8 – Emotion, Emotional Intelligence and Motivation

As we have done with the other concepts that have been discussed so far—e.g.

mind, individual, identity, self— and almost completing the list of the main ideas we

approach critically, in this chapter we focus on ‘emotion’ [(Latin ēmōtus, past participle

of ēmoveō (“to move out, move away, remove, stir up, agitate”), from ē- (“out”) (variant

of ex-), and moveō (“move”) which has also till recently been mostly associated with our

‘inner’ side (though it seems to clearly mean moving outside)]. We, therefore, want to

show what this word does to us in education and what we do with it, when we take it as

an inner reality in our life, especially in relation to contemporary fascination around

notions of emotional intelligence and motivation.

For a long time, emotions have and still are understood mostly as an individual’s

psychological--positive or negative—type of experience inside. The little ‘i’ (the

homunculus) carries these emotions. Yet in the case of emotions another dichotomy is

created; the little I (the true enlightened I) is rational when enlightened (and we add

western, manly, and white) and when not, it is emotional (other or womanlike). As it has

been the case for previous concepts, in modernist discourses a clear dualism is

established between emotion and reason (N. Elias, 1939/1978; Hochschild, 1983); reason

is associated with the public and the rational and emotion with the private and the

irrational. Much feminist writing has been painstakingly trying to challenge this

psychologized perspective and the divisions of “private” vs. “public,” considering how

the private is as the public a political terrain, and emphasizing that so are emotions

(Boler, 1999; Campbell, 1997; Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990). Truth and knowledge

themselves cannot be free of emotional underpinnings, “even though it may be pretended

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by those who espouse modernist approaches that their route to truth and knowledge is

dispassionate, scientific and objective” (Lupton, 1998): 3-4). Generally speaking, then, in

modernist approaches, emotions are considered atomistic internal responses to ‘external’

events; these responses are perceived to be getting in the way of ‘clear’ and ‘objective’

thinking. Something happens ‘outside’ of us triggering something ‘inside’ and then

emotions appear. If we want to get rid of the consequences identified so far with other

concepts, we have to find ways to put aside these internal psychological responses for the

metaphors created might misguide our educational efforts.

Psychologized language pays little attention to the social, cultural, historical, and

political context in which meanings of emotions are developed. Emotional rules, for

example, reflect existing power relations and thus function as techniques for the

discipline of human differences in emotional expression and communication (Hochschild,

1983). This may take place through inscribing and recording of ‘appropriate’ and

‘inappropriate’ emotions, managing and utilizing emotions according to these

inscriptions, and classifying emotional expressions of students and teachers as ‘deviant’

or ‘normal’. Consider anger, for example. Anger is often described as a ‘dangerous’

emotion that threatens rationality, social order and constructive dialogue (Jaggar, 1989;

Lyman, 2004). What has been the psychologized response to this? Anger management.

The goal of anger management—which has become a widespread movement in schools,

organizations and the workplace in the west, especially in the USA—is to control one’s

emotions, that is, repress, neutralize or even express anger occasionally but do this in

‘appropriate’ ways . However, when anger is taken seriously as dialogic, rather than as an

inner, ‘psychological disorder’ or ‘inappropriate and ‘uncivil behavior’, then anger

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becomes a social and political emotion; it can urge people to raise their voices against

injustice and thus be used to inspire transformation and social change (Lorde, 1984;

Spelman, 1989; Swaine, 1996).

Paying attention to the social, cultural, historical, and political context, then, has

led to historicized and politicized perspectives of emotions as a response to the familiar

psychologized notion. According to these perspectives, emotional experience is certainly

embodied, yet not one residing ‘inside’, but rather one that takes shape as a particular

kind of performance and practice. People—students, teachers—do not ‘have’ individual

emotions that are somehow resided ‘inside’, requiring the proper stimulus for them to

‘come out’. This metaphor of emotions being ‘inner’ the body is deeply problematic,

because it is grounded in a set of dualisms that have no empirical basis. However, if we

pay attention to the social, cultural and political elements that influence and delimit the

manner in which emotions are performed and discussed in school settings, we will begin

to see how in the name of ‘emotional intelligence’ schools promote certain emotional

regimes that are considered ‘appropriate’.

