Rethinking thinking: Using emotional intelligence skills to think, feel, and do better
In this TED-Ed module, Trevor Mabor offers a detailed explanation and helpful example of how we can use the Ladder of Inference to change our beliefs, feelings, and actions.
We have all behaved in ways that we later regret. When locked into the rightness of our thoughts, and carried away by the momentum of our emotions, we act in ways that make sense to us in the moment, but have unintended consequences.
More than three decades after its inception, the Ladder of Inference remains a powerful tool for us to change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.1 The Ladder of Inference identifies specific steps where we can pause by breaking down the process by which we make meaning that informs action.
Slowing down, we can choose to think, feel and do better.2
Using the example of road rage, Trevor Maber illustrates seven steps in a nuanced version of the Ladder of inference in a TED-ED module.3
The EITC team noticed how EI skills can be helpful at every step, for example:
| Ladder of Inference | EI competencies |
| Impulse control: Resist the temptation to act based on your first thoughts and feelings about a situation, that is, to react. Instead, pause to go through the rungs of the ladder of inference. | |
| (1) Raw data and observations of our experience | Reality testing: Notice what data and observations may have been filtered out. This is especially important to do when getting carried away with/by an emotion. Pause to observe the physical environment. What can you hear, smell, feel, or see, for example? |
| (2) Filter in specific information based on preferences, tendencies | |
| (3) Assign meaning – interpret what the information is telling us | Self-actualization: Recall your values and willingness to learn new things, opening up the possibility that the story you are telling may not be serving you well. Just notice the story that you are telling about the facts you gathered. Hold that story lightly. |
| (4) Develop assumptions based on meaning from previous rung. [Fact and story start to blur] | Problem solving: Notice how the story you are telling (including the moral of the story) leads to certain assumptions about the situation. What other stories could be told, and what other assumptions/ideas might be at play in this situation? |
| (5) Make conclusions based on those assumptions. [Here is where our emotional reactions are created.] | Empathy: Emotional reactions are created on the fifth rung, where we start to form conclusions based on our assumptions. So rather than gripping onto your initial emotional reactions, this is an opportune place to check in on others. What is their perspective, and how are they feeling? |
| (6) Adjust beliefs about the world around us, based on those conclusions. | Social responsibility: Put your initial conclusions about this situation into a wider context. What social values might be relevant here? How do you want to show up for the wider community? |
| (7) Take action based on our adjusted beliefs. | Interpersonal relationships: What can you say or do that would strengthen relationships in this situation? Connection is the correction. |
The Ladder of Inference can help us slow down and notice – our thoughts, our emotions and our decisions. It can create space for us to enact our values, rather than react on the basis of being right or prioritizing ourselves.
When we use EI skills effectively, we have more choice about what actions to take. We can slow down and become more present with a fuller range of data, loosen our grip on our story (and in turn, its grip on us), multiply the potential explanations, empathize with others, and revisit values and commitments to community. We can choose to strengthen the bonds between us.
Notes
- “One approach to action research developed by Chris Argyris at Harvard with Donald Schön of MIT starts from a theory of human action. It posits that individuals act on the basis of their beliefs, and that the beliefs that drive action are largely unexamined and tacit.” Action science “offer[s] a theory of intervention… to create the conditions for social change.” Watkins and Shindell 1994 In much contemporary discussion of the Ladder of Inference, Donald Schön’s contributions to the model seem to have been forgotten (with recognition and citations being attributed to Argyris alone). The ladder of inference continues to influence the field of “action science”. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848607934.n57. See also https://ikhsanaira.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/action-research-participative-inquiry-and-practice-reasonbradburry.pdf#page=689.
- For example, to reduce implicit bias in medical practice. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-024-03278-1
- This TED Ed module has three components: (1) Watch – an animated video; (2) Think – questions to complete after watching the video; and (3) Dig Deeper – citations and links to additional resources if you want to learn more.
