Self-awareness is about recognising and understanding your emotions – what you’re feeling and why – as well as appreciating how they affect those around you. It’s the basis of good intuition and decision-making, helping you to instinctively make the right choices for you in all aspects of life. Self-awareness is also about knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and what is important to you – your values or moral compass.
Once you’ve mastered emotional awareness, the next step is managing those emotions – particularly the negative ones – effectively. Always treat others with respect and try to stay in control. If you have a tendency to emotional outbursts, practise being calm: step back and take a deep breath. It’s also important to stay true to your values, and hold yourself personally accountable for any mistakes.
The third ‘personal’ element, motivation is about your drive to improve and achieve: setting high standards for yourself and working consistently towards your goals. Take the initiative: be ready to act on opportunities as they come along, and practise being assertive. Motivation is also about optimism and resilience, and finding the positive in a situation, even – or especially – those that didn’t go well.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a multi-faceted construct consisting of our ability to perceive, monitor, regulate and use emotions. Despite much attention being paid to the neural substrates of EI, little is known of the spontaneous brain activity associated with EI during resting state. We used resting-state fMRI to investigate the association between the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFFs) and EI in a large sample of young, healthy adults. We found that EI was significantly associated with ALFFs in key nodes of two networks: the social emotional processing network (the fusiform gyrus, right superior orbital frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule) and the cognitive control network (the bilateral pre-SMA, cerebellum and right precuneus). These findings suggest that the neural correlates of EI involve several brain regions in two crucial networks, which reflect the core components of EI: emotion perception and emotional control.
Conflict of interest statement
Competing Interests:The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Figures
Figure 1. Brain regions which exhibited significant…
Figure 1. Brain regions which exhibited significant correlations between ALFFs and WLEIS total scores.
Figure 1. Brain regions which exhibited significant correlations between ALFFs and WLEIS total scores.Color bars represent R values. The results are shown with p<0.05 (corrected).
Figure 2. Scatter plots of the relationships…
Figure 2. Scatter plots of the relationships between WLEIS total score and mean ALFF values…
Figure 2. Scatter plots of the relationships between WLEIS total score and mean ALFF values in the significant clusters.A, B, C, D and E showed significant correlations between EI total score and mean ALFFs in left PCC, bilateral SMA/pre-SMA, right precuneus, right cerebellum and right fusiform gyrus, respectively.
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MeSH terms
Emotional Intelligence / physiology*
Magnetic Resonance Imaging*
Grant support
This study was supported by “the National Natural Science Foundation of China” (31170980, 81271477) to W. Pan and A. Chen, the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (201107) to A. Chen, the New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-10698), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1009001, SWU1309351) to A. Chen and research fellow. Study design and data collection were supported by “the National Natural Science Foundation of China” (31170980, 81271477). Data analysis, preparation of the manuscript and decision to publish was supported by the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (201107), the New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-110698), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1009001, SWU1309351).