How Feelings Make Us Smarter

0:00This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In October 1967, the world's greatest chess minds gathered in Seuss, Tunisia, to face off at the Interzonal Tournament, the high-stakes gateway to the World Chess Championship. The early games were dominated by the American prodigy, Bobby Fischer. He was a 24-year-old grandmaster with an IQ rumored to be at the genius level of 180. He was the favorite to win it all.

0:33But despite his overwhelming lead, the tournament quickly spiraled into a masterclass in self-sabotage. Bobby Fischer issued a series of escalating demands regarding his playing schedule. When organizers refused to rearrange the event to suit him, he walked out, withdrawing from the tournament while in first place and throwing away years of work in a single fit of frustration. The walkout was a window into a profound emotional ineptness that lived right alongside Bobby Fischer's brilliance. Throughout his career, he operated in a state of constant relational friction, alienating the very coaches and friends who tried to support him.

1:17At his chess matches, he frequently violated the social norms of the game, arriving late and refusing to make eye contact with the player sitting across from him. Bobby Fisher possessed a mind that could see a dozen moves ahead on a chessboard, but he struggled with the basic moves of social and emotional life. This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, the logic of emotion and how feelings make us smarter.

1:53you're listening to this podcast so you've got a curious mind here's a helpful fact drivers who switch and save with progressive save over 900 on average visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates national average 12-month savings of 946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. You know that thing that you love? You'll find others geeking out about it on Facebook. Whether you're looking for community or inspiration, Facebook helps turn passion into action.

2:28Obsessed with running a marathon? Discover a neighborhood run club group. Start training and meet your new neighbor. Thinking about cooking more at home? Connect with meal prep groups to discover recipes in a new community. And as you're scrolling the feed, you may even find reels showing you top running shoes or the best tools for your culinary journey. This summer, find more on Facebook. For moi? Claude, you can talk? I've always had the gift of gab, Nancy, but now you can understand. With Pretty Litter, the odor-neutralizing, long-lasting health-indicating kitty litter that's simply the most luxurious way to bury my poopies and my peepees.

3:08Pretty Litter was developed with veterinarians. It helps me monitor potential health problems just by changing color. Go to prettylitter.com today. Pretty litter, not just a pretty litter. Think back to the last time you made a decision you regretted. Perhaps you felt blinded by rage or paralyzed by fear. In those moments, it feels like our emotions are obstacles to our success, a vestige of our primitive brains getting in the way of our rational minds. But research in recent decades into the world of emotions suggests that this idea is profoundly wrong. Emotions are central to our ability to understand, attend, and to prioritize.

3:53They aren't obstacles that block our path. They are food and fuel for the journey. Peter Salovey is a psychologist at Yale University. He studies how our emotions shape our decisions and our behavior. Peter Salloway, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you so much, Shankar. It's a real honor to be with you. I listen to your show regularly and have enjoyed seeing you live as well. And so it's a privilege to be a guest. Peter, in addition to being a psychology professor at Yale, you've held several administrative posts at the university, including provost and dean. While you were dean, a prominent individual visited the campus.

4:38Can you paint me a picture of the moment you got to shake hands with the president? Yes, we had invited President Clinton to visit campus, and if memory serves, he was going to give a talk on campus at the time. And they lined all of us up, all the deans in the boardroom, actually, of the university. We were around the perimeter, and President Clinton walked in. And he worked his way around the perimeter of the room, shaking hands with everyone. And when he got to me, I was quite nervous, actually. And he stuck out his hands, and he said, I'm Bill Clinton. And I said, I'm Peter Salve. I'm the dean of Yale College.

5:25and he said, you know, it's a pleasure to meet you, Peter. We actually already know each other.

5:39So when he said that you had met earlier, had you actually met him earlier, Peter? No, I had never met him, at least, you know, not to my memory, but no, no, I had never met him. I had never met him. And so I was surprised when he said that. And of course, I was a little nervous. Like, am I, I forget that I had met Bill Clinton? How could that possibly be? So I'm a little self-conscious in my interaction at that point.

