Emotional intelligence is highly important in a teen’s development. There is considerable evidence pointing to its positive role in helping students deal with stress, develop relationships, and handle the transitions (过渡) facing them.

Emotional intelligence helps us manage negative emotions and our behaviors in response to them. So, does it impact on how teens and students perform academically? Some research does, in fact, suggest a relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. In one study of education students at university, self-emotion appraisal (评价) and understanding of emotion were revealed to have positive significant linkages with their academic performance on assessments. Later studies support this finding, with Sanchez-Ruiz and colleagues finding that emotional intelligence predicted academic performance better than established personality and cognitive (认知的) ability for Cyprus university students.

But what about teens specifically? Interestingly, there is also cogent evidence to suggest that teens with EI are better able to make the transition from high school to higher education. Results of a study of 1,426 first-year students found significantly higher interpersonal, stress management, and adaptability skills among students who were academically successful in entering university. The authors’ conclusion was that emotional intelligence has a large impact on students’ ability to deal with challenges such as developing new relationships and learning to live more independently, amongst other factors.

It is worth noting that while the studies above do provide evidence for some benefits of emotional intelligence skills for students, they don’t necessarily indicate an academic consensus (共识). As with most areas in the field, much room for future research remains. So interpersonal and emotional management skills may play a key part in helping students better handle the challenging aspects of academic life.

“Inspector Sands to the control room, please.” If you ever hear that at a British train station, don’t panic. But you might appreciate knowing that this is a codeword meant to inform staff that there is an emergency somewhere in the building. The idea is to avoid causing alarm among commuters (通勤者), but still get the message out to those trained to deal with the problem.

The subject of secret codewords like this was raised this week on Reddit, and the discussion has attracted thousands of examples. But what codewords and signs are really out there in the wild?

A good place to start is hospital emergency codes. These are often colour-coded, and one health centre in Canada has published its list online. “Code red” announces a fire, “code white” indicates a violent person while “code black” means a bomb threat is active. It’s been reported that hospital staff sometimes refer to the morgue as “Rose Cottage”, in order to avoid upsetting relatives of a patient who has recently died.

“I can see very good reasons for having these codes,” says Paul Baker, a linguist at the University of Lancaster. “It may be that people are unsure when they’re giving the code so there’s no point upsetting members of the public.”

Not all codes are alphanumeric (字母数字的). Some are visual, intended to be hidden in plain sight. As BBC Future discovered earlier this year, many banknotes feature a specific pattern of dots placed there to prevent people from photocopying money. Many copiers and scanners are programmed to spot it.

And finally, the spray-painted squiggles (波形曲线) you see on pavements in towns and cities all over the world are codes understood by construction workers and engineers. For example, in UK, different colours are related to different types of cable or pipe. Blue meant a water system while yellow indicated gas lines and green labelled CCTV or data wiring.

All of these codes have a purpose — to avoid causing panic, to transmit subtle signals in social groups, or to provide technical information quickly and easily. “People don’t like secrets, do they?” says Baker. “There is a drive to have as much information as possible — we do live in the information age,” he adds.

Most educators know the basics of peer (同龄人) pressure. When peers are around, teenagers take more risks. For example, teenage males drive faster with other boys in the same car because the reward centers of teenagers’ brains are more active with peers than when alone.

However, risk taking in an educational context is an important skill that enables progress and creativity, which is just one of positive peer effects. People often talk about negative (消极的) peer effects but ignore many studies that show a lot of negative behavior of high school kids is discouraged by friends. There is a lot of very positive pressure that peers apply, like, “No, man, that’s stupid.” This prevention is one of the many underreported forms of peer effects.

In a 2018 study of college freshmen, researchers found that having friends with a higher willingness to study is predictive (预测的) of receiving higher freshman grades. Because the study looked at both assigned (指派的) roommate pairings and chosen friend groups, the researchers were able to show the effect wasn’t just a reflection of “selection bias”, with hard-working kids having already chosen to befriend each other. Hanging out with someone who’s hard-working, they concluded, caused teenagers to study for more hours and achieve higher grades. The findings prove previous research showing a connection between how a child views the importance of doing well in school and how their friends do. Similar effects have been proved for volunteer work and health-promotive behaviors, such as exercise.

What does all this mean for educators? Effective students can definitely improve classroom situations. In one program, kids were trained to publicly encourage anti-conflict (反冲突) practice. Reports of student conflict dropped 30% over one year. To some extent, this success may lie in the fact that the program got kids’ help. Efforts that engage (使……参与) teens in actual, real-life tasks have been the most promising when it comes to changing the content of the values spread within teenager peer groups.