My hope was that organizations would start including this range of skills in their training programs - in other words, offer an adult education in social and emotional intelligence.

In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.

Emotional self-control is NOT the same as overcontrol, the stifling of all feeling and spontaneity....when such emotional suppression is chronic, it can impair thinking, hamper intellectual performance and interfere with smooth social interaction. By contrast, emotional competence implies we have a choice as to how we express our feelings.

Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

One of the leading theories of why electroconvulsive therapy is effective for most severe depressions is that it causes a loss of short-term memory - patients feel better because they can't remember why they were sad.

There are a host of surprises among longer-term meditators, like a boost in the immune system from a day of practice, which is not seen in beginners, and a rapid recovery from stress or pain. At the "Olympic level" we find there is no anticipatory anxiety when the stress of pain is certain to come, and no lingering aftereffects - unlike the stress reactions in ordinary folk.

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.