Improving Emotional Intelligence through Personality Development: The Effect of the Smart Phone Application based Dharma Life Program on Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Emotional intelligence is established to predict success in leadership effectiveness in various contexts and has been linked to personality factors. This paper introduces Dharma Life Program, a novel approach to improving emotional intelligence by targeting maladaptive personality traits and triggering neuroplasticity through the use of a smart-phone application and mentoring. The program uses neuroplasticity to enable users to create a more adaptive application of their maladaptive traits, thus improving their emotional intelligence. In this study 26 participants underwent the Dharma Life Program in a leadership development setting. We assessed their emotional and social intelligence before and after the Dharma Life Program intervention using the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI). The study found a significant improvement in the lowest three competencies and a significant improvement in almost all domains for the entire sample. Our findings suggest that the completion of the Dharma Life Program has a significant positive effect on Emotional and Social Competency scores and offers a new avenue for improving emotional intelligence competencies.

Digital Mental Health Tools for Caregivers of Older Adults—A Scoping Review

“…The summary of the relevant studies in this review suggests general positive outcomes for caregivers after using the digital mental health tool with a reported increase in coping skills or emotional regulation (8,10,22,27,31), a decrease in stress, and burden (7,22,31) as well as perceived improvements in motivation to care (23). There were no adverse effects of digital mental health tools reported, even in the population that had low familiarity with technology, which might be further argued as a limitation.…”

“…The mobile apps category includes eight reviewed studies with the main focus on mobile-based mental health tools-i.e., mobile apps (7,11,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). The thematic analysis of the result sections within the mobile category indicated reappearing topics-e.g., cope, stress, depression, self-regulation, behavior change, selfcontrol-that were further grouped into themes of "coping skills" and "emotional self-regulation."…”

“…This review suggests that the overall aim of the mobile apps category is centered on building coping and emotional regulation skills of a caregiver as means for dealing with the caregiving burden, stress and adverse emotions in general. The pre-post measurements available in three studies (22,25,27) indicated that the mobile apps helped decreased stress and increased coping skills after only 3 weeks, moreover, there was a reported significant positive impact on decreasing depressive symptoms of the caregivers and significant positive effect on emotional and social competency. The mobile apps category includes studies reflecting on apps that are designed for the caregivers specifically (e.g., iCare, RX Refill, Journal, Care4Caregivers, UnderstandAid, CareHeroes) and three mobile apps for dealing with adverse mental health symptoms in general, building emotional self-regulation, and the review of self-help apps -VA Pain Coach, VA PTSD Coach, DarmaLife Program, Mindify, Happify- (22,23,27).…”

Unravelling the Nexus between neuroscience and leadership research

“…The studies orient themselves into various attributes like emotional intelligence to predict and establish a leadership pattern (Amagoh, 2009). Emotional intelligence is one of the critical parameters that decide the success of a leader (Poonamallee et al , 2018). The effect of social and emotional intelligence in leadership is typically well established in the literature.…”

“…Such an understanding has inevitably triggered research on assessing, identifying, understanding and measuring the competencies coupled with a growing recognition that leaders are integrated to the emotionally enhanced nature of organizations (Antonakis et al , 2009; Graetz, 2000). Poonamallee et al (2018) take up a Dharma oriented life program, an innovative approach to improve the emotional intelligence by focusing on the maladaptive traits of personality and triggering neuroplasticity by the effective use of a smartphone application and corresponding mentoring.…”