Social intelligence

The original definition of social intelligence as a separate form of intelligence was developed and defined by Edward Thorndike in 1920, calling social intelligence "the ability to understand and manage men and women and boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations." This definition gives social intelligence an equivalence to interpersonal intelligence, or a type of intelligence identified in Howard Gardner's 1983 theory of multiple intelligences, and related to the theory of mind.

Social intelligence is considered the intelligence used when two individuals, or a group of individuals, begin interacting. This includes the use of tasks like expression, dialogue, listening, conciliation, and learning through communication with others. As well, social intelligence is assumed to be a subgroup of emotional intelligence, which is expected to come from introspection and offers emotional awareness. These two are sometimes combined into a concept known as emotional and social intelligence (ESI).

The abilities considered to be a part of social intelligence include those required for effective communication, such as empathy, self-knowledge, listening, and reading of emotions. Some believe that social intelligence can be learned or acquired over time. Strategies have been developed to help individuals cultivate those skills, with strategies including paying attention to what and who is around an individual, working on increasing the closely related emotional intelligence, respecting cultural differences, practicing active listening, and appreciating and developing relationships with important people.

The social intelligence hypothesis is similar to, and likely informed by the social intelligence theory, as part of the theory of multiple intelligences. The hypothesis posits that complex cognition and enlarged executive function centers of the brain evolved in response to challenges associated with social complexity. The hypothesis holds that social complexity was the main selective force shaping the evolution of sophisticated intelligence and increased brain size in extant animals. This is based on the proposition that social complexity is cognitively demanding and therefore provides that noted selective pressure on intelligence. The theory has found support among mammal and bird species and helps explain variation in both brain size and cognitive abilities.

The hypothesis has been well-supported, but there have also been data that are inconsistent with its predictions and challenge the overall hypothesis.

This hypothesis has merged with the research into its probability, which has led to research into the individual operations of the brain, such as the social brain, which are capable of adapting to complex interpersonal relations based on an individual's memory, such as aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia. This research, in part, was developed by the discovery in 1992 that neurons in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys became active when those monkeys performed an action itself, or when mirroring the actions of a person.

As social intelligence is suggested to be developed from experience with people and learning from success and failures in social settings, it has been referred to as "tact," "common sense," or "street smarts." The magazine Psychology Today suggests critical traits for people with high social intelligence:

• individuals can carry on conversations with a wide array of people and communicate with appropriate and tactful words
• they are adept at learning to play different social roles and well-versed at the informal rules of the game of social interaction
• they are known to be excellent listeners
• they know how to analyze what makes people tick, often by paying attention to what they are saying and how they are behaving
• they put these skills into practice to help different personality types feel at ease
• they take care of the impression of themselves they make on other people, which can be a hard skill set because it requires a balance between managing and controlling that image

As it is considered a developed skill as much as an innate, or genetic, intelligence, it is broadly believed that most adults can develop social intelligence to some extent. This includes an idea of what it means to be socially adept, but individuals will differ in their abilities to comply with the rules of social life and how they navigate them. The first signs of social intelligence are considered to emerge as early as the sixth week of life, while at eighteen months of age children show a capability to understand others' intentions. As people age, the social environments they inhabit become more complex and demanding, and they require that an individual's set of skills and abilities, and the sophistication of those skills, are developed to meet those new environments.

An individual with low social intelligence, or perceived low social intelligence, displays unsociable behavior. This can make others feel frustrated, inadequate, and devalued. Often, a low social intelligence individual is not intentionally unsociable; instead, their behavior is considered to be linked to a lack of social awareness and understanding of how their behavior may affect others. Recent brain research suggests that people are wired to connect to each other, and relationships can shape experiences and influence people's brains. This means, the more emotionally connected individuals are, the stronger the impact they can have on each other's brain.

Further, social intelligence, as a subcategory of emotional intelligence, is considered to be important for helping to guide individuals through the complexity of relationships with other people and their different personalities and needs. More than a trend, the focus on emotional and social intelligence has helped people realize the roles emotions play in the quality of their interactions and communications with others. The understanding of these consequences and an individual's relationship management can contribute to the capacity to face a variety of situations and to influence others.

This belief that social intelligence can help an individual in their relationships, combined with the included competencies such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, has led many business leaders to see social intelligence and emotional intelligence as an important facet of competency for their jobs. This has led proponents of social and emotional intelligence to suggest its associated competencies are more important for the performance of leaders, especially as intelligence, or general intelligence, is considered to be fixed to some extent, while social and emotional intelligences are considered to be learned and improved over time.

This has been supported in the research of Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, who found in an analysis of C-level executives that those who had been hired for their self-discipline, drive, and intellect were often fired for a lack of social skills, or a perceived lack of social and emotional intelligence. Part of this emphasis on social intelligence in business leadership was furthered with Daniel Goleman's popular 2006 science book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, in which Goleman suggests the need for effective leaders to possess a high level of social intelligence. This was based on research that suggested that certain actions leaders take affect not only their brain chemistry but also the brain chemistry of their employees.

