The RULER approach: what Yale's emotional intelligence research means for families

"How are you?" "Fine." Most of us answer that question dozens of times a week without thinking. Researchers at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence argue that learning to answer it precisely — to know what we feel, name it and do something useful with it — is a skill that can be taught. Their approach, called RULER, has been used in thousands of schools. Here is what it is, what the evidence says, and what families can borrow from it.

Who is behind RULER

RULER was developed at Yale, from the mid-2000s, by a team led by Marc Brackett, now founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at the Yale Child Study Center. It builds on the theory of emotional intelligence published by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in 1990. Brackett later wrote a book for a general audience, Permission to Feel (2019).

What RULER stands for

RULER names five emotion skills:

• Recognizing emotions in yourself and others — in faces, voices, bodies.
• Understanding their causes and consequences.
• Labeling them with a precise vocabulary ("disappointed", not just "bad").
• Expressing them in ways that fit the situation.
• Regulating them with helpful strategies.

The tools

RULER uses four "anchor tools". Two of them translate easily to family life:

• The Mood Meter — a grid with two questions: how pleasant do I feel, and how much energy do I have? It gives four colours: red (unpleasant, high energy, like angry or scared), blue (unpleasant, low energy, like sad or lonely), green (pleasant, low energy, like calm) and yellow (pleasant, high energy, like excited). The message: all emotions are okay.
• The Charter — a shared agreement about how members of a group want to feel together, and what they will do to get there.

The other two are the Meta-Moment (a pause between what happens and how you react) and the Blueprint (questions to understand and repair a conflict).

What the research says

RULER has mainly been studied in schools, by the team that developed it:

• A study of 273 pupils in grades 5 and 6 (Brackett and colleagues, 2012) found higher end-of-year grades and better teacher-rated social and emotional skills in classes using the RULER "feeling words" curriculum. It was not randomised.
• A randomised trial in 62 schools (Rivers and colleagues, 2013) found that after one year, classrooms using RULER had warmer relationships between teachers and pupils and more attention to pupils' perspectives.

Two honest caveats: these studies took place in classrooms, not homes, and most were run by RULER's developers. RULER offers resources for families, but we found no evaluation of a home version.

What it means at your table

• Grow the emotion vocabulary. "Frustrated", "proud", "left out", "relieved": precise words help children understand themselves.
• Ask about energy as well as mood. "Tired-sad or angry-sad?" is often more useful than "Are you OK?".
• Make a family charter. Ask: how do we want dinner to feel? Calm? Funny? Then: what helps?
• Practise the pause. When something sets you off, take a breath before answering. Children learn the pause by watching it.

How it shapes the Kalmdix method

• Naming feelings is a game, not a lesson. In Feelings detective, a player tells a tiny story in a mood without naming it, and the others guess the feeling.
• Children practise noticing others. The Notice feelings mission asks children to name how someone seems to feel — as a question, never as a verdict.
• Parents practise too. The private goal Welcome an emotion asks parents to name the emotion before looking for a solution, and Lower your voice is a family-sized Meta-Moment.
• One shared intention at a time. Like a charter, a Kalmdix habit is something the family works on together over five meals.

Sources

• RULER Approach — overview. rulerapproach.org
• Mood Meter overview for families (PDF). Read the guide
• Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Reyes, M. R., & Salovey, P. (2012). Enhancing academic performance and social and emotional competence with the RULER feeling words curriculum. Learning and Individual Differences, 22(2), 218–224. Summary
• Rivers, S. E., Brackett, M. A., Reyes, M. R., Elbertson, N. A., & Salovey, P. (2013). Improving the social and emotional climate of classrooms: A clustered randomized controlled trial testing the RULER Approach. Prevention Science, 14, 77–87. Abstract
• Yale News (2019). Permission to Feel. Read more

Kalmdix is independent. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence is not a partner of Kalmdix and has not evaluated it. This article summarises published research in our own words — read the sources for the full picture.

Frequently asked questions

What does RULER stand for?

Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing and Regulating emotions. It is the approach to social and emotional learning developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence by a team led by Marc Brackett.

Can parents use the Mood Meter at home?

Yes. RULER offers family resources about the Mood Meter, which sorts feelings by pleasantness and energy into four colours. Note that the published evaluations of RULER took place in schools, not in homes.