情商：为什么情商比智商更重要（第2版）

杏仁核（以及有关的边缘结构）和新皮层的联结是头脑与心灵、思维与感受之间战争或缔约的博弈中心。这一神经通道揭示了情绪对有效思维的关键作用，有效思维包括明智决策和保持思维清晰两个方面。

举一个情绪破坏思考的例子。神经学家用“工作记忆”这个术语来描述对完成给定任务或问题所必需的、储存于大脑的事实的关注能力，这些事实可能是从多个角度考量得出的理想房屋的特征，也可能是考试时推理题的基本要素。前额叶皮层是负责工作记忆的大脑区域。^[17]不过由于前额叶与边缘脑之间存在着神经回路，焦虑、愤怒等强烈情绪的信号会制造神经静电，从而破坏前额叶保持工作记忆的能力。这就是我们悲伤时不能好好思考的原因，也是持续的情绪困扰造成儿童智力缺陷、损害学习能力的原因。

这些缺陷有时比较微妙，智商测试未必能够发现，不过它们可以通过更有针对性的神经心理学测量方法发现，同时在儿童持续的焦虑和冲动性上有所体现。比如，智商超出平均水平但学习成绩差的男学童，经过神经心理学测试后发现，他们的额叶皮层功能受到损害。^[18]同时，他们还表现出冲动和忧虑，经常惹是生非——这说明他们的前额叶无法控制边缘组织。尽管他们具备不错的智力潜能，但这些儿童很有可能遇到学习成绩差、酗酒和犯罪等问题。原因不在于他们的智力有所欠缺，而是他们控制情绪生活的能力出现了问题。智商测试只涉及新皮层区域，而控制愤怒和怜悯等情绪的情绪脑与新皮层在一定程度上是分离的。这些情绪的神经回路是由童年期的经历塑造的，但我们甘冒风险，在智商测试时完全忽视了童年期经历的影响。

我们再看看情绪在最“理性”的决策过程中的作用。艾奥瓦大学医学院神经学专家安东尼奥·达马西欧（Antonio Damasio）博士在一项对理解心理生活影响深远的研究中，仔细分析了“前额叶–杏仁核”通道受损病人的受影响情况。^[19]这些人的决策能力出现了严重缺陷，但他们在智商测试或其他认知能力测试中并没有表现出任何退化。尽管他们的智力没有问题，但他们在工作和私人生活当中所做的决策非常糟糕，就连面对“什么时候预约”这种简单的决定也犹豫不决。

达马西欧博士认为，他们难以决策的原因在于无法进行情绪学习。我们从生活中获得的喜欢或厌恶的经验储藏在杏仁核里，作为思维和情绪的交会点，前额叶–杏仁核的联结通道是通往这个知识库的关键门户。如果新皮层与杏仁核的情绪记忆切断了联系，那么无论新皮层如何冥思苦想也难以触发与以往经验紧密相连的情绪反应，此时每件事情都处于灰色的中立地带。一种刺激，无论是最喜欢的宠物还是讨厌的熟人，都不会再引发喜爱之情或者厌恶之情。由于无法获得储藏在杏仁核中的情绪知识，这些病人已经“忘记”了以往所有的情绪体验。

这种研究结果使达马西欧博士持有反直觉的立场，他认为感受对理性决策来说不可或缺，感受为我们指明了正确的方向，干巴巴的逻辑在此时可以发挥最佳效果。世界常常给我们出各式各样的选择题（你应该如何投资退休储蓄？你应该和谁结婚？），生活赋予我们的情绪知识（比如一次蹩脚的投资或者痛苦的分手记忆）示意我们首先排除一些选择，突出另一些选择，从而帮助我们形成合理的决策。达马西欧博士认为，情绪脑正是以这种方式与思考脑共同参与推理的过程。

因此，情绪对理性有着重要意义。在感觉与思维共舞时，情绪无时无刻不在引导我们进行决策，与理性脑通力合作，令思维本身有效或者失效。反过来，思考脑在情绪中扮演执行官的角色，当然情绪失控或者情绪脑蔓延的时刻除外。