6:11So something happened earlier that day that is pertinent to what Bill Clinton told you. Tell me what happened earlier that morning, Peter. Yeah, so as I was coming onto campus, really, to park near where this meet and greet was going to take place, I saw a spot, I pulled in quickly, and I didn't realize it, but I had pulled right in front of Bill Clinton's limo. And, in fact, kind of cut it off. And a Secret Service agent, or some kind of security that was with him, jumped out of the car and said, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait. and President Clinton rolled the window down and said, no, no, no, no, it's okay.

6:55That guy's the dean. And I realized he had been reviewing the people he was going to meet in his car, most likely, as a public figure might. And so when I was in the meet-and-greet line to meet him, he said to me, we already know each other. And I was so charmed by this. And more importantly, he could tell I was nervous. He could tell I was anxious meeting the president. And he told that story to sort of say, there's no need to be nervous, Mr. Dean. We're old friends. We had an interaction earlier today. It put me at ease. It was a wonderful example of President Clinton managing my emotions. He can see I'm nervous.

7:54No need to be nervous. We're old friends, he says. And in fact, the old friend is based on an embarrassing interaction. But that doesn't matter.

8:06I've seen photographs of the moment. And he's looking me in the eye and giving me a firm handshake. And it's that when he's looking at me, he is seeing that I have a look of nervousness or fear, anxiety in my face. And it cues him to do something, which is tell this story about the interaction with him and his limo in the Secret Service. because he knows it might put me at ease or at least make us feel familiar and like old friends.

8:45What Peter realized after the fact was that Bill Clinton had demonstrated an essential idea in Peter's own research. Some people are incredibly skilled at reading a room. In interactions with others, this gives them an edge. They can see around the corners of a conversation, soothe frictions, put people at ease. Some years after this incident, Peter became a president himself. He became president of Yale. He inherited a challenge that required the same skills of him that Bill Clinton had shown in that interaction. We had a residential college named for John C. Calhoun. It's called Calhoun College.

9:27John C. Calhoun was a senator, was the vice president of the United States all before the Civil War. Served as, I think, Secretary of State and Secretary of War as well. But what he was most well known for is his ardent defense of slavery. Slavery not just as a, quote, way of life in the South, but to use his words, as a positive good. He believed, and he rooted it in white supremacy. He viewed it as the proper order of society. And I imagine he must have gone to Yale himself if a building was named after him. Yeah, he'd been vice president of the United States. He was a Yale graduate. it. And when the building was built in about 1930, there was a debate about who to name it for.

10:24And there were two colleges being named that year, and they named one of the colleges after a minister. And so the other was to be named after the most prominent statesman, who at the time would have been John C. Calhoun. So with that as history, over the years, many decades, there had been more and less protest about this name. Why do we name a college after the most ardent defender of slavery? And so I, in some ways, tired of receiving petitions about this or watching protest, I said, let's have a conversation. And I gave my welcoming speech that fall. And I said, let's have the kind of conversations you should have on campus about whether we should continue to have a college named for John C.

11:26Calhoun. And I made the argument that good people, moral people, thoughtful people, would likely find themselves on both sides of this issue. Some wanting change, some saying we don't need to honor John C. Cullen, and others saying we may not agree with John C. Cullen, but he's a public figure, a historic figure, and universities should not be in the business of effacing history.

12:04So early on, as this controversy was brewing, you decided that the name should not be changed. Talk about the moment you actually announced this to the campus and what the reaction was, Peter. Sure. While our students generally wanted the name to be changed, our alumni did not. and our faculty at that point were largely not interested in this particular issue. And I talked to many experts, the head of the NAACP, prominent African-American intellectuals who had lived in Calhoun College when they were Yale undergraduates, and many, many others. And all of them were profoundly ambivalent about the idea of effacing history.

12:57We should leave his name on there, many of them said, but confront him in other ways. And so in light of that, I had announced that we would maintain the name, but we would contextualize it. We would put up educational materials, plaques and the like, explaining who he was and what he believed and why we left his name on the college. Well, I think the next day after announcing that decision, there was a very loud protest on campus led by students. We had a town hall meeting at which I spoke, and now the faculty were quite energized by the issue. I think seeing how upset the students were, they were then calling for a different outcome.

