WFED410:

Lesson 03: Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

The Emotional Brain

Recent neuroanatomical research, including the mapping of physical locations of various brain functions, has significantly increased our understanding of how the human brain works. Rather than a unified entity, the brain is composed of anatomically distinct parts in which specific functions are localized.[13] Cognition and emotions are interwoven in mental life, especially in complex decision-making, self-awareness, and interpersonal functioning. The different parts of our brain have different characteristics; although their neural connections allow them to influence each other, they are able to operate independently of each other.

Emotional competencies are ones that combine thought and feeling… The tight orchestration of thought and feeling is made possible by what amounts to a superhighway in the brain—a bundle of neurons connecting the prefrontal lobes, behind the forehead—the brain’s executive decision-making center—with an area deep in the brain that harbors our emotions[14]

The two main brain systems of interest are the limbic and the cerebral cortex. The limbic system, which includes the amgydala, is lower in the brain and develops before the higher cerebral system, the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala, the storehouse of memories of emotional reactions, signals us with emotional information. It is emotional, intuitive, simple, approximate and categorical, and, as compared with the cerebral cortex, faster, more automatic and unconscious. The cerebral cortex is rational, conceptual, analytical, complex and quantitative, and, as compared with the limbic system, slow, tentative, effortful and conscious.

When an emotionally significant event occurs, the sense organs carry information to the thalamus, which interprets sensory stimuli, takes a snap shot and compares the incoming information with stored earlier scenes. It then triggers the amygdala which sends signals to the hypothalamus to initiate the physical changes that accompany emotions and stimulate motor areas of the brain. It also sends a signal through the hippocampus, the lowest part of the cortex, to the prefrontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex, which stores long-term memory, receives the information and processes it in a relatively slow, careful and thoughtful manner. The cortex’s analysis of the meaning of the event is fed back to the amygdala and influences both emotional and behavioral responses.

The amygdala receives information about environmental events first, and it responds in a quick, crude, emotional and action-oriented fashion. The cortex receives information about events only later, and it responds in a slow, careful, analytical manner, with forethought. As a result, an event can elicit an emotional reaction and a motor response before the person has even begun to think about what the event means. Although the reaction time difference may be but a fraction of a second, the quicker response of the limbic system can cause someone to behave impulsively even when he or she has the cognitive ability to choose a more adaptive response.

Emotional incompetence often results from habits deeply learned early in life. These autonomic habits are set in place as a normal part of living, as experience shapes the brain. As people acquire their habitual repertoire of thought, feeling, and action, the neural connections that support these are strengthened, becoming dominant pathways for nerve impulses. Connections that are unused become weakened, while those that people use over and over grow increasingly strong. When these habits have been so heavily learned, the underlying neural circuitry becomes the brain’s default option at any moment—what a person does automatically and spontaneously, often with little awareness of choosing to do so. [15]