Karl Albrecht, in his theories of multiple intelligences, describes behavior towards others as part of emotional and social intelligence (ESI) and suggests that behavior falls somewhere on a spectrum between "toxic" effect and "nourishing" effect. Toxic behavior is described as making people feel devalued, angry, frustrated, guilty, or otherwise inadequate. While nourishing behavior is described as making people feel valued, respected, affirmed, encouraged, or competent. As part of this theory, Albrecht defines people of low social intelligence as toxic and having an inability to connect with people and influence them effectively. Meanwhile, nourishing behavior tends to make a person more effective in dealing with others and is a marker of high social intelligence.

However, this has been contradicted by other studies into ESI, which (regardless of some perceived lack in empirical evidence for theories of ESI) have found that high levels of ESI have correlated with vulnerability for internalizing symptoms in adults facing chronic stress. While in occupational settings, ESI was seen to be used as a tool for emotional manipulation of others. This has linked high ESI with prototypically negative personality traits, often described as machiavellian, psychopathic, or narcissistic, which have been characterized by callous and manipulative behaviors. Some research has linked high ESI to narcissism, indicating that ESI can be linked to similar antisocial outcomes, suggesting in some studies that even positive skills and virtues, such as loyalty or empathy, have seen decreasing returns at increasing levels of ESI.

One good and well-documented example of this is self-esteem. High self-esteem has been associated with better academic, psychological, and social adjustment. Yet there is ample evidence that highly inflated levels of self-esteem result in negative consequences, including aggression towards others.

The modern concept of social intelligence, as mentioned above, was initially developed by Edward Thorndike in 1920. The classification of intelligence in his concept of social intelligence includes three different capacities: the first is the capacity to understand and manage ideas, or abstract intelligence; the second is the capacity to understand and manage concrete objects, or mechanical intelligence; and the third is the capacity to understand and manage people, or social intelligence.

In 1933, a more extensive definition of social intelligence was offered by Vernon. As per this new description, social intelligence is:

the ability to get along with people in general, social technique, or ease in society, knowledge of social matters, susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group, as well as insight into the temporary moods or underlying personal traits of strangers.

Since then, there has been disagreement over social intelligence in psychology. Some consider social intelligence to be a psychological construct in its own right; others, such as Wechsler in 1958, assert that social intelligence is a component of general intelligence applied to social situations. However, the theory of social intelligence, or rather the theory of multiple intelligences, developed by Howard Gardner in 1983, has lent popularity to the concept. In the theory of multiple intelligences, Gardner proposes eight different kinds of intelligence:

• linguistic-verbal
• visual-spatial
• naturalistic
• bodily-kinesthetic
• musical
• logical-mathematical
• intrapersonal
• interpersonal

This theory has since been criticized for being too broad and lacking empirical research. Despite that, interest around the concepts of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences has grown and seen some research around the possibility of these types of intelligence, which would be a kind of analogue of social intelligence. Karl Albrecht went on to develop this theory further, with social intelligence not as a part of personality, but as a cluster of intelligences. Albrecht's theory simplifies Gardner's theory, offering a model that includes six dimensions of intelligence:

• abstract
• social
• practical
• emotional
• aesthetic
• kinesthetic

Gardner's theory, and other theories related to multiple intelligences, have gained traction as traditional or older views of intelligence, especially those linked to the controversial IQ tests and theories around the potential of a person being measured by an IQ test has lost credibility.

As these theories have gained ground for researchers, the idea of social intelligence has gained traction, although research has been hindered by a lack of agreement regarding the definition of social intelligence. Even Daniel Goleman, in his book in social intelligence, has suggested there needs to be a development of work on social intelligence, including new tools for assessment and added consideration for individual differences. This view has primarily emerged because of the growth in neuroscientific studies.

Part of Goleman's work centers around developing a conceptualization of social intelligence that includes two main facets. The first facet is "social awareness," which refers to a spectrum running from sensing another's inner state, to understanding another's feeling and thoughts, and being able to parse complicated social situations. Based on this concept, social awareness incorporates the following:

• primal empathy—sensing others' feelings through nonverbal signals
• attunement—listening with full receptivity or tuning in with a person
• empathic accuracy—understanding another's thoughts, feelings, and intentions
• social cognition—understanding how the social world works

The second fact of Goleman's conceptualization of social intelligence is "social facility," which refers to the ability to have smooth and effective interactions with others. As part of this concept, social facility includes the following:

• synchrony—interacting with others easily at nonverbal levels
• self-presentation—presenting oneself well
• influence—shaping the outcomes of social interactions
• concern—caring about others' needs and acting accordingly

There has been some research that has supported parts of Goleman's conceptualization of social intelligence. For example, mirror neurons activate when an individual executes a specific motor action and observes the action performed by another individual and seems to support the concept of primal empathy. While the idea of influence has been supported by research that has shown that individuals capable of tactfully expressing themselves tend to be viewed as more favorable by others.