13:50I understand that during the town hall, there was a moment when students were showering you with fake cash to make the assertion that you cared more about donors and the alumni than the well-being of students. And that must have come as something of a shock to you. That, of course, was a shock to me. I was a very student-oriented president. I taught students introductory psychology for many, many, many years. And so I was not happy about that kind of protest. Several months later, in the summer, a worker in Calhoun College, I believe he was a dining hall worker, noticed that the iconography, the symbolism, the windows, stained glass windows in Calhoun College reflected themes relevant to the name.

14:44They reflected the Old South, African Americans picking cotton. John C. Calhoun is kind of a statesman-looking regal. And he, in a kind of emotional moment, he broke one of these stained-glass windows, I believe it was the one of the African Americans picking cotton. And he said that as a black man, I couldn't stand looking at that every day. And I needed to do something.

15:30I'm wondering, Peter, as you heard about all this protest and you saw how intense the feelings were, Did you have a moment when you felt that you had in some ways misjudged the intensity, the depth of feelings that existed on campus about this issue? Yes. And I think part of that was that times were changing. This was all happening in a dynamic environment. It was happening in real time. And I think when we began this conversation, sure, students wanted change. But many other people quite reasonably made the argument that a facing history was not appropriate. I think views shifted over the course of that year.

16:21And in the course of grappling with my own feelings about that, I met with an African-American student who grew up in South Carolina. In fact, she grew up, I believe, in a home just off of Calhoun Street in Charleston. This student said to me something very interesting. She said, I've known the name of Calhoun all my life. I know who he is. I can handle being in a space named for John C. Calhoun, such as Calhoun College. but I don't want to live in a shrine to slavery. And I said, that's a powerful metaphor. What do you mean by that? She goes, look at the stained glass windows. Look at the reliefs carved into the stone walls.

17:17Look at the artifacts from plantations in the South that are in the collection of this college. Look at the name that is on our t-shirts when we go out and play intramural sports. This has become a shrine to slavery. And I swallowed hard, and I had a moment of emotional understanding and deep empathy, that the debate really wasn't entirely about, do you honor figures from the past, even if we completely disavow their viewpoints now, or whether you efface history, or whether times change and who we honor should change, I suddenly got focused on how people feel. Thinking about that student living in a shrine to slavery, thinking about our worker so moved to an act of vandalism, that he risked his job, he risked criminal prosecution, it was a shift in my thinking.

18:44And it was really a processing of those emotions triggered by my interaction with the student primarily that created a moment of clarity for me and suggested that we needed to consider an alternative path. What did you end up doing? We ended up changing the name. The name of that college is Grace Hopper College, named after an early computer scientist, I think before the field had even been invented, and a Navy admiral. But we honored her service and being one of the early founders of the field. She had gotten her PhD in mathematics at Yale. But it was really this moment of insight created by the arousal of empathy following an emotional conversation with a student that set me anyway on a different course in my thinking.

19:57One of the most consequential challenges we face in daily life is to read what is happening in the emotional lives of other people. When we come back, how the ability to read the emotional undercurrents in a room can transform our lives. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

20:27Adobe Firefly is the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video editing for today's creative process. Built for creators of every kind, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the asks aren't getting smaller, the budgets aren't getting bigger, and the timelines, oh yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Unlock a better way to make with Adobe Firefly. Hear that? That's now Crispy of McCrispy Strip meeting creamy Caesar sauce. Sounds extra crispy. Caesar sauce at McDonald's for a limited time.

21:14This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Schools and universities often test students on their knowledge of complex material. In the workplace, employees are promoted because of their expertise and problem-solving skills. We've all heard of geniuses who produce great works of literature or magnificent musical compositions. But dig a layer deeper, and you find that some of the smartest people are not very smart when it comes to gauging the emotional temperature of a situation. When they meet someone new, they find it hard to tell friend from foe. They are unaware of the emotional undercurrent swirling around them, and they often behave like bulls in china shops.

22:02Peter Salovey is a psychologist at Yale University. He studies how our emotions shape our decisions and our behavior. Peter, your research tackles a long-standing belief of Western culture that thinking and feeling are opposing forces in the mind. Talk a moment about the long history of that idea. Yes. Whether you're looking at, you know, Stoic philosophers or many religious traditions and the like, the idea is that we shouldn't be ruled by our passions. You know, rule your feelings or your feelings will rule you. It's kind of the idea that on the one hand, We have thought and reason. And on the other, we have emotions, passions.

