Monday, January 6, 2020

Reading the Research: EQ

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article doesn't have to mention autism to scream its relevancy to our lives.  It's another example of a systemic change that might benefit autistic (or other neurodiverse) people most, but has benefits for everyone.

Before I continue, a note. Autistic people don't necessarily have low emotional intelligence.  We're often empathic, sometimes painfully so.  The disconnect can be that we don't understand why a person is upset, even if we can tell they're upset.  This can occur because we sometimes react differently to situations than neurotypical people might.

For example, my spouse and I are currently learning that we have vastly different priorities while resolving a conflict. I prefer to immediately figure out where the miscommunication or disagreement occurred, and try to modulate my emotional response and next steps appropriately, ignoring hurt feelings until this is cleared up.  He prefers to address those hurt feelings immediately, regardless of their appropriateness for what actually happened, and worry about the actual issue after the upset has been handled.  Obviously, this isn't an unworkable difference, but it does require some very serious changes to both our operating procedures when conflicts occur.

I'm pretty sure, for all that my good IQ tests, that if they'd given me an EQ test or some other measurement of emotional intelligence in school, I probably would have scored very poorly.  Maybe not "here's your dunce hat, there's the corner, go sit" poorly, since I have a painfully overtuned sense of empathy, but poorly enough to drive my point home.

So, that said: I don't know how you teach emotional intelligence, but I'd really like a class on it, even now.  I think, now that I'm in my 30s and have spent so much time studying people, that I might score okay on a test.  But I'd rather take the class and find out it's review than go through life unsure.  If you know of a such class, especially a free one, please do let me know.

The benefit of this training for autistic people, as for anyone, is reduced operating burden.  The less you have to puzzle over and suffer through conflicts, the easier handling the rest of life is.  Autistic and neurodiverse people simply tend to have higher operating burden than others due to our differences, like sensory sensitivities, motor dysfunctions, learning disabilities, etc.  Reduce the operating burden, and the person can learn more and do better work.

In an age where schools keep slashing non-academic budgets because grades and test scores are all-important, I'm uncertain that implementing something so important will happen on a wider basis.  One thing I'm certain of, though?  Teaching emotional intelligence to everyone would benefit us all.  I can't count the number of apparently neurotypical, yet emotionally-clueless idiots I've run across in my life.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which  has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

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