Daniel Goleman (born March 7, 1946) is an author,
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...
, and
science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book ''
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information t ...
'' was on
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for a year and a half, a bestseller in many countries, and is in print worldwide in 40 languages. Apart from his books on
emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information t ...
, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the
ecological crisis
An ecological or environmental crises occurs when changes to the environment of a species or population destabilizes its continued survival. Some of the important causes include:
* Degradation of an abiotic ecological factor (for example, incr ...
, and the
Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current D ...
’s vision for the future.
Biography
Daniel Goleman grew up in a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
household in
Stockton, California
Stockton is a city in and the county seat of San Joaquin County in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquired Rancho Campo de los Franceses. The city is named after R ...
, the son of Fay Goleman (née Weinberg; 1910–2010), professor of sociology at the
University of the Pacific, and Irving Goleman (1898–1961), humanities professor at the Stockton College (now
San Joaquin Delta College). His maternal uncle was nuclear physicist
Alvin M. Weinberg
Alvin Martin Weinberg (; April 20, 1915 – October 18, 2006) was an American nuclear physicist who was the administrator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during and after the Manhattan Project. He came to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 19 ...
.
Goleman studied in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
using a pre-doctoral fellowship from
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and a post-doctoral grant from the
Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is a US-based, independent, international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines. Established in Manhattan in 1923, it today maintains ...
.
While in India, he spent time with spiritual teacher
Neem Karoli Baba, who was also the guru to
Ram Dass
Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been ...
,
Krishna Das, and
Larry Brilliant. He wrote his first book based on travel in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
and
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
. He earned his PhD in psychology at Harvard.
Goleman then returned as a visiting lecturer to Harvard, where during the 1970s his course on the psychology of consciousness was popular.
David McClelland, his mentor at Harvard, recommended him for a job at ''
Psychology Today
''Psychology Today'' is an American media organization with a focus on psychology and human behavior. It began as a bimonthly magazine, which first appeared in 1967. The ''Psychology Today'' website features therapy and health professionals direc ...
'', from which he was recruited by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1984.
Goleman co-founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
's Child Studies Center, which then moved to the
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...
. Currently he co-directs the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
. He is on the board of the
Mind & Life Institute.
Career
Goleman authored the internationally bestselling book ''Emotional Intelligence'' (Bantam Books, 1995), which spent more than a year and a half on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list. In ''Working with Emotional Intelligence'' (Bantam Books, 1998), Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as
IQ for workplace success, and made a similar argument for leadership effectiveness in ''Primal Leadership'' (Harvard Business School Press, 2001). Goleman's most recent bestseller is ''Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence'' (Harper, 2013).
In his first book, ''
The Varieties of Meditative Experience'' (1977) (republished in 1988 as ''The Meditative Mind''), Goleman describes almost a dozen different
meditation
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...
systems. He wrote that "the need for the meditator to retrain his
attention
Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Att ...
, whether through
concentration
In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', '' molar concentration'', ''number concentration'', ...
or
mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one's attention to the present-moment experience without evaluation, a skill one develops through meditation or other training. Mindfulness derives from ''sati'', a significant element of Hind ...
, is the single invariant ingredient in the recipe for
altering consciousness of every meditation system".
[Daniel Goleman, ''The Varieties of Meditative Experience''. New York: Tarcher. . p. 107.]
Awards
Goleman has received many awards, including:
* Career Achievement award for Excellence in the Media (1984) from the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
.
[. The award was given through the APA-affiliated American Psychological Foundation.]
* Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
in recognition of his efforts to communicate the behavioral sciences to the public
Publishing history
Books
* 1977: ''
The Varieties of the Meditative Experience'', Irvington Publishers. . Republished in 1988 as ''The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience'',
Tarcher/Penguin.
* 1985: ''
Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception'', Bloomsbury Publishers.
* 1995: ''
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ'',
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. ...
.
* 1998: ''Working with Emotional Intelligence'', Bantam Books.
* 2001: ''Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence'', with
Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Harvard Business Review Press.
* 2006: ''Social Intelligence: Beyond IQ, Beyond Emotional Intelligence'', Bantam Books.
* 2013: ''Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence'',
Harper Collins Publishers
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
.
* 2015: ''A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World'', Bantam Books.
* 2017: ''
Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body'', with
Richard Davidson,
Avery.
* 2019: The Emotionally Intelligent Leader, Harvard Business Review Press.
Journal articles (selected)
*
*
*
*
*
*
See also
*
Emotional aperture
Emotional aperture has been defined as the ability to perceive features of group emotions.Sanchez-Burks, J. & Huy, Q. (2008) "Emotional Aperture: The Accurate Recognition of Collective Emotions." ''Organization Science'', pp. 1-13 This skill invol ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goleman, Daniel
American psychologists
Jewish American social scientists
Emotional intelligence academics
Amherst College alumni
Harvard University alumni
Writers from Stockton, California
Jewish American writers
Mindfulness (Buddhism)
Mindfulness (psychology)
Mindfulness movement
Students of S. N. Goenka
1946 births
Living people
21st-century American Jews