22:51The belief was somehow that our emotions were vestigial, meaning, yes, they're part of our animal heritage, just like our wisdom teeth, just like our appendices. But we don't really need them anymore. We are a thinking species.

23:11Peter and a colleague, Jack Mayer, noticed there were all kinds of situations where people are asked to read the emotional temperature of a situation. Some people are better at doing this than others. Wasn't this a kind of intelligence too, they wondered. Together, they came up with a formulation for the skill they were talking about. They called it emotional intelligence. The idea came to them in the oddest of places, not a lab, but as the two were painting Peter's living room. Yeah, that is what happened. And we're painting the living room. We're talking about emotions. We're talking about intelligence.

23:47We both had done research on the impact of mood and emotion on memory, on judgment, on decision-making. And we're just chatting as we painted. Jack was very nice to help me paint my living room. We'd only been friends a year or two at that point, and talked about this idea of emotional intelligence. My original idea was, let's develop a framework for organizing all of these abilities having to do with the emotions and their effect on thinking and behavior. Jack came out of a more traditional intelligence laboratory, but had now turned his attention to mood and emotion. And he was wondering whether you could measure any of this.

24:33And so we came together in that way. Yes, and it was while painting my house.

24:43Peter and his colleagues have found ways to measure emotional intelligence. Instead of asking people about their emotional skills, people turn out to be poor judges of their own emotional intelligence, the researchers came up with a series of tests. How good were people at reading the expressions of others? How well did they understand what was happening in their own emotional lives? How skillful were they at regulating their emotions? They came up with a measure, very much like an IQ test. It came to be called the Mayer-Salloway-Carruso scale, or mesquite for short. We did a study in which you came to the lab as a participant in research and had to interact with a stranger.

25:29And then the stranger would rate how well did you listen to him? How connected were you trying to be with him? How empathic did you seem? And for our participants who scored well on the Mesquite, the stranger rated them more highly. But also, we could show videos of that interaction to others who had no idea, of course, what the experiment really was about. And they rated the person as more sociable, better able to make friends, and the like, if they had higher scores. We could also do just correlational studies. How many friends do you have? It's predicted by the mesquite, by our emotional intelligence measure.

26:26Do you engage in pro-social behaviors with friends? Are you more likely to help, to share? Or are you more likely to get into arguments and fights? All of it predicted by emotional intelligence. So I'm sure everyone listening knows of someone who everyone wants to be their friend because they listen well, they empathize, they reflect feelings. They seem to be able to pick up on something about you that many others don't. And they seem to be able to kind of walk a mile in your shoes. And not surprisingly, they are the kinds of individuals who you would love to have as a friend.

27:19You've also looked at how emotional intelligence makes a difference in other realms of life. Young people who are more emotionally intelligent tend to be less likely to engage in risky behaviors. Why do you think this might be the case, Peter? Yeah, that's right. We've shown correlations between mesquite scores and the likelihood of using drugs or alcohol, particularly in adolescence. Higher scores on the mesquite predict less likelihood of drug or alcohol use, less likelihood of delinquent behavior. I think some of it is, you know, if you're more in touch with your own emotions, you don't need, what would I say, illicit substances to help you regulate them.

28:09You're less likely to need to self-medicate. Similarly, if you're better able to empathize, better able to understand the emotions of another person, you're less likely to have conflict with them, less likely to think the way to settle differences is through fighting. Maybe most importantly, you're more likely as a kid to stay in school because you like school and you like learning better. So I think it's all of a piece, right? You're happier in the school environment, more likely to make friends, less likely to become frustrated, drop out, more likely to not self-medicate with drugs or alcohol when you get older.

28:52It's all of a piece. And this is not just when you are looking at the behavior of students and young people. You find emotional intelligence plays a role in our work lives. For sure. One small study we did was at an insurance company where we measured traditional intelligence, we measured personality, and we also gave them a skeet, or measure of emotional intelligence. And what we predicted a time later were the performance reviews you received from your boss and whether you were likely to get a promotion and how big a raise that you received at work. But the emotional intelligence test that we used, the mesquite, was a good predictor of those kinds of workplace outcomes.