Social Learning Through Emotional Intelligence

Social Learning Through Emotional Intelligence

Written by: Dr. Gandham Sri Rama Krishna

Published in International Journal of Management, Marketing and HRD, Westwind Publishing House, Mumbai, January, 2015, Vol.1, Issue.10, PP.14-20, ISSN:2321-8622.   

Abstract

In social learning and clinical psychology, the effect of behaviour has an impact on the motivation of people to engage in a specific behaviour. People wish to avoid negative consequences, while desiring positive results or effects. If one expects a positive outcome from a behaviour or thinks there is a highly probability of a positive outcome, then there will be more likely to engage in that behaviour. The behaviour is reinforced, with positive outcomes, leading a person to repeat the behaviour. Social learning suggests that a combination of environmental and psychological factors influence behaviour. On the other hand, an emotional intelligence is the area of cognitive ability involving traits and social skills that facilitate interpersonal behaviour. Intelligence can be broadly defined as the capacity for goal-oriented adaptive behaviour; Emotional intelligence focuses on the aspects of intelligence that govern self-knowledge and social adaptations. Individual skills at accurately gauging affective responses in others are usually talented at choosing socially adaptive behaviours, in their response.

Key words: Social Emotional Learning, Clinical Psychology, Emotional Intelligence.

Introduction

Social learning is learning that takes place at a wider scale than individual or group learning, up to a societal scale, through social interaction between peers. It may or may not lead to a change in attitudes and behaviour (Reed et.al, 2010). On the other hand, social emotional learning (SEL) is a process for learning life skills, including how to deal with oneself, others and relationships, and how to work in an effective manner in dealing with oneself. Social emotional learning helps in recognizing individual emotions and in managing those feelings (http://casel.org).    

Social learning theory establishes that human behaviour is influenced and affected by the individual behaviour and environment. Every person affects as well as gets affected by this triadic relationship. The theory establishes that each individual possesses the capacity to symbolize, develop self directed forethought and learn from his/her and others individual experiences (Schunk and Pajares, 2002). The self regulating system represents a process that is affected by     interdependent relationship between behaviour, personal experience and environment (Bandura, 2001). This relationship becomes a triadic interrelation that influences motivation and self-beliefs.

The self system is a part of self-regulatory system that each individual possess. The self-regulatory system aids in the development of beliefs and behaviour that will enable or discount actions. Various researches have shown that self regulatory behaviour can account for academic achievement (Pajare, 1994). As a part of this self-regulatory system, Bandura introduced the concept of self- efficacy. He defines self-efficacy as an essential part of the human functioning reciprocally motivating and perpetuating the individual’s behavior.

Bandura (2001) explains the process of thought and action as regulated by a self system that enables individuals to exercise control of their thoughts, feelings and actions. Pajare (1994) describes the self system as one that “houses one’s cognitive and affective structures and includes the ability to symbolize, learn from others, plan alternative strategies, regulate one’s own behavior and engage in self-reflection”. The self system is a self-regulatory sub-system that mediates the influences of each of the triadic parts of individual’s behavior, thoughts, feelings and motivation. Based on the results of the interactions between environment, personal characteristics and beliefs, the individual’s likelihood of similar actions to

occur increases. Each person affects his/her environment and is influenced by his/her actions. The thoughts resulting from this interrelationship becomes a mediator between knowledge and behaviour. Each person’s experience forms an important part in the development of self-regulation (Bandura, 2001).

The individual therefore accumulates perception about his or her performances that influence his/her self-belief. Through this bi-directional reciprocal process, the individual is in control of his thoughts, environment and behaviour. The self system is composed of experiences and beliefs that each person forms from his/her abilities. According to Bandura self-efficacy is the concept by which each person’s experiences, abilities and thoughts merges into one road.

According to Social Learning Theory, models are an important source for learning new behaviours and for achieving behavioural change in institutionalized settings. Social learning theory is derived from the work of Albert Bandura which proposed that observational learning can occur in relation to 3 models.

·        Lives model – In this model an actual person demonstrates the desired behaviour.

·        Verbal instruction – Here an individual describes the desired behaviour in detail and instructs the participant in how to engage in the behaviour.

·        Symbolic – In this modeling occurs by means of the media, including movies, television, internet, literature and radio. This type of modeling involves a real or factional character demonstrating the behaviour.

An important factor of Bandura’s social learning emphasises on reciprocal determinism. This notion states that an individual’s behaviour is influenced by the environment and characteristics of the person. In other words, a person’s behaviour, environment and personal qualities all reciprocally influence each other. Bandura proposed that the modeling process involves several steps:

·        Attention – In order to learn something, an individual must pay attention to the features of the modeled behaviour.

·        Retention – Humans need the ability to remember details of the behaviour in order to learn and later reproduce the behaviour.

·        Reproduction – In reproducing behaviour, an individual must organize his or her responses in accordance with the model behaviour. This ability can improve with practice.

·        Motivation – There must be an incentive or motivation driving the individual’s reproduction of the behaviour. Even if all of the above factors are present, the person will not engage in the behaviour without motivation.

