NY Times, Sept. 10, 1995. The Decline of the Nice-Guy Quotient By Daniel Goleman Contrary to conventional wisdom, nice guys do finish first. The trouble is, nice guys are harder and harder to find. Amid the agonizing over standardized intelligence tests comes a new problem to worry about. Psychologists seeking a broader measure of intelligence, one that accounts for the personality traits that seem to predict success better than IQ alone, have discovered that a newly minted virtue they call "emotional intelligence" is declining as well. A recent study done at Bell Laboratories the high-tech think tank near Princeton N.J., found that the most valued and productive engineers -- at least among electrical engineers working in teams of up to 150 people -- were not those with the highest IQs, the highest academic credentials or the best scores on achievement tests. Instead, the stars were those whose congeniality put them at the heart of the informal communication networks that would spring up during times of crisis or innovation. When these likeable engineers hit a snag and E-mailed for help, they got an answer instantly; when others less gifted in interpersonal realms sent similar messages, they sometimes waited days or weeks for a reply. The standouts excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation, persuasion and the ability to build consensus among people. The new term for these traits is emotional intelligence, which, in addition to the social graces, includes the ability to read one's own feelings, to control one's own impulses and anger, to calm oneself down and to maintain resolve and hope in the face of setbacks. To predict the success of a financial analyst or geophysicist, IQ is still crucial. But within a pool of high-lQ people, those with high emotional intelligence will have an extra competitive edge. Emotional intelligence, like self-knowledge and personal charisma, has long been seen as ineffable, more the stuff of poets and philosophers than psychometricians. And yet, despite all that, the measuring has begun. In the mid-1970s, and again in the late 1980s, Thomas Achenbach, a psychologist at the University of Vermont, had thousands of American children assessed by their parents and teachers on a behavioral checklist. He found that over the course of that decade and a half, America's children, on average, had become more anxious and depressed, more impulsive and mean, more demanding and disobedient, more hot-tempered and aggressive -- and not just in beleaguered urban neighborhoods. The study found growing emotional deficits even among the children of the wealthiest suburbs. Although the scores were worst for the poorest children, the rate of decline was the same for all, privileged and impoverished alike. Apparently, students continue to be receptive even into their teen years. Neuroscientists have found that the centers in the prefrontal lobes that control emotional impulse are among the last parts of the brain to reach full maturity, sometime in mid- to late adolescence. Now, at last, from the emotional literacy front there is some promising news: Children in the courses show marked improvements in the ability to control their impulses, show empathy, cooperate with others, manage anger and anxiety, focus on a task, pursue goals and resolve conflicts. Delinquency, fights and drug use drop. And there is an added bonus: achievement test scores rise too. ------