[00:00:00] Dr. Christine Ko: Welcome back to SEE HEAR FEEL. Today, I have the pleasure of talking to Dr. David Caruso. He has been very generous with me, and he was willing to come again onto this podcast. For those of you who have not listened to episodes 1 and 2, please feel free to listen back. Just in case you haven't heard them, here is a brief introduction. Dr. David Caruso is a management psychologist who develops and conducts emotional intelligence training around the world. He co-authored the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, which is still used today. And he co-wrote several books, including The Emotionally Intelligent Manager with Dr. Peter Salovey and A Leader's Guide to Solving Challenges with Emotional Intelligence with Lisa Rees. He is married with three children and four grandchildren. He has been an executive coach to leaders around the world. Welcome to David.
[00:00:49] Dr. David Caruso: Thank you so much.
[00:00:50] Dr. Christine Ko: I asked David to talk to me again because he's an expert in emotional intelligence, and I've been telling him that I am definitely not. Recently for the podcast, I did speak to Dr. Antoine Bechara who did research with Hanna Damasio and her husband Dr. Damasio on the somatic marker hypothesis and the gut feeling. I wanted David's take on the gut feeling, and I thought first he could define for us what a feeling is versus emotion, because those two are not necessarily interchangeable.
[00:01:25] Dr. David Caruso: I do want to just go back a little bit: when people, in your field, when you are called an expert, you have expert knowledge. In my field, especially with emotional intelligence, when someone calls me an expert, if you told my family that, they would probably disagree. A few weeks ago, it was a especially stressful week, I yelled at someone in a zoom meeting. I didn't really yell at that person, but I was really impatient and I was just amazingly frustrated, and it leaked out. Knowledge doesn't always translate to expert behavior. Here's the thing: even if you do all this stuff, you're still gonna screw up. You just wanna reduce the numbers of times when you had the choice, to do something, to behave in a more, let's say emotionally intelligent manner. You don't always have the choice. I certainly don't. So the struggle is, you get a little better. In terms of feeling, there's a wonderful article by the psychologist Sigal Barsade. And there's a wonderful table that I always refer to. She defines the term affect, which is a broad range of feeling, that you experience, physical sensations. Feeling is used interchangeably with affect. Affect includes moods and emotions. Then what's an emotion and what's a mood? She defines discrete emotions have an identifiable cause or a target: anger, or, jealousy or happiness. And they come on really quickly. And then they dissipate. What a mood is, is a little different. She describes it as a global positive or pleasant, or global negative or unpleasant feeling, and they're very diffuse. They don't have real specific cause. You aren't aware of it; it's this background noise. The key for us is when I have that feeling, I need to validate the feeling, but then investigate. What's the sources? How much of it was that discrete emotion? That event? How much of it is this background or global perspective? Including my overall personality. Am I a grumpy person? Am I an upbeat, cheery type person? She calls that dispositional affect as well. You have to put all these things together. I'm not sure how clear that was or is that helpful in beginning to approach this?
[00:03:30] Dr. Christine Ko: That's helpful! So, you're saying, there's feeling and affect are overarching; and then under affect there's emotion and there's mood. And emotions are often triggered by something, and we can, especially, if we get good at it, we can name it. Okay, I'm sad right now. I'm angry right now. I'm happy right now. And those emotions themselves dissipate, usually relatively quickly, but moods are just background. So I could think of foreground background, like in art. If there's a figure in the foreground, the emotion is in the foreground. And then there's either a bright, sunny sky in the background. Let's say a more pleasant mood; versus a dark, stormy, background - just sort of a sad or darker mood. Not to get so bogged down by semantics or anything, and we can get really bogged down in dermato pathology/ medicine; we can get really bogged down and just argue over the terms all day.
[00:04:19] But the reason I was wondering is because the Damasios and Antoine Bechara, who worked with them, do call it a gut feeling, a bodily state that we have, in their somatic marker hypothesis. And their term is "gut feeling". Where do you think that lies related to affect / global feeling as an overarching term?
[00:04:41] Dr. David Caruso: So, that sounds like affect. Should we go with that gut feeling? Is the gut feeling informing us intelligently or does it lead us astray? I think, if you can figure out and investigate the source of those feelings, gut feelings, if you can separate out your emotions from your moods, I believe you'll make better decisions, because how you feel impacts your decisions. You might be a better diagnostician. I think everyone would want to make better decisions; more accurate, comprehensive, diagnostic work.
[00:05:09] Dr. Christine Ko: Apparently you can improve having a gut feeling that's advantageous to you. And he says that's true, but we really have to, he said, be in a calm state, and be aware of our bodily states, of those kind of gut feelings. People who have gut feelings, as measured by say skin conductance, their body knows, earlier, and then eventually people have more cognitive awareness of it, but their body knew earlier than their minds knew.
[00:05:36] To me it sounded like, okay, so if you take the gut feeling as say, like an emotion, you could probably train yourself, just like you train yourself to deal with anger a certain way, over time, and you still make mistakes, but you train yourself. If starting to listen to your gut, and you manage your gut feeling and learn how to use it, then that would be helpful. And it's a skill though, just like emotional intelligence is a skill. That gut feeling, and listening, being able to listen to it and know when it's right and when it's actually not right. Like when it's a fake gut feeling, say, is probably a skill since you can improve it. I just wanted your opinion and thoughts on this.