For example, there are forms of language and expressions of emotion that

teachers and students are taught to value and others that must be rejected. Confronted on

a daily basis with a variety of emotions—e.g. anger, bewilderment, anxiety and so on—

teachers and students learn to control emotions of anger, anxiety, and vulnerability and

express instead calmness, reservation and kindness (and when not, there are

consequences). Thus, emotional rules prescribe what teachers and students should do to

comply with certain expectations about their respective roles. These rules, interacting

with school rituals (presentations, meetings, teaching manuals, speeches, memos),

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constitute a particular essence of the ‘teacher-self’ or ‘student-self’. Teachers and

students must perform themselves in line with these familiar identities, or they risk being

seen as eccentric, if not outrageous. They need to regulate and control not only their overt

habits and morals, but also what are perceived as their ‘inner’ emotions, wishes, and

anxieties. More importantly, this process of emotional control is not unrelated to the rules

of the privileged and the dominant classes; for instance, middle and upper class children

come to school already knowing the emotional rules of the game, which are different

from the rules of those children who are in the periphery. Naturally, these (already)

marginalized children are further excluded and fail (once again).

In the late capitalist society, emotions have become commercialized and

commodified, by entering the marketplace and by becoming linked to economic

rationality. Such an orientation is present in the person-oriented professions, e.g.

salespeople, social workers, business people, professionals in the media, and teachers. In

these professions, appropriate emotional expressions—or emotional labor as it has

become known—are part of the professional role. Mestrovic (Mestrovic, 1997) has taken

this a step further and proposed the concept of postemotionalism, namely, the deliberate

and synthetic manipulation of emotions so as to promote harmony, avoid negative

emotions and present everything in a happy way. The “McDonaldization of emotions”

represents the “pre-packaged, rationally manufactured emotions—a ‘happy meal’ of

emotions—that are consumed by the masses” (Mestrovic, 1997)p. xi). This is especially

evident in children’s programs in which fun is now so institutionalized, according to

Mestrovic (Mestrovic, 1997), that Sesame Street has transformed the act of learning for

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children into the remarkably new notion that all education must be deliberately painless,

thus establishing “an oppressive ethic of niceness” (pp. 43-44).

All these developments highlight the social and political aspects of emotional

lives so much so one wonders what sense it males to define emotions as psychologized

entities. Anthropological views, for example, see emotions as ‘discursive practices’

(Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990). A focus on emotion as discursive practice “leads us to a

more complex view of the multiple, shifting, and contested meanings possible in

emotional utterances and interchanges, and from there to a less monolithic concept of

emotion” (ibid., p. 11). This approach recognizes the constituted nature of emotion and

acknowledges the power relations inherent in emotion talk, because

power relations determine what can, cannot, or must be said about self and

emotion, what is taken to be true or false about them, and what only some

individuals can say about them […] The real innovation is in showing how

emotion discourses establish, assert, challenge, or reinforce power or status

differences. (Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990) p. 14)

Furthermore, on this view, emotions are discursive practices located in particular

spaces and procedures that grant powers to some relations and delimit the powers of

others, enable some to create truth and others to submit to it, allow some to judge and

others to be judged. Emotions are understood as properties, not of mental mechanisms

but of conversations and practices (Rose, 1998). The words used in relation to emotions

are not assumed to be simply names for ‘emotion entities’, describing pre-existing things

or coherent self-characteristics. Rather, these words are seen as actions or ideological

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practices serving specific purposes as part of the process of creating and negotiating

reality (Lutz, 1988).

