The Hanging Dog

The Hanging Dog

Warning - This true story may be very intense for some people. It is difficult for me to even write about it.

Today I went to a relatively isolated spot along a river. I am currently living, by the way, in Argentina.

At one point I heard what sounded like a dog crying out for help. I went to see what was happening and I saw four men hanging a dog by its neck from a tree branch. The dog was barking and wailing as best it could. Moments later a man came along, a man who I had talked to just a bit perhaps thirty minutes earlier. At the time I was a little afraid he was an alcoholic and he was going to ask me for money so I cut the conversation a bit short after he asked me several questions like where I was from. This time he was carrying a machete, as is common South America.

He was upset with what the other men were doing. He asked them what was going on and as best as I could understand their Spanish they said the dog was sick and was contagious. He criticized them and said they could take him to a vet to be put to sleep. The men said that cost too much money. Then the man said for 2 pesos (about 60 US cents) they could buy some poison and kill him. He then walked through them and with a few swings of his machete, cut the dog down, as he could not bear to see it suffering like that.

I admire the man for what he did. I have been wondering, though, if Mayer and Salovey would say this was an act of emotional intelligence. As I discuss in my article "Calling Conformity Intelligence" they seem to believe that it is emotionally intelligent to go along with the majority. So what if we designed a test of emotional intelligence and asked the question, "What is the most effective way to deal with a dog having a deadly, contagious disease?" What if we gave the test to these five people? What if they were the only five people on an island, and therefore made up the "culture." Would we say that the majority response of hanging the dog would be the most emotionally intelligent since it was the most common answer?

The man with the machete, by the way, came by to talk to me again later. Like many alcoholics it was obvious he was a lonely man and wanted someone to be his friend. This reminds me of a South African who told me once "Alcoholics are sweet people."

In my experience, both in traveling to over 50 countries in the world, and in working with suicidal teens who drink and use drugs, this is very true. They are all "sweet people" who come from emotionally dysfunctional homes, and cultures.

I firmly believe Mayer, Salovey and Caruso are a bit off the mark in their understanding of what emotional intelligence is. I hope that with time they or other academic researchers will improve the definition of emotional intelligence and come up with a test which measures innate EI, not behavior which could be a result of many factors.

S. Hein
November 15, 2006