从某种意义上说，我们有两个大脑、两种心理，以及两种不同的智力——理性智力和情绪智力。我们的行为由两者共同决定，智商和情商同时在发挥作用。实际上，没有情绪智力，思维就无法达到最好的效果。

边缘系统与新皮层、杏仁核与前额叶通常互为补充，相辅相成，都是我们心理生活的真正伙伴。如果它们彼此合作愉快，情绪智力和理性智力就能双双得到提高。

这种观点彻底改变了推理与感觉相互冲突的传统看法。我们并不是要像伊拉斯谟说的那样，抛开感性，拥抱理性，而是要找到两者的平衡点。

传统范式认为理性应当超脱于感性的约束，而新范式却要求我们使头脑和心灵保持和谐。我们在生活中要有效地做到这一点，首先必须更加准确地理解明智地处理情绪的意义。

1. The case of the man with no feelings was described by R. Joseph, op. cit.p. 83. On the other hand,there may be some vestiges of feeling in people who lack an amygdala (see Paul Ekman and RichardDavidson, eds., Questions About Emotion .New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). The differentfindings may hinge on exactly which parts of the amygdala and related circuits were missing;the lastword on the detailed neurology of emotion is far from in.
2. Like many neuroscientists, LeDoux works at several levels, studying, forinstance, how specificlesions in a rat’s brain change its behavior; painstakingly tracing the path of single neurons; setting upelaborate experiments to conditionfear in rats whose brains have been surgically altered. His findings,and others reviewed here, are at the frontier of exploration in neuroscience, and so remainsomewhatspeculative—particularly the implications that seem to flow from the raw data to an understanding ofour emotional life. But LeDoux’s workis supported by a growing body of converging evidence from avariety of neuroscientists who are steadily laying bare the neural underpinnings of emotions.See, forexample, Joseph LeDoux, “Sensory Systems and Emotion,” Integrative Psychiatry ,4, 1986; JosephLeDoux, “Emotion and the Limbic System Concept,” Concepts in Neuroscience ,2,1992.
3. The idea of the limbic system as the brain’s emotional center was introducedby neurologist PaulMacLean more than forty years ago. In recent years discoveries like LeDoux’s have refined the limbicsystem concept, showing thatsome of its central structures like the hippocampus are less directlyinvolved in emotions, while circuits linking other parts of the brain—particularly theprefrontal lobes—to the amygdala are more central. Beyond that, there is a growing recognition that each emotion maycall on distinct brain areas. The mostcurrent thinking is that there is not a neatly defined single“emotional brain,” but rather several systems of circuits that disperse the regulation of a givenemotionto farflung, but coordinated, parts of the brain. Neuroscientists speculate that when the fullbrain mapping of the emotions is accomplished, each major emotionwill have its own topography, adistinct map of neuronal pathways determining its unique qualities, though many or most of thesecircuits are likely to be interlinkedat key junctures in the limbic system, like the amygdala, andprefrontal cortex.See Joseph LeDoux, “Emotional Memory Systems in the Brain,” Behavioral andBrain Research ,58,1993.
4. Brain circuitry of different levels of fear: This analysis is based on theexcellent synthesis in JeromeKagan, Galen’s Prophecy (New York: Basic Books,1994).
5. I wrote about Joseph LeDoux’s research in The New York Times on August15,1989. The discussionin this chapter is based on interviews with him, and several of his articles, including Joseph LeDoux,“Emotional Memory Systemsin the Brain,” Behavioural Brain Research , 58,1993; Joseph LeDoux,“Emotion,Memory and the Brain,” Scientific American , June, 1994; Joseph LeDoux,“Emotion and theLimbic System Concept,” Concepts in Neuroscience , 2, 1992.
6. Unconscious preferences: William Raft Kunst-Wilson and R. B. Zajonc,“Affective Discriminationof Stimuli That Cannot Be Recognized,” Science (Feb.1, 1980).
7. Unconscious opinion: John A. Bargh, “First Second: The Preconscious inSocial Interactions,”presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC (June 1994).
8. Emotional memory: Larry Cahill et al., “Beta-adrenergic activation andmemory for emotionalevents,” Nature (Oct. 20, 1994).
9. Psychoanalytic theory and brain maturation: the most detailed discussionof the early years and theemotional consequences of brain development is Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of Self(Hillsdale, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates, 1994).
10. Dangerous, even if you don’t know what it is: LeDoux, quoted in “HowScary Things Get ThatWay,” Science (Nov. 6, 1992), p. 887.
