1 Peter Salovey and John Mayer, “Emotional Intelligence,” Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 1990, 185-211. .

2 Reuven Bar-On, “The Bar-On model of emotional intelligence: A valid, robust and applicable EI model,” Organisations & People, 14, 2007, 27-34.

3 For an overview of the field: http://www.eiconsortium.org/reports/what_is_emotional_intelligence.html

4 Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

5 Reuven Bar-On et al, (2003).” Exploring the neurological substrate of emotional and social intelligence,” Brain, 126, 1790-1800; Bechara et al, “The anatomy of emotional intelligence and the implications for educating people to be emotionally intelligent,” in Reuven Bar-On et al (eds.) Educating People to be Emotionally Intelligent. Westport, CT: Praeger, pp 273-90.

6 EI in the brain: see.e.g., T.H. Taki et al., “Regional gray matter density associated with emotional intelligence: Evidence from voxel-based morphometry,” Human Brain Mapping, Aug. 25 2010, posted at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20140644

7 Emotion and cognition in good and bad choices: see Bechara et al, “Emotion, decision-making, and the orbitofrontal cortex,” Cereb Cortex, 10 (3), 295-307, 2000.

8 See, for example, Larry Squire, “Memory systems of the brain: a brief history and current perspective,” Neurobiol Learn Mem, 82,3,2004.171-177.

9 David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey, The Emotionally Intelligent Manager. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

10 Ap Dijksterhuis et al, “On making the right choice: The deliberation-without-attention effect,” Science.

11 Five common emotional triggers: Tony Schwartz, The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

12 Setpoint: R.J. Davidson and W. Irwin, “The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style,” Trends in Cognitive Neuroscience 3, 1999, 11-21. However, there is not an either/or relationship between right and left: both sides of the prefrontal area are active to some degree during amygdala hijacks as well as regulating them. See, for example, A.R. Aron et al, “Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 4, 2004, 170-177.

13 Barbara Frederickson, Positivity. New York: Crown Publishers, 2009.

14 Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

15 Richard Davidson et al., “Alterations in brain and immune function Produced by mindfulness meditation,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 2003, 564-570.

16 Trying to intervene in the brain via external methods, like, psychopharmacology, means that you're targeting one outcome, but with a chemical that has a multitude of impacts in the brain -- so you have many side effects. For example, a major class of medication for depression regulates the serotonin system in the brain – but only about five percent of the body’s serotonin receptors are in the brain. A very large percent are in the gastrointestinal tract, which is why common side effects involve problems with digestion. The GI tract in turn helps regulate the immune system, among others, so those side effects can ramify. There are some promising pilot applications of neural feedback where people getting their brains scanned get immediate information about when they are in a desired brain state, and so can experiment to see what might keep them there. But we don't yet understand what the benefits or limits are of neural feedback. My own bias is toward more natural interventions, if only because the brain is the most complicated and densely packed and interconnected mass known in the universe.

17 Engaged versus disengaged: The Gallup Organization, http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/employee-engagement.aspx

18 McEwen B. S. (2000). "Allostasis and allostatic load: implications for neuropsychopharmacology". Neuropsychopharmacology 22 (2): 108–24. doi:10.1016/S0893-133X(99)00129-3

19 Stress and health: Bruce McEwen, The End of Stress as We Know It. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. 2002.

20 Cognitive efficiency: Antonio Damasio, “Sub-cortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions,” Nature Neuroscience, 3, 2002, 1049-1056.

21 Mastery: K. Anders Ericsson, “The search for general abilities and basic capacities: Theoretical implications from the modifiability and complexity of mechanisms mediating expert performance,” in Robert Sternberg and Elena Grigorenko (eds.) The Psychology of Abilities, Expertise, and Competencies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

22 Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Wellbeing. New York : Norton, 2007.

23 There is debate among neuroscientists with how extensive mirror neurons are within the human brain. Some say they are concentrated in the motor cortex, while others contend they are widely distributed among brain areas..

24 Three ingredients of rapport: Linda Tickle-Degnan and Robert Rosenthal, “The Nature of Rapport and its Nonverbal Correlates,” Psychological Inquiry 1, no. 4 (1990), pp. 285-93.

25 Oscillators: R. Port and T. Van Gelder, Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition. Cambridge:Mass: MIT Press, 1995.

26 Human moment: Edward Hallowell, “The Human Moment at Work,” Harvard Business Review, January 1, 1999.

27 Clay Shirky, Here comes Everybody. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

28 C. Lamm, C.and T. Singer, T. “The role of anterior insular cortex in social emotions,” Brain Structure & Function, 241(5–6), 579–951. (2010).

29 Tania Singer et al, “A common role of insula in feelings, empathy and uncertainty,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 8, 2009, 334-340. Singer suggests the route to emotional empathy seems to be via the insula in tandem with the mirror neurons; this avenue creates interpersonal chemistry and rapport. But when it comes to cognitive empathy, we’d expect to see a greater role for cortical areas, the thinking part of the brain. As for empathic concern, I would expect the same circuits that underlie emotional empathy to be involved, along with some in the premotor or motor areas that drive action.

30 Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain , London: Allen Lane, 2003.

31 Sociopath’s brain: Antonio Damasio, “A Neural Basis for Sociopathy,” Archives of General Psychiatry 57, 2000, 128-129.

32 Richard Boyatzis and I, working with the Hay Group, have designed such an assessment tool, called the Emotional and Social Competence Inventory, or ESCI-360 For information on the ESCI: http://www.haygroup.com/leadershipandtalentondemand/Products/Item_Details.aspx?ItemID=58&type=5

33 To learn more about Social/Emotional learning, see the Collaborative for Academic and Social Learning, www.CASEL.org

34 SEL evaluation: Joseph Durlak and Roger Weissberg, “The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-analysis of School-based Universal Interventions,” to be published in Child Development (In press).