The important thing about the notion of emotions as discursive practices is that

people do emotions; emotions do not just happen to passive actors. Emotions are

performed (practiced) under the actual or imagined authority of some system of truth at

school that prescribes, for instance, that too much or too little emotional attachment is

inappropriate. For example, if a teacher or a student does not want to become the subject

of attention or isolation, he or she should conduct—that is, regulate—his or her everyday

emotions according to the dominant emotional rules. In all of these ways of teacher or

student subjectification, a major theme recurs: the practice of subjectification is

fundamentally linked to the project of identity and self, as described in previous chapters,

that is, emotions are inextricably bound up with certain ways of exercising power. The

‘identity project’ is constitutively linked to work on one’s emotional world, his or her

relations with one’s ‘self’ and others.

One of the most famous psychologized constructs in recent years is of course that

of ‘emotional intelligence’. This construct has become an internationally well-recognized

educational slogan, buzzword, catchphrase, and contemporary educational goal. Brought

to the public attention by Daniel Goleman’ s (Goleman, 1995) international bestseller

Emotional Intelligence, the notion that emotions are a valid domain of intelligence

became quickly popular. Emotional intelligence captured the interest of the media and

public, at a time during the end of the 20th century when society was experiencing a

number of perplexing and often violent ethnic, racial, and cultural problems. Since

Goleman’s bestselling book and his follow-up publication Working with Emotional

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intelligence (Goleman, 1998), emotional intelligence has been billed by many in the

popular press as a panacea for all of society’s ills. Emotional intelligence has been

suggested as the means to improve everyday life and to help us become more creative,

entrepreneurial, loving, responsible, caring, fair, respectful—in essence, better, more

productive members of society.

While it is satisfying to see that the role of emotion is taken seriously, both

academically and in popular discourse, it is interesting to examine the underlying

assumptions on emotional intelligence and the critiques that have been raised from within

the field of psychology itself to undermine the claims made by advocates of emotional

intelligence. Historically speaking, Peter Salovey and John Mayer are credited by many

with first coining the term ‘emotional intelligence’ (Pfeiffer, 2001). They view emotional

intelligence as, a set of skills hypothesized to contribute to the accurate appraisal and

expression of emotion in oneself and others, the effective regulation of emotion in self

and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one’s life. This set of

skills is later developed by Goleman (Goleman, 1995) into five domains that characterize

emotional intelligence: knowing one’s emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself,

recognizing emotions in others and handling relationships. The popular version of

Salovey and Mayer’s work as developed by Goleman broadened the initial description of

emotional intelligence such that it included many motivational concepts (e.g. zeal and

persistence), and finally, equated emotional intelligence with character.

However, according to Mayer and his colleagues, the term ‘emotional

intelligence’ is more usefully employed to denote an actual ability-based intelligence than

a synonym for character or personality. This is a critique for Goleman who made

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“extraordinary claims for the concept [of emotional intelligence], and loose description

[that] created an explosion of activity in a new, and now increasingly fuzzily defined

area” (Mayer, 2001) p. 8). Mayer and his colleagues further argued that much of

emotional intelligence writing is not about emotional intelligence and after the

popularization of the concept “the cacophony of conceptualizations and definitions

began” (p. 18). It was perhaps popular claims such as Goleman’s “with the opportunistic

relabeling of self-report measures as measures of emotional intelligence, that led some

psychologists to dismiss the area entirely” (Mayer, 2001) p. 22) and express skepticism

about the value of emotional intelligence as an ‘internal’ skill. As Sternberg (Sternberg,

2001)—an outspoken scholar on the field of intelligence—argued very strongly, “Much

of what is being done under the banner of emotional intelligence appears to be

conceptually weak and oriented more toward commercial exploitation than toward

increasing psychological understanding” (p. 193, author’s emphasis).

