EQ and IQ are intertwined I believe, with a positive correlation.
(I'm basing this on the assumption that high EQ means you can "manage" your emotions better)
EQ is defined really well by Daniel Goleman's best seller
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. There are
four elements:
- Perceiving emotions - i.e. Empathy - What are other people's emotions, can you feel them?
- Applying emotions - How are you handling your own internal emotions for problem solving, staying optimistic and keeping tenacity/motivation in order to stay positive?
- Understanding emotions - Why is a person behaving like so? What's the underlying (emotional) reason?
- Managing emotions - Not just within yourself, but to others. How do you inspire, motivate a team to reach end goals?
Although IQ and EQ correlate, there can be differences in proportions, e.g. a bright spark engineer with high IQ who can't manage his own emotions (is negative) and can't work with his team (e.g. is disagreeable, really skeptical, ruins any motivation or positivity in a team) would be a bad apple which any HR team would want to filter during the screening process.
Moreover, a high EQ person (I think/have read/seen in life) will do really well in fields such as marketing, sales (or other client interfacing roles) and it would not matter they don't have high IQ to solve technical problems. Such people can be more successful that medium EQ/medium IQ people I think.
Hmm, it's sort of obvious that the intelligent nations would be with less diesease than less intelligent ones, due to their management of the health system etc. Unless I'm missing something here...
I think the argument is a more an underlying one in the article: parts of the world that have less diseases/natural disasters are more likely to have higher intelligence scores, before modern healthcare arrived. As in the documentary
"Gun, Germs and Steel": if the population is spending less time battling malaria or floods, then more time can be spent being more productive.
One strong argument is that the Asian countries which have worked hard to eradicate certain diseases have developed at breakneck speeds in the last 50 years e.g. the four Asian tigers: S. Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong. However, I know that India/Bangladesh had similar economies back in the 1950s, so why is it they couldn't develop as fast? And for that I think it comes down to corruption ... which I think is an extension of EQ ... well that's my inconclusive thinking so far. A friend discussed the issue that lowering corruption requires a media and a revolution in the people to caste their vote and not vote their caste, like in India. But ... why is corruption not as high in the four Asian tiger countries?
But still, education is an important factor.
Interesting point. I think IQ points can be increased with brain exercise. I noticed software developers practice maths or Financiers solve quantum physics problems as hobby just so they can better apply their synapse power in their respective fields. There is no doubt brining up a child solving many different mathematical problems would increase their IQ by a few points than they are naturally born with.
As for knowledge based education, it can definitely increase a persons productivity and employability e.g. learning a different modern languages, but in terms of increasing IQ or EQ, I think it is important to consider what type of education we are discussing.
As with Maths, other effective educational based ways of increasing intelligence would be to read books like the
Mind Gym Books that can effectively teach EQ that perhaps some people don't have or are aware of. There is also evidence that reading novels enables the reader to build empathy by being in the shoes of different characters.
Knowledge is different to practical intelligence, so if education includes working in teams to solve things, or undertaking projects to improve time-management, networking, communication, leadership, problem solving, teamworking then I would add that to how education helps intelligence.
Lastly, creativity. Education in terms of learning a musical instrument, cooking, or generally doing something artsy can flex a person's mind other than just problem solving or what they are used to doing on a daily basis. Learning new things and having the ability to learn quickly I would also class as a type of intelligence.
In summary, I think people are all born with a baseline memory, IQ and EQ. IQ can be increased a little bit, but peaks at about 19/20 years of age. EQ can be increased somewhat much more (empthay, working with people, controlling our own emotions, concentration, etc) over time. But just like none of us here will be able to beat 100m world record, we can all try improving ourselves to be better than we are. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Topic: Intelligence and disease