Although this cognitive approach has served well in linguistics and in artificial intelligence, it meets its limits when applied to human relationships. As we ponder ways to approach that attractive person, we take the high road.Ĭonventional ideas of social intelligence have too often focused on high-road talents like social knowledge, or the capacity for extracting the rules, protocols, and norms that guide appropriate behavior in a given social setting. We are aware of the high road, and it gives us at least some control over our inner life, which the low road denies us. The “high road,” in contrast, runs through neural systems that work more methodically and step by step, with deliberate effort. When we are captivated by an attractive face, we have the low road to thank. The spectrum of social facility includes self-presentation, influence, concern, and synchrony (interacting smoothly at the nonverbal level).īoth the social awareness and social facility domains range from basic, “low-road” capacities, to more complex “high-road” articulations.īy “low-road,” I mean the neural circuitry that operates beneath our awareness, automatically and effortlessly, with immense speed. Social facility builds on social awareness to allow smooth, effective interactions. Social awareness refers to a spectrum that runs from primal empathy (instantaneously sensing another’s inner state) to empathic accuracy (understanding her feelings and thoughts) to social cognition (“getting” complicated social situations).īut simply sensing how another feels, or knowing what they think or intend, does not guarantee fruitful interactions. The ingredients of social intelligence as I see it can be organized into two broad categories: social awareness, what we sense about others-and social facility, what we then do with that awareness. This myopia leaves the “social” part out of intelligence. But as I’ve come to see, simply lumping social intelligence within the emotional sort stunts fresh thinking about the human aptitude for relationship, ignoring what transpires as we interact. In my book Emotional Intelligence, I folded social intelligence into my model of emotional intelligence without making much of that fact, as have other theorists in the field. Small wonder: The two domains intermingle, just as the brain’s social real estate overlaps with its emotional centers. Psychologists argue about which human abilities are social and which are emotional.
Now, almost a century later, “social intelligence” has become ripe for rethinking as neuroscience begins to map the brain areas that regulate interpersonal dynamics. “The best mechanic in a factory,” he wrote, “may fail as a foreman for lack of social intelligence.”
Thorndike noted that such interpersonal effectiveness was of vital importance for success in many fields, particularly leadership.
“Social intelligence shows itself abundantly in the nursery, on the playground, in barracks and factories and salesrooms, but it eludes the formal standardized