 In social learning and clinical psychology, Rotter (1954) suggests that the effect of behaviour has an impact on the motivation of people to engage in that specific behaviour. People wish to avoid negative consequences, while desiring positive results or effects. If one expects a positive outcome from a behaviour or thinks there is a highly probability of a positive outcome, then there will be more likely to engage in that behaviour. The behaviour is reinforced, with positive outcomes, leading a person to repeat the behaviour. This social learning theory suggests that behaviour is influenced by these environmental factors or stimuli and not psychological factors alone.

Albert Bandura expanded on Rotter’s idea, as well as the earlier work of Miller and Dollard. This theory incorporates aspects of behavioural and cognitive learning. Behavioural learning assumes that people’s environment cause people to behave in certain ways. Cognitive learning presumes that psychological factors are important for influencing how individual behaves. Social learning suggests that a combination of environmental and psychological factors influence behaviour.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the innate potential to feel, communicate recognize, remember, describe, identify, learn from, manage, understand and explain emotions. (Laure, 2010). Emotional Intelligence is the area of cognitive ability involving traits and social skills that facilitate interpersonal behaviour. Intelligence can be broadly defined as the capacity for goal-oriented adaptive behaviour; Emotional Intelligence focuses on the aspects of intelligence that govern self-knowledge and social adaptations.

The term first appeared in 1985, in Wayne Payne’s  Doctoral thesis, “A study on Emotion: Developing Emotional Intelligence”. Payne’s thesis centered on the idea that society’s historical repression of emotion is the source of wide-scale problems such as addiction, depression, illness, religious conflict, violence and war.  

Goleman (2001) describes emotional intelligence as “managing feelings so that they are expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly toward their common goals”. According to Goleman, the four major skills that makeup emotional intelligence is; self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, and relationship management.

Psychologists have identified a variety of intelligence over the years (Gardner,1998). Most of these can be grouped into one of three clusters;

·        Abstract intelligence is an ability to understand and manipulate verbal and mathematical symbols,

·        Concrete intelligence is an ability to understand and manipulate objects.

·        Social intelligence is an ability to understand and relate to people (Ruisel,1992).

The Conceptualization of Emotional Intelligence:

Mental processes include appraisal and expression of emotion in the self, which suggest that people skilled in this process can recognize and so respond more appropriately, to their own emotions. Such emotionally intelligent individuals can better express these emotions to others. They also tend to be more talented at recognizing others’ emotional reactions, thus produces empathic responses to them. Individual skills at accurately gauging affective responses in others are usually talented at choosing socially adaptive behaviours, in their response. Thus others should see them as warm and genuine. In contrast, individuals who lack such skills can often appear impolite or diffident.

Emotional intelligent individuals are said to be particularly adept at regulating emotion. This process is often used as a means to meet particular goals, as it can lead to more adaptive mood states. In other words such emotionally

intelligent individuals may improve their moods and moods of others’. As a result, they can even go far as motivating others to achieve worthwhile objectives. Sometimes, however, these skills are sometimes channelled anti-socially and are used to manipulate others.

Finally, emotional intelligence can be utilized in problem solving. Fred O Walumbwa (2011) proposed that individuals tend to differ greatly in their ability to organize their emotions, in order to solve problems. Both emotions and moods have a subtle influence over the strategies involved in problem solving. They come to the conclusion that positive mood enables a greater degree of flexibility in future planning, which enables better preparation for making the most of future opportunities; similarly they claimed that a good mood is beneficial in creative thinking, as it increases an individual’s ability for developing category organizing principles. Unfortunately, the reverse of these abilities have a tendency to hold true for individuals in negative moods.

Moods may also be used to motivate one in the face of a challenge. Some people can positively channel their anxiety experienced in situations, such as exams, while others may imagine the possibility of failure, to better motivate themselves. In general, individuals with an optimistic attitude towards life construct interpersonal experiences, which result in improved outcome for themselves and those around them. All in all it can be said that emotionally intelligent individuals will be at an advantage in adaptively solving problems that are encountered in life.

Bhagavad Gita quotes “Do your duty,

It is not your duty to think of its result.”

Emotional Control

In psychology, the word emotion stands for a state of excitement in an organism. Emotion is derived from the Latin word ‘movere’ which means to stir up, to agitate or to excite. Emotions in general include happiness, surprise, love, fondness, affection, faith, compassion, devotion, anxiety, jealousy, rage, fear, hatred, horror, humiliation, apathy etc.

Emotions play an important role in life and contribute to the personal and social development of an individual. Continuous emotional disturbance affects the individual’s growth and development and gives rise to mental, physical, social and other problems. It hampers intellectual training. On the other hand, an emotionally stable individual leads a happy, healthy and peaceful life. He is at ease with himself, his surroundings and other fellow beings. Therefore, the development of emotions is extremely important for the harmonious development of the personality of an individual. Emotions influence all the aspects of an individual’s personality. Proper training and education will go a long way to enable the young people to control their emotions and obtain mental balance and stability. Emotions are the prime motive forces of thought and conduct and their control is very important. It has been rightly said, “To keep one’s emotions under control and be able to conceal them is considered a mark of strong character.

