Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com

about the first page of the EQi manaul.... see the file on MHS

Here is the first draft of what I wrote after I saw the EQi technical manual and Steven Stein's book "The EQ Edge". Unfortunately I only had a short time to review them one day while I was traveling. I had hoped to get another chance to look at them, but that doesn't look likely since that was in Peru and I am now in Argentina.

Steve
March 25, 2006

these notes started out talking about the cover of the EQi technical manual

So we see that Bar-On and Steven Stein, the president of Multi-Health Systems (MHS), claim very directly that the BarOn EQi is a “measure of emotional intelligence.”

And we also see that they started saying this as early as 1997.

Later I plan to get a copy of this page and scan it in. Or I will write to Stein and ask him to confirm that this is what the pages says or at least once said. I also plan to ask him how he decided to call the BarOn EQi a “measure of emotional intelligence.” And I will ask him if he still thinks it is fair to call it that. And I will ask him who else besides he and Reuven and the people who are making money from selling and administering his test are saying that it is a “measure of emotional intelligence.”

The 1997 date is important because Goleman’s first book came out in 1995 and it was after this, according to Stein himself, (xx) that Stein and Bar-On met. So it was after Goleman's book became popular that Stein and BarOn came up with the idea re-naming Reuven's test and calling it a test of "emotional intelligence" and then marketing it around the world as such.

Prior to the 1995 Goleman book Bar-On had been calling his test a test of “well-being” – something quite different than emotional intelligence, as Mayer et al have defined it.

In the EQi technical manual there is a quote by someone named Daniel Gomez Dupertois, a psychology professor in South America. It is supposed to be a testimonial for the EQi test. But in the quote Dupertois calls Bar-On's test a test of "well-being". He never refers to it as a test of emotional intelligence. I assume this is either because he made the statement before he found out that Stein and Bar-On planned to market the test as a test of EI or because he has some integrity and didn't feel right about calling Bar-On's test a test of emotional intelligence.

At any rate, I am not at all impressed with Steven Stein. I wasn’t impressed with him before I saw this manual and I am even less impressed with him now. Besides seeing Reuven’s manual I also had a chance to read some of Stein’s book that he co-wrote with someone else. The book is called “The EQ Edge.”

I learned a little more about Stein from the first few pages of that book. I learned, for example, who some of his friends are and what kind of people he spends time with.

His book starts with pages that are numbered with Roman numerals. On pages ix and x he thanks some of friends who helped him collect data on the BarOn test. First, he thanks some people in the US military. Then he thanks Larry Tennenebaum, who is “co-owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs”. In case you don’t know, the Toronto Maple Leafs is a hockey team. And in case you don’t know, hockey is one of the most violent games in sports. And I think it goes without saying that people in the military are involved in the most deadly types of competition known to the human species. But let me show you a direct quote from Stein’s book. This is what he says on page x

We were pleasantly surprised at how open these hockey professionals were to the importance of emotional intelligence in the development of their young hockey players.

I could be wrong, but I am guessing that Stein has a lot of friends in the military in both the USA and Canada. And I am guessing that he also has friends in the Israeli military. I learned from my reading that day that Bar-On was in the Israeli military for something like 11 years, serving as a psychologist, according to Bar-On. And I learned that Stein and Bar-On met at some dinner conference in Israel in around 1995 or 1996. Stein did not tell us the exact date. I suspect this is because he doesn’t want people like me to figure out even more about how he and Bar-On took advantage of the popularity of Goleman’s book and rushed out a test which they called a “measure of emotional intelligence” and made a lot of money from. I also found out that the BarOn EQi costs 25 dollars per test. And I found out that if you want to use it for research you have to buy a minimum of 50 at a price of 5 dollars each. So if my math is correct, that is 250 dollars. That is a lot of money in a lot of countries for a lot of psychology students.

I will speculate some more about Stein. I will guess that he likes to go to hockey games. And I will guess that he probably sits in the VIP boxes with the Larry Tannebaum. And I will guess that both Stein and Tannebaum are Jewish. And I am sure that Bar-On is Jewish because Stein even says that Bar-On is an “American born Israeli” in his EQ Edge book. (I am not sure how you can be an “American-born Israeli”, but I will take Stein’s word for it.)

Now I am afraid you will think that I am some kind of racist and I don’t like Jews since I have mentioned that Bar-On, Stein and Tannebaum are (or probably are) Jewish. But Jack Mayer is also Jewish and this doesn’t really bother me. I would not discredit someone’s work just because they are Jewish. But I do want to call attention to two things. One is Israel’s track record of success in resolving conflicts and creating peace, and another is the reputation Jewish businessmen have for putting human feelings ahead of profits. Of course, I am being quite cynical and sarcastic, and not all Jews are the same, but I think you get my point.

Basically I want to help people who read my site think about some things, or at least take some things into consideration when they decide whether to spend money on the BarOn EQi and whether to pay Reuven Bar-On or Steven Stein consulting fees or speakers’ fees.

I want people to think about what is really important to these people. Is truth important, for example? Is peace important? Is non-violence important? Are people’s feelings important?

Or are money, military power and winning hockey games important?