Marc Brackett, PhD, is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. His research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. He has published 125 scholarly articles, received numerous awards, and is featured regularly in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Good Morning America, The Today Show, PBS NewsHour, and many others.
On Brené Brown podcast "Unlocking us", which I highly recommend, we have the chance to know more about Marc's work. He is the author of Permission to Feel (Macmillan/CELADON): Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive. In this book he explains his research of RULER which infuses the principles and skills of emotional intelligence into the immune system of schools by enhancing how school administrators lead, educators teach, students learn, and families parent.
I can't recommend more this episode of Brené Brown podcast and also his book. I've been working with RULERS and the Mood Meter with my clients and it's an amazing tool
What is RULER and Mood Meter?
RULER is an evidence-based approach and is an acronym that describes the skills of emotional intelligence. And those skills are recognising emotion in self and others; that is the R. Understanding the causes and consequences; that's the U. Labeling emotion, (L) expressing emotion (E) in healthy and appropriate ways, and then finally the last R is regulating emotion effectively. The RULER is that acronym that describes the five critical emotional intelligence skills.
The Mood Meter is our signature tool for RULER and emotional intelligence. And we actually have an app now that people can download and use to build their awareness. It's just moodmeterapp.com. The Mood Meter is a tool built on emotion theory and essentially asserts that our feeling space is the byproduct of two things. The first is kind of our appraisal of the environment; how pleasant or unpleasant is the environment that we're in. So you can think about it for kids, you know, when they walk into the school, are they unpleasant or pleasant? When you get home to you feel unpleasant or pleasant? And then the second dimension is energy or activation, and that's kind of how much juice you have in your body. Are you feeling negative vibes, for example, and you're about to fall asleep, or plus vibes, where you feel
activated? And essentially what happens is that you cross the two axes, pleasantness and energy, to create these four quadrants, the yellow, the red, the blue, and the green. And briefly, yellow is for high-energy pleasant emotions, like you're excited or happy. Red is for high-energy unpleasant emotions, like anger or anxiety. The blue is for low energy, unpleasant feelings, like down, disappointment, sadness. And the green is for calm, pleasant emotions, like tranquil, peaceful, and content.
Marc also developed a Mood Meter app that can help people to develop emotional skills and self-regulate.
Marc Brackett's research is amazing and if you want to know more about him and his work, you can visit his website and read his book.