Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman

The twins and their mother were observed so minutely when they took part in research by Daniel Stern, a psychiatrist then at Cornell University School of Medicine.7 Stern is fascinated by the small, repeated exchanges that take place between parent and child; he believes that the most basic lessons of emotional life are laid down in these intimate moments. Of all such moments, the most critical are those that let the child know her emotions are met with empathy, accepted, and reciprocated, in a process Stern calls attunement. The twins’ mother was attuned with Mark, but out of emotional synch with Fred. Stern contends that the countlessly repeated moments of attunement or misattunement between parent and child shape the emotional expectations adults bring to their close relationships—perhaps far more than the more dramatic events of childhood.