In plain language
Science has given us remarkable control over the external world, yet people still struggle to manage their inner emotional lives — road rage, conflict, and despair remain everywhere. This book chapter asks why people so often act ineffectively when strong emotions show up, and what can actually be done about it. The authors draw a crucial distinction: emotional intelligence is a potential (the ability to process emotions), whereas emotionally intelligent behavior is what you actually do — whether anxiety stops you from getting a health check, or anger leads you to hit a friend.
Using Relational Frame Theory and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the chapter describes four language-based processes, summarized by the acronym FEAR — fusion, evaluation, avoidance, and reason giving — that make emotions behaviorally binding. When people fuse with negative evaluations and treat thoughts as immutable truths (for example, "if I feel angry, I must act aggressively"), emotions come to block effective action.
The proposed antidote is Mindfulness-Based Emotional Intelligence Training (MBEIT): learning to look at thoughts rather than through them (defusion), to willingly experience unpleasant feelings rather than fight them (acceptance), and to act in line with clearly held personal values even in the presence of fear, doubt, fatigue, or intense emotion. The chapter also uses this framework to organize the sprawling field of EI-related measures and to connect them to a coherent, testable intervention strategy.
Key findings
- Emotional intelligence (ability or potential) is distinguished from emotionally intelligent behavior — acting effectively in the presence of emotions and emotionally charged thoughts.
- The FEAR processes — fusion, evaluation, avoidance, and reason giving — drawn from ACT and Relational Frame Theory, explain how language makes emotions behaviorally binding and produces emotionally unintelligent behavior.
- The emotionally intelligent person can recognize unpleasant emotions as constellations of sensations, thoughts, and predispositions that are not intrinsically harmful and need not determine what is done next.
- MBEIT counters FEAR with cognitive defusion, acceptance, mindfulness, and an effective action orientation — acting on values even amid impulses, fear, uncertainty, pain, or intense emotion.
- The framework organizes previously isolated individual-difference measures (e.g., the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, mindfulness scales) and links them to a coherent intervention strategy.
- The authors argue that MBEIT and ability models of EI (such as Mayer's MSCEIT) can inform each other — for example, future ability measures could assess the capacity to act effectively while experiencing strong emotion.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., & Blackledge, J. T. (2006). Mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training: A new approach to reducing human suffering and promoting effectiveness. In J. Ciarrochi, J. P. Forgas, & J. D. Mayer (Eds.), Emotional intelligence in everyday life (2nd ed., pp. 206–228). New York: Psychology Press.
BibTeX
@incollection{ciarrochi2006mindfulness,
title = {Mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training: A new approach to reducing human suffering and promoting effectiveness},
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Blackledge, John T.},
booktitle = {Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life},
edition = {2},
editor = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Forgas, Joseph P. and Mayer, John D.},
publisher = {Psychology Press},
address = {New York},
pages = {206--228},
year = {2006}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version.