[00:06:17] Dr. David Caruso: What they're describing, Christine, I think what you're describing, too, is -just to bring in another line of work from clinical psychology- is dialectical behavior therapy, D B T. So it's been around since the eighties or so. And there's a term that D B T folks use and it's called wise mind. And it's the intersection of, they call it, rational mind, the completely logical person, if that exists, and emotion mind, which I object to. I think you should call it mood mind. But it's the intersection, in a Venn diagram, of the rational mind and emotion mind, creates wise mind, or really good decisions. And the reason I'm thinking about that is what you said before, which is how do you get there? And so they teach a lot of mindfulness. It's that reflection on that gut feel, on that feeling, and it's sources, not the source, but it's multiple sources. And so we can figure this stuff out, but we have to actually pause, take that breath, reflect on it, ask myself how I feel. You have that feeling, but is it reasonable for me to be angry? How would someone else react? And also, like, how much sleep did I get last night? Did I have breakfast? Oh, gee, I didn't sleep very well. I'm just in a bad mood. So my anger is not reasonable. Someone else may not feel that way. And so that gut feel of anger or frustration that tension in my stomach, no, I can't act on that. That's just junk; background noise.
[00:07:42] Dr. Christine Ko: Yes. No, thank you. I'll have to look into dialectical behavior therapy. I've never heard of that, but that sounds useful. Like a good framework, that may really be getting at what I'm trying to get at. Every diagnosis is actually a decision. When you say, how we feel impacts how we think... you think judges are supposed to be impartial, but they've shown with studies that it's towards the end of the day, they give harsher sentences. If they're hungry, they give harsher sentences. If they're tired, they give harsher sentences, and maybe the corollary to that is in diagnostic work at the microscope- since I'm lucky to work with many colleagues who do the same thing that I do- we'll talk about that. Oh, today I feel more benign. Like, I have my benign hat on today, we'll say. Maybe my mood is good, and so I'm less likely to make a cancer diagnosis, which is horrifying, in a way, like, really, that today I'm in a better mood, so I'm going to give a different diagnosis? Shouldn't diagnosis be objective, rather than subjective? I guess I'm thinking that at least I can control maybe those quicker emotions, if they're quicker, like I'm, I'm really mad right now, for whatever reason. So I'm not gonna, diagnose 10 melanomas in a row. I'm gonna calm down first before I do some diagnostic work. That's an extreme, sort of, simple example, but I guess that's why this stuff matters to me, because I do try to be objective at the microscope, and I try to be calm and in a sort of even state, not like overly emotional in any direction, but just really concentrated and focused. And as you've mentioned before, maybe actually towards a more like depressed mood in a way, so that I'm able to look for errors and think about errors, and just be more careful. But there's definitely this gut feeling aspect of when we look. Like people will say, my colleagues will say, oh, but I just really don't think that this is something bad. And, I believe in that feeling. I have it myself. Before I say, this is the diagnosis; before I finalize it, I'm thinking, does this sit right with me? I think the more I delve into this stuff, I make better decisions.
[00:10:01] Through talking to people on this podcast, one of the subjects that I touched on was shame, shame and medicine. I wanted to see what you, as an emotions researcher and someone who leads emotional intelligence seminars around the world, how you categorize shame and what you think of it?
[00:10:22] Dr. David Caruso: Yeah. We have these basic emotions, right?
[00:10:25] You were the one who first introduced me to the universal emotions that most emotions researchers agree on: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and maybe surprise as a sixth one.
[00:10:37] And then there are secondary emotions. There are complex emotions. There are social emotions: so embarrassment, shame, guilt. Those kinds of things might be social emotions. They're unique to one's culture and upbringing and so forth. They do exist. So the reason, probably, shame is not considered basic, is the work of Paul Ekman and colleagues, on basic emotions. He would say basic emotions have unique causes, unique physiological signs and causes, things like that, whereas a shame may not. So that's the only reason it's not in that core category, if you will. And there may not be a universal expression of it as well. It's well, beyond those basic building blocks.
[00:11:18] Dr. Christine Ko: Yes. And I think it's helpful that you point out that shame, it's a social emotion that you need an other there in order to feel it, whether that the other is really present or not, if, even if it's just imaginary in your mind oh, I've fallen short here and so it's not just guilt, but it's really, I've fallen short of some norm. There's a lot of shame in medicine, and I do think that emotional intelligence, and using it better, like you say, can help address that.
[00:11:45] Dr. David Caruso: Yeah. Let's use that as a signal. Let shame be used as signal, whether slow down, consult with others, I have difficulties with a certain area. All emotions can be super helpful, right? We say they are data, they help inform us. They should make our lives better. Now it's a signal that's something got messed up. So let me stop, let me examine it, and let me not do the same thing.
[00:12:06] Dr. Christine Ko: Yeah.
[00:12:07] Dr. David Caruso: So, it's a very helpful emotion.
[00:12:09] Dr. Christine Ko: Yes. I think, what I've ultimately learned from you, one of the major things, is that all emotions can be helpful. They could all be used as signals.
[00:12:17] Dr. David Caruso: Emotion management is really the key, and being smart about it, and interrogating it.
[00:12:20] Dr. Christine Ko: Thank you very much, David. I appreciate the time. I appreciate your insights. I appreciate your spending time with me and just giving me chances to learn more and be able to apply these things better.
[00:12:35] Dr. David Caruso: It's good for me as well, because I think these are important concepts, and it helps me when I describe it. And I'd really love these concepts to be applied well, to help people. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
[00:12:44] Dr. Christine Ko: Thank you. Thanks, David.
