Rosa’s Reviews > Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know > Status Update

Nuance: This isn't to say that emotional intelligence is useless.

Caveats: As better tests of emotional intelligence are designed, our knowledge may change.

Contingencies: For now, the best available evidence suggests that emotional intelligence is not a panacea. Let's recognize it for what it is: a set of skills that can be beneficial in situations where emotional information is rich or vital.
page 253.

An inconvenient truth - Al Gore

History teaches us that it sometimes takes a combination of preaching, prosecuting, and pol- 3 ! iticking to fuel that kind of dramatic swing. Page 239

20 years later, none of what Al Gire said has happened!

SOME INCONVENIENT TRUTHS
In 2006, Al Gore starred in a blockbuster film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary and spawned a wave of activism, motivating businesses to go green and governments to pass legislation and sign landmark agreements to protect the planet. Page 239

20 years later, nine of what Al Gore said has happened!

Change talk

Say you have a friend who mentions a desire to stop smoking. You might respond by asking why she's considering quitting. If she says a doctor recommended it, you might follow up by inquiring about her own motivations: what does she think of the idea? If she offers a reason why she's determined to stop, you might ask what her first step toward quitting could be. "Change talk is a golden thread," page 219

Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don't know what might motivate someone else to change, but we're genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn't to tell people what to do; it's to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities.
Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, -page 211

We might question the underlying belief that it makes sense to hold opinions about groups at all.
If you get people to pause and reflect, they might decide that the very notion of applying group stereotypes to individuals is absurd.
Research suggests that there are more similarities between groups than we recognize. And there's typically more variety within groups than between them. Page 200

In politics, you probably know some Democrats who view Republicans as being greedy, ignorant, heartless cretins, and some Republicans who regard Democrats as lazy, dishonest, hypersensitive snow-fakes. As stereotypes stick and prejudice deepens, we don't just identify with our own group; we dis-identify with our adversaries, coming to define who we are by what we're not. -page 178

Some Democrats are violent.

From the web:

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon where the desire for harmony or conformity within a group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision. Members prioritize consensus over critical thinking, suppressing dissenting opinions and ignoring alternative options to avoid conflict.

When someone becomes hostile, if you respond by viewing the argument as a war, you can either attack or retreat. If instead you treat it as a dance, you have another option—you can sidestep. Having a conversation about the conversation shifts attention away from the substance of the disagreement and toward the process for having a dialogue. -page 166

Most people think of arguments as being like a pair of scales: the more reasons we can pile up on our side, the more it will tip the balance in our favor. Yet the experts did the exact opposite:
They actually presented fewer reasons to support their case. They didn't want to water down their best points. As Rackham put it, "A weak argument generally dilutes a strong one? -page 151