Thinking About Thoughts

Once upon a time, we thought that people with a high intelligence quotient (IQ) were the crème-de-la-crème of humanity. However, times changed, ideas shifted, and people with a high emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ) were thought of as more clever still, and became more valued. 

However, according to the latest research, the trait that separates the truly intelligent from the rest of us—the quality that can’t be beat—is something known as metacognition, or the ability to think about your thoughts. But, not just think about them, but also do something about them. 

According to a study published in the popular science journal Nature, people with a metacognitive ability are not only aware of their thought processes but are also able to regulate these processes more effectively and then respond accordingly. The authors claim that the ability to analyse and challenge your thoughts is a key intelligence marker. In various educational activities, high-performance people tended to present with it more than the lower performers.

Elsewhere, another study found that people with this metacognitive ability were better at both divergent thinking (the ability to generate new and creative ideas by combining diverse information in novel ways) and convergent thinking (logically analysing something, then narrowing it down towards a single, correct solution). 

Don’t fret if you think that metacognition is something that you really want but don’t possess, as, thankfully, experts agree that it isn’t something you are born with but, rather, something that can be developed. You just need to build good habits. Pausing before reacting, reflecting on your decisions, and becoming more mindful and aware are all good habits to cultivate. And this is where—to my mind at least—that therapy and coaching come in.

As the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl once famously said, “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This whole pause-reflect-choose-respond idea lies at the heart of many therapies and coaching modalities. It’s just that some do it better than others.

We have metacognitive therapy (MCT), which is a type of therapy that literally helps you to focus on and change how you think about your thoughts. Especially all those pesky anxiety and depression-provoking thoughts. Developed in the early '90s by psychologist Adrian Wells, MCT is an effective and evidence-based practice.

In thinking about thinking about your problem (not just anxiety and depression, but also obsessive-compulsive disorder and more), MCT helps you change your relationship with your thoughts, as opposed to changing the thoughts themselves. In doing so, it helps you to focus on the process of thinking rather than the content of your thoughts (or how you think rather than what you think).

Whilst it’s good to laud and applaud the metacognitive, we don’t want to dismiss all those who have gone before. Having a high intelligence quotient is still a valued thing, and Mensa International is still the largest and most prestigious high-IQ institution in the world.

Emotional Intelligence, meanwhile, involves a whole host of important soft skills, including the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways. It helps you to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathise with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. It involves a blend of social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and motivation, and is a highly prized management and executive leadership skill.

The positive psychologists out there among you might recognise this as social intelligence, which is a key character strength. For those of you who aren’t in the know, positive psychology makes a big deal of character strengths, which are attributes or abilities that can help you improve your mood, elevate your wellness, and help you find your flow.

There are 24 of them, and the idea here is that if you discover and play to your top five strengths accordingly, you’re going to feel a whole lot happier than you do now. Social intelligence is also a valued skill and prized workplace commodity. It involves both social awareness (what you sense about others) and social facility (what you do with that awareness).

But I do wonder what would happen if we put people who displayed metacognitive abilities as well as emotional and social intelligence in positions of power, influence, and leadership. While the world might not become a paradise, it could become a whole lot better than it is. Life could flow more easily and become kinder and more compassionate.

-Psychology Today