There is no such thing as EQ (2016)

I'm a psychologist whose research is close to this area. (Maybe in this area?)

The Quora post is kind of a trifecta of topics that tend to elicit very internet-y types of controversies for lack of a better way of putting it.

I can't speak for Peterson, to provide some context, I can understand where he's coming from. There are researchers of all sorts of backgrounds who spend a fair amount of time studying empirically the contours of human behavioral and psychological individual differences, and there are certain ideas that come up in the popular discourse, and persist despite their being a scientific literature that speaks against them in one way or another. They resonate with people because they do have variously sized kernels of truth to them, but somehow the scientific literature never gets injected into public discourse. This eventually feeds back, though, in textbooks and standardized exams, and it's like you're constantly fighting a battle for precision of terms.

Here's a small sampling of things that will trigger a response like that of Peterson on Quora: EQ, grit, Myers-Briggs.

The new MCAT is an example of this--the behavioral sciences section is horribly outdated in certain sections. I'm not sure how it got the way it is. But it's a major test, so now you have to teach to it, which then leads to a distorted perception of psychology and behavioral sciences by who are interested in the biomedical sciences, which then leads to all sorts of strawman arguments, and so forth and so on. It's like if the biology section included a section on intelligent design or something.

Anyway, the problem with something like EQ is that yes, there are non-cognitive determinants of success: empathy, social perceptual skills, perseveration, conscientiousness, socioeconomic background, and so forth and so on. So EQ captures this vague idea that IQ isn't everything.

The problem is that saying "IQ isn't everything" doesn't mean that a construct like EQ, which basically means "non-cognitive traits", is empirically precise and contributes something meaningful above and beyond other constructs mentioned by Peterson. These kinds of discussions create problems, because they create this false sense that if you argue against EQ, you're arguing against the idea of non-cognitive determinants of functioning, or arguing that IQ tests can't be improved, which is a false argument. Rather, what Peterson is saying is that there are well-characterized constructs like Big Five Agreeableness, or Conscientiousness, which have demonstrated predictive validity, and that are empirically coherent and precise enough to be more-or-less workable for lots of theories. That doesn't mean you can't be more precise; it just means that they represent a certain baseline of precision.

Contributing to this a certain confusion about what's meant by "thingness" in these literatures. Behavioral scientists are often studying actions, states, experiences, which are not physical in the sense of being objects (even though supervenience holds, so physical things underlie them), which is a little more abstract than what people are used to thinking about. So there's predictably some offshoot discussion about that issue. It's a bit like arguing that DL nets aren't things because they aren't instantiated directly in neuromorphic chips.

You're right to be critical of the idea that IQ is everything. But I can see where Peterson is coming from in certain respects.

A gossip magazine will make statements that are often false but falsifiable. Hence strictly more scientific than statements about EQ. Right now there is no consensus of what the claims behind the phrase EQ even mean -- which gives society free game to just speculate or assume that their assumptions are correct.

The reason for this is actually obvious: an IQ test will ask questions of which there is a strong consensus as to what the correct answer should be (like math questions). If you have different teams make different IQ tests with this rule, the rankings of test subjects will prove to be uniform. Different test, same test subjects: similar ranking. It is a reproducible metric. Although none of this proves it measures 'intelligence' as used in everyday conversation. The name is unfortunate, the metric is quite useful.

People have not succeeded in making a reproducible metric of emotional intelligence -- it is currently not even well defined. Unlike the statements in a gossip magazine, which although may not always be factual, they are at least well qualified and defined statements.

"Celebrity X slept with celebrity Y". There is no ambiguity about what that statement means and what would be considered supporting evidence to convince you that the statement is true. Therefore, the gossip magazine is closer to science than the pop-literature about EQ.

What confuses me, is that to take offense to this, one has to be or know a scientist that has or is trying to get funding or work published that hinges on the EQ pop culture buzz, which would be unfortunate, but not damning. One can do real research and move it away from the magical world of speculation and anecdotes. But to explain to a person in that position the value of and importance of the scientific method, is like explaining to a catholic priest that children shouldn't be raped according to the bible. How is this perspective on science at all surprising to you? Is this how far academica has deformed itself? That the core values of science are vague historic details in a mist of career planning?

>1. You can just invent a trait.

Of course you can, though it will probably be a useless invention.

>2. You don't have to define a trait, measure it or distinguish it from other traits or use it to predict the important ways that people vary.

Naturally, if you're going to invent a trait you should distinguish it from other traits as well as show it has predictive power. Measuring it however is the tricky part, but not being able to currently measure it does not mean it doesn't exist.

>3. EQ is a psychometrically valid concept. >4. It isn't the Big Five trait agreeableness

Don't know - didn't major in psychology.

>5. EQ measures shouldn't all measure THE SAME THING

Yes they should, once EQ measures are well defined and standardized, which they are not.

I admit that What rubbed me the wrong way about the answer was the elitist vibe I got from it - if I'd have listened to predictors about me in my youth, I wouldn't never have reached anything I've achieved. Hubris is dangerous thing, and this is the feeling I got. I'm open to the possibility that it may well be a wrong interpretation on my part though.

It's famous, funny, and a classic, but the original SO question was about "matching open html tags" with a regex while the answer was about "parsing [X]HTML" with a regex. So the poster made some assumptions about what the original question's author was intending to do. Ultimately the choice between which tool to pick is a tradeoff that has to be made by the author, as hinted in the (much better) second answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1733489

Okay I don't want to derail too much, but a couple things to note:

1. IQ is itself a combination of multiple cognitive functions: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed, etc, and people might be better or worse on in individual topics.

2. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are part of the Big 5 model, which is itself just a model of personality that has its own share of flaws.