The studies of different types of intelligence, including social intelligence, are in part motivated by the studies of patients with focal brain lesions. These studies suggest that emotional and social intelligence can be differentiated from cognitive or general intelligence, supported by separate neural substrates. The neural systems that support emotional and social intelligence overlap with neural systems serving the processing of emotions and feelings, but are not associated with cognition. And damage to those neural structures that serve emotions and feelings, but not cognition, are associated with changes in emotional experience and social functioning.

This was further impressed by the understanding of individuals who are capable of understanding the non-social world, such as math or engineering, yet admit finding the social world confusing. And the existence of the opposite type, those who have no difficulty interacting with the social world but who find non-social problem-solving confusing.

One fMRI study from 1999 aimed to test the theory of social intelligence and the neural model of social intelligence through comparison of normal cerebral blood oxygenation changes induced by performance of a task with hypothetically abnormal changes in a group of patients with high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. The results of the study were considered a confirmation of the theory, but suggested further studies would be necessary to tease out which parts of the brain were involved in social cognition and general intelligence in order to discover the specific elements of the social brain.

However, the study noted some general limitations, as the fMRI and the researchers had difficulty in differentiating between a subject solving the experimental problem in terms of social cognition, rather than solving an assignment from long-term memory or inducing an emotional state represented by the stimuli. Nor could the study account for periodic signal change in areas specialized for novelty detection, differential engagement, or language systems. Also, the design of the 1999 fMRI study forced subjects to make a decision through a button press and did not allow subjects to answer an inconclusive, so it was not able to account for guessing.

Another interpretation of some of the neurological results of this and similar studies is that social cognition is a poorly understood part of human intelligence, or general intelligence. This is in part inherited from the social intelligence hypothesis, in which social interactions are seen as a selection pressure for the evolution of the human brain. This is seen in the neural machinery of social cognition that comprises a substantial proportion of the brain, which has been especially important as working in social groups has pushed human intellect to new levels. But the understanding of the taxonomy and the underlying brain mechanisms of social intelligence have yet to be well-developed.

The theory of multiple intelligence, and specifically emotional intelligence, promises to predict and improve the life of individuals. Proponents of the theory believe in understanding, analyzing, and managing emotions in themselves and others, which offers a chance for an improved quality of life. As the operationalization of the theory is the crucial factor that validates many of the claims of the theory, the first and foremost challenge is to design an instrument or improve upon existing measures to accurately evaluate and assess the emotional skills of an individual.

Another challenge that faces the theory is that so many definitions and approaches exist, which is a challenge thought to be a vital and healthy sign for any new theory. The lack of a specific definition has led to people judging the concept as mere hype and considering the theory to be bogus. In response, some researchers have pointed out that intelligence itself has little to no consensus about the best way to measure it. However, the lack of a proper definition in research on the subject has led to confusion from the use of concepts such as social competence, social intelligence, social skills, soft skills, or emotional intelligence, among others.

A study for the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) in Germany, Bayer, Ditton, and Wohlkinger from 2012 noted there is no generally accepted definition and delimitation of the concepts of social skills, interactional skills, assertiveness, self-esteem, or social or interpersonal competence in many published studies, with some studies using these terms interchangeably and others treating them as entirely separate properties. For example, Beelmann et al. (1994) treated "social competencies" as a general term for social skills; but in Baron and Markman's (2003) definition, the two concepts are viewed as components of one another, with "social competencies" viewed as the ability to interact with others, based on discrete social skills. Meanwhile, Warnes et al. (2005) treated them as two different concepts, with social skills seen as behavior that facilitates effective interaction and social competencies as a person's interactional quality as perceived by others.

Apart from the common social acceptance of the concepts of emotional and social intelligence, substantial overlap in some of the theoretical approaches and measurement approaches can be perceived. This has resulted in various test batteries, such as the Six Factor Test and the Four Factor Test for social intelligence, and the George Washington Social Intelligence Test. These were developed to test different theories and constructs of social intelligence, but reviews of the tests have been found to test cognitive abilities, despite researchers reporting no substantial correlation with general intellectual abilities. Also, studies following some of the initial publications could not find empirical support for social intelligence as a psychological construct.

Later studies again found no evidence for convergent or discriminant construct validity, meaning no possible differentiation of social intelligence as an independent construct. Many of these tests were later found to test the understanding of a certain social milieu more than any divergent cognitive ability. While other tests, despite authors claims, saw performance when testing for "social" intelligence correlate up to 70 percent with academic intelligence, showing no validity for the construct. Furthermore, in later studies, such as those done by Keating in 1978, Chapin in 1967, and Gough in 1968, or those by Sternberg and colleagues in 1985 and 1989 were found to be unable to predict effective social functioning (assessed by peer-reports) to a larger extent than academic intelligence. The ability for a study to predict the performance of a given individual in social intelligence would have been a strong empirical proof for social intelligence as a divergent psychological construct.