Unfortunately, it seems that it is “commercial exploitation” and the “cacophony of

conceptualizations” of emotional intelligence that have made their way into many school

curricula and have resulted to the popularization of ‘emotional literacy’ in schools. It is

only fair to point out that the emotional literacy curricula implemented in school

nowadays have some of their roots in the affective education movement of the 1960s

(Goleman, 1995, 1998). Many of the affective education programs back in those days

were mainly intervention courses that taught a core of emotional and social competences

such as impulse control and anger management. However, the emotional literacy

movement nowadays brings emotional literacy into schools making emotions and social

life themselves topics. The primary goal of this movement is that skills of emotional

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intelligence “can be taught to children, giving them a better chance to use whatever

intellectual potential the genetic lottery may have given them” (Goleman, 1995)p. ix). As

some of the supporters of emotional literacy curricula pointed out, “It is not surprising

that we should look to schools as prime locations for the promotion of emotional

intelligence” (M. J. Elias, Hunter, & Kress, 2001)p. 135).

Generally speaking, emotional intelligence is characterized by three dominant

discourses, which together provide indications about the underlying assumptions

permeating the notion of emotional intelligence and consequently, that of emotional

literacy in school curricula (Boler, 1999). First, emotional intelligence is based on a

universalized portrait of emotions which is imposed in terms of discourses of the right

‘skills’ that capitalize on the hard-wired virtues and can be learned by all for personal as

well as community benefit. Second, absent from descriptions of emotional intelligence is

the role of cultural and gender differences. Finally, the focus is on the mastery of

emotions and moral self-control through the acquisition of skills that take advantage of

biological potential and learn ‘appropriate’ social behaviors. Boler (Boler, 1999) also

contends that emotional literacy, now taught through compulsory educational curricula in

many public schools, employs largely these discourses to authorize which emotional

behaviors are ‘appropriate’ and thus constitute the ‘good’ citizen and the ‘productive’

worker. That is, emotional literacy and emotional intelligence create a site for social

moral control as a basis for social efficiency and cultural assimilation.

The construct of emotional intelligence, as presented by Goleman and by many

contemporary emotional literacy curricula, turns out to be only a partial substitute for the

much more complicated aspects of one’s emotional life. Admittedly, the notion of

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‘emotional literacy’ is appealing to many educators largely because it conveys a promise

of an emotional utopia—a place in which people have the ability to recognize,

understand, handle and appropriately express their emotions. After all, who wouldn’t

want to live in such a place, especially after the terrorist events that are recurring in

recent years? However, the education of someone to live a human life is far more

complex than the training and education of someone to acquire skills in order to

accomplish a specific task e.g. learning how to observe or developing the skills to set up a

scientific experiment.

Concerns about the emotional development of children are particularly important

for educators, students and parents. Unfortunately, the underlying assumptions of many

emotional literacy curricula seem to ignore many complexities such as issues of power,

knowledge and political ideology, which drive educational goals. That means nurturing

emotional literacy is above all about power relations and ideology. Given the vastly

unequal educational outcomes and emotional experiences among students of different

backgrounds nurturing students’ emotional experiences is important; however, treating

emotional development as a set of competences seems to be a hollow activity, if we do

not confront the inequalities that exist in schools. Not to mention that the burden is placed

on each individual, because emotional expression is presented as a personal-

psychological issue (i.e. a ‘problem’) of each individual, just as we have seen in previous

chapters with other constructs.

***

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 King: I feel more and more melancholic, as these authors seem to imply that there

is nothing left inside us…

Slave: I can see it in your face, your majesty! It was not enough for the authors

that they spat at all these sacred words—self, identity, mind and so on; to all these they

deemed it necessary to add one further refinement, emotion. But why are you

melancholic, when they seem to free us from being imprisoned in all of these

psychologized concepts?

King: But how do you really know that I feel melancholic?

Slave: But you are telling me so! No melancholic feeling ever needs to exist as

such, somewhere inside you. You have learned the rules of the language game. You

associate this unpleasant feeling with the fact that these authors seem to dismantle

everything you know.

King: So are you saying that I am what it’s called ‘emotionally literate’, then?

Slave: Hm, I see you are into the zeitgeist…

King: I admit that I would be hesitant to be labeled as such. I guess I am a King

after all, so I don’t need such labels.

Slave: King or not, you are right your majesty. I don’t think there is need for such

labels.

King: And yet, some people seem to be raising a lot of money! The industry on

emotional intelligence is a lucrative business!

