Worklife with Adam Grant Merve Emre on emotional intelligence as corporate control (Re-release)
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Dec 31, 2024 Merve Emre, an Associate Professor at Oxford and a cultural critic for The New Yorker, challenges the traditional views of emotional intelligence. She argues that it can be weaponized for corporate control rather than genuine growth. The conversation explores its roots in emotions, how it intersects with social class, and its impact on workplace culture. Emre calls for reevaluation of psychological strategies in organizations, advocating for sustainable employee support over superficial fixes, while revealing the complexities of emotional labor in professional settings.
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Early Introduction to Emotional Intelligence
- Merve Emre's parents gave her Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence" book at age ten.
- She felt it was meant to address a deficiency, creating early suspicion towards the concept.
Emotional Intelligence and Labor
- Emotional intelligence originated from sociological studies of emotional labor in the service sector.
- It reframes this labor, a social relation between employee and corporation, as individual aptitude.
Individual vs. Social in Emotional Intelligence
- Individual differences in emotional adeptness exist, but separating the individual from social context is problematic.
- Socialization heavily influences how individuals perceive and manage emotions.
