to understand how our ability to express, understand and manage our emotions changes as we grow.  This would be helpful for anyone who spends a lot of time with children.  It can help the children expand their abilities but also allow the adults better understand where the children are coming from when they react in a certain way.