11. Much of this speculation about the fine-tuning of emotional response by theneocortex comes fromNed Kalin, op. cit.
12. A closer look at the neuroanatomy shows how the prefrontal lobes act asemotional managers.Much evidence points to part of the prefrontal cortex as a site where most or all cortical circuitsinvolved in an emotional reaction cometogether. In humans, the strongest connections betweenneocortex and amygdala run to the left prefrontal lobe and the temporal lobe below and to the side ofthefrontal lobe (the temporal lobe is critical in identifying what an object is). Both these connections aremade in a single projection, suggesting a rapid and powerfulpathway, a virtual neural highway. Thesingle-neuron projection between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex runs to an area calledtheorbitofrontal cortex.This is the area that seems most critical for assessing emotional responses as weare in the midst of them and making mid-course corrections.The orbitofrontal cortex both receives signals from the amygdala and has itsown intricate, extensiveweb of projections throughout the limbic brain. Throughthis web it plays a role in regulating emotionalresponses—including inhibitingsignals from the limbic brain as they reach other areas of the cortex,thus toningdown the neural urgency of those signals. The orbitofrontal cortex’s connectionsto thelimbic brain are so extensive that some neuroanatomists have called it akind of “limbic cortex”—thethinking part of the emotional brain. See Ned Kalin,Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry,University of Wisconsin, “Aspects ofEmotion Conserved Across Species,” an unpublished manuscriptprepared for theMacArthur Affective Neuroscience Meeting, November, 1992; and Allan Schore, AffectRegulation and the Origin of Self (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 1994).There is not only a structural bridge between amygdala and prefrontal cortex,but, as always, abiochemical one: both the ventromedial section of the prefrontalcortex and the amygdala are especiallyhigh in concentrations of chemicalreceptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin. This brain chemicalseems, amongother things, to prime cooperation: monkeys with extremely high density ofreceptors forserotonin in the prefrontal-amygdala circuit are “socially well-tuned,” while those with lowconcentrations are hostile and antagonistic. SeeAntonio Damosio, Descartes’ Error (New York:Grosset/Putnam, 1994).
13. Animal studies show that when areas of the prefrontal lobes are lesioned, sothat they no longermodulate emotional signals from the limbic area, the animalsbecome erratic, impulsively andunpredictably exploding in rage or cringing infear. A. R. Luria, the brilliant Russian neuropsychologist,proposed as long agoas the 1930s that the prefrontal cortex was key for selfcontrol andconstrainingemotional outbursts; patients who had damage to this area, he noted, wereimpulsive andprone to flareups of fear and anger. And a study of two dozen menand women who had been convictedof impulsive, heat-of-passion murders found,using PET scans for brain imaging, that they had a muchlower than usual level ofactivity in these same sections of the prefrontal cortex.
14. Some of the main work on lesioned lobes in rats was done by VictorDermenberg, a psychologist atthe University of Connecticut.
15. Left hemisphere lesions and joviality: G. Gianotti, “Emotional behavior andhemispheric side oflesion,” Cortex , 8,1972.
16. The case of the happier stroke patient was reported by Mary K. Morris, ofthe Department ofNeurology at the University of Florida, at the International Neuro-physiological Society Meeting,February 13-16,1991, in San Antonio.
17. Prefrontal cortex and working memory: Lynn D. Selemon et al., “PrefrontalCortex,” AmericanJournal of Psychiatry , 152,1995.
18. Faulty frontal lobes: Philip Harden and Robert Pihl, “Cognitive Function,CardiovascularReactivity, and Behavior in Boys at High Risk for Alcoholism,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology,104,1995.
19. Prefrontal cortex: Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain(New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994).