Social Gerontology, Essay Example

This paper presents a review of the article Emotional Intelligence and Age by L. Fariselli, M. Ghini, and J. Freedman. The article describes the results of a research carried out in an attempt to identify and calculate the association between emotional intelligence quotient and age of a person.

The research is concerned with both age changes and age differences, though the latter are less widely covered. The study compared certain personal qualities for 405 American people of different age groups and investigated the dynamics of EQ change. Besides, a look at the diagrams provided in the article shows that linear graphs illustrate age changes, while pie charts merely indicate the age and gender structure of the researched group. However, the analysis of the findings also stresses some age difference matters. For instance, the last paragraph of the article gives some recommendations as to the treatment of different age groups at workplace.

As it has already been mentioned, the research described in the article investigates the link between emotional intelligence and age, i.e. whether older people are wiser and have a better control over their emotions through better recognition of them. In prospect, the research deals with measuring the extent to which emotional intelligence (a) can be acquired; (b) relies on personal experience. The research also diversified the findings into three categories: self-awareness, self-management, and self-direction.

Unfortunately, the article does not provide an extensive coverage of previous research on the matter, only mentioning the assumption based on popular literature and “common sense” that older people tend to be wiser and have better self-control. This is, undoubtedly, a weak point of the article. However, it might also suggest that it is a pioneer research and nothing significant had been done in the field.

The research question is Do older people demonstrate higher emotional literacy quotient?

To find the answer, the research team tested 405 Americans of different ages using the Six Seconds’ Emotional Intelligence Assessment. The result showed that the relationship between emotional intelligence and age is very slight: r=.13 (p<.01). It means that while there is a great number of young people with high EQ, there are also older people with lower EQ. Still, the general tendency is to show greater emotional intelligence in the ripe old age.

The statistical method of Linear Regression revealed that age can be held responsible for only 1.6% of the Emotional Intelligence variance. Presumably, other factors have a stronger influence on it.

The researches also investigated certain components of emotional intelligence and the way they change during life. The first parameter was self-awareness. Hypothetically, older people have learned from their life experience about emotions and their strength and have become more emotionally literate. However, the findings showed that the rate of self-awareness is only slightly bigger in older people than in younger ones (age is predictive of only 2.8% of self-awareness).

The second major parameter was self-management (the ability to choose yourself, or, in other words, to navigate emotions, be optimistic, use intrinsic motivation and exercise consequential thinking). The study did not reveal any significant relationship between aging and better self-management, which suggests that in most cases self-management is not the ability to be learned during the whole life.

The ability that is most dependent on the age of a person is self-direction, i.e. the ability to give yourself – having more empathy for people and pursuing noble goals in life (having high moral standards and behaving accordingly). About 3.9% of self-direction is age-predictive. This includes 2.7% variation in empathy and 2% variation in pursuing noble goals. This relationship between age and self-direction can be explained by the fact that older people tend to be parents and grandparents, and also seniors in organizations, which means they are used to carrying responsibility for others and themselves and understanding other people. They also feel they have to set a good example to junior ones. Still, the percentage figure is quite small; therefore, it cannot be claimed that vision and wisdom heavily depend on age.

In the forthcoming studies the researches are planning to investigate other demographic categories to define the extent to which emotional intelligence is influenced by, for example, job or education level.

The current findings show, on the one hand, that emotional intelligence does build up with age, which means that it is a learnable quality. On the other hand, age is found to only slightly influence on emotional intelligence with many young people having the same as EQ as older ones or even higher. This fact should be taken into consideration by employers for whom emotional intelligence is critical: young people tend to demonstrate high rate of it.

Reference

Fariselli, L., Ghini, M., Freedman, J. Emotional Intelligence and Age. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://www.6seconds.org/sei/wp-age.php#_ftn3