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 Slave: Most certainly! But as that famous recent advertisement goes, “Labels are

for cans (or clothing), not for people”. As you have realized by now, our authors are

allergic to labels and categories!

***

Finally, all of the above in one way or another comes together in the most popular

and in-famous educational concept of ‘motivation’. Motivation is an umbrella concept

encapsulating the psychological processes that direct, energize, and sustain human

behavior (Mitchell & Daniels, 2003). Children learn or not because they have motivation

or lack of it. If only they (their I’s, their self) had motivation; then, they would learn. We

need to motivate them, we are told; if we do and we do it enough, they will succeed. Poor

or rich, motivation will make the difference. Bored or fascinated, motivation is the key.

Motivation has to be raised and motivation rests inside. It lives an autonomous life inside

our students and needs to be ignited.

By now it will come as no surprise that as many of the concepts we discussed

above, the etymology of the word will not help justify the expectations. Motive (from

Latin motus)  means "a moving, motion," past participle of movere "to move"). We

realize that motivation has multiple conceptualizations (Wigfield, Eccles, Roeser,

Schiefele, & 2009) (Weiner, 2013) among others as that which is an inner or social

stimulus for an action; yet in traditional educational discourse for the most part, the inner

is the main focus. A lack of motivation could be traced to a lack of emotional maturity

and if motivated and not successful it could be drawn to a lack of intelligence. The

constant presence of motivational discourse in educational settings does not make it into

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helpful explanatory device. Its locus is too hidden (if at all real) to be available for

research and thus left to the violence of those who can have their voices heard—

specialists in educational hierarchies who can identify it and measure it and record it,

headed till today by psychologists or psychologically inclined clerks of sorts. Just the

assumption that someone somewhere inside motivates is ridiculous (empirically). The

belief (for it is not much more that) that motivation relates to cognition(Pintrich &

Schunk, 2002) or more recently beliefs (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) are the primary

sources of motivation is no less so.

More, rather recent, approaches following Vygotskyan theoretical perspectives

have emphasized the contextual social nature of motivation (Hickey, 2009) and though

distributive perspectives are much more sound, what cannot be evaded is to question the

need for motive to explain human activity at all. Motivation is ascribed even when it

seems to be acknowledged that people are just doing desired or expected things. Why

would we need motivation to do something or not instead of agreeing that somebody has

done something or not? Motivation does not seem to make much of a difference.

What might explain the need to mediate the doing with a motivation (intrinsic or

extrinsic) seems to rest in the duality we discussed earlier; a duality which we have

shown to be affiliated to hierarchies and power. The interest in motivation seems to have

started its modern trajectory at a juncture reminiscent of hierarchies and power. The

Hawthorne studies, conducted from 1924 to 1933 at the Western Electric Company’s

Hawthorne plant, represented a major historical event in the development of industrial

sociology, psychology and the social sciences in general. Its aim was to consider the

potential effects of illumination, rest breaks, length of workday and workweek, wages,

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food, humidity, and temperature on worker performance. Yes, work performance easily

related to profit. Though the Hawthorne effect was never clearly identified (Adair,

Sharpe, & Huynh, 1989) and was harshly criticized from multiple theoretical and

methodological perspectives (Kompier, 2006), it became the source of much interest

which ultimately spilled over to educational research. When considering the goals of

massive education, the study of response-consequence contingencies extended to the

examination of motivation in learners should come as no surprise. But, it should be held

under suspicion.

We want to reiterate that, as just stated, there is no need to explain action other

than by itself in situ; evasive hidden conceptualizations such as motivation will not take

us far. We will be better off, if we can identify and describe in detail the settings and

circumstances in which expected or rejected activities take place without resorting to the

‘dangerous’ (empirically speaking and power wise speaking) question of ‘why’. We are

not rejecting ‘why’ questions, of course. That would be naïve. What we suggest though is

that it would be equally naïve to resort to motivation and ascribe hidden reasons for

human activity, because we lack empirical evidence, when we should be paying careful

attention to human activity.

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