Emotions are the basic facets of individual since the expressions of feelings are vital as well as indispensable. Expression of emotions can be considered as the most fundamental need which is quite similar to the need for food, water or sleep. Emotions are aggregations of the personal subjective experiences and individual behaviour. Emotions play a significant role in guiding and directing our behaviour. Many times they seem to dominate us in such a way that we have no solution other than behaving as they want us to. Charles G. Morris stated “emotion is a complex affective experience that involves diffuse physical changes and can be expressed overtly in characteristic behaviour patterns”.

·        Emotional symptoms: These are persistent anxiety, intense conflicts and tensions, fear, hatred, jealousy, anger, inferiority complex, extreme timidity, temper-tantrum and excessive worry.

·        Signs of emotions: Emotions may be external or physiological and internal or psychological. Important signs of emotions in an individual are: increase in heart rate, rise in blood pressure, occurrence of changes in blood composition, increase in respiration, hair standing on end, dilution of eye pupil, increase in muscle tension, and increase in perspiration etc.

·        Emotional tolerance: Frustration, fear, jealousy, and envy-these are the four unpleasant emotions which everyone will inevitable face and must learn to tolerate.

·        Emotional expressions: How the person expressions his emotions affects his personality both directly and indirectly. The direct effect comes from the ability to emotional expression to clear the system of the excess energy aroused to meet the situation that stimulated the emotions. Indirect emotional expression affect the personality pattern by influencing the judgments others make of the person.

·        Emotional balance: In which the pleasant emotions outweigh the unpleasant, is essential to good personal and social adjustment and to happiness.

·        Emotional catharsis: Most individuals learn to repress the overt expressions of emotions that would lead to unfavourable social judgments. It is recognized that successful purging of the mind and body of pent-up emotional energy requires both physical and mental catharsis.

·        Emotional stress: Emotional stress is a generalized state of heightened emotionally which eventually becomes habitual.

·        Emotional climate: The emotional climate of the home directly influences the person’s characteristic pattern of behaviour and his characteristic adjustment to life. If the home climate is favourable, the individual will react to personal problems and frustration in a calm, cooperative way. If the home climate is frictional, he will develop the habit of reacting to family members and outsiders as well as a hostile or antagonistic way. While the emotional climate of the school has a strong influence on personality.

·        Emotional bank account: Deposits are smile, calling by a person his/her name and remember the names, listening, compassion, and appreciation. Withdrawals are, not criticizing others directly or indirectly and not  blaming others. Therefore you always can take the interest on deposits in your account by withdrawing unnecessary emotions and criticizes.

·        Affective Events Theory (AET): It demonstrates that employees react emotionally to things that happen to them at work and this influences their job performance and satisfaction.

·        Get rid of emotional stress: Dr. John A. Schindler has suggested the following practical aids for doing so: (I) Practical thought control. (ii). Turn every defeat into a moral victory (iii). When the things going are good and smooth, allow yourself the delightful feeling of being happy. (iv) Avoid the felling of misfortune through your mind which is like a repeating phonograph record.

Emotions can be categorized into two kinds – positive and negative emotions. Emotions like love, affection, fondness, faith, devotion, compassion, amusement, curiosity, happiness and joy which are very helpful and essential to the normal behaviour are termed as positive emotions. Whereas, unpleasant emotions like anger, fear, rage, hatred, horror, anxiety and jealousy which are harmful to the individual’s development are termed as negative emotions.

Napoleon Hill observers,

“Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind

at the same time. One or the other must dominate.”

It should be borne in mind that it is not to assume that all the positive emotions are always good and the negative emotions are bad. Excess of anything is bad. Whether an emotion will prove to be helpful or harmful to an individual depends upon the frequency and intensity of emotional experience. Emotions with too much intensity and frequency whether positive or negative bring harmful effects.

In emotional capabilities, no one is inferior to anyone. Once again it all depends on what sort of expectations you have for yourself. If you expect to be depressed, anxious, afraid, angry, then you will make these conditions regular parts of your life. You are what you choose to be yourself, and if you stop expecting emotional upset and instability, you will begin to take on the traits of a fully functioning personality.

Conclusion

          The article highlights all about emotions, emotional intelligence and how they influence the social learning. Social learning to a large extent depends on a combination of environmental and psychological factors. So learning about emotions, emotional intelligence, their effects and how to control them helps in improving our personality as well as social adaptability. There is a saying that “He who can manage himself can manage anything”. Managing oneself is nothing but managing the feeling and having a control over them. And here feelings are nothing but the emotions both negative and positive which influence a person’s behaviour. Here the emotional intelligence which focuses on the aspects of intelligence that govern self-knowledge and social adaptability is very much useful in adaptive problem solving that is encountered in life.

As emotions are inevitable and unavoidable in humans, there is a need for all humans to know about emotional intelligence which helps them in social learning, managing their emotions, inculcating adaptability which leads to a happy and peaceful life.   

Reference  

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3.     Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maists (2013),Understanding Psychology, Pearson Publishers.

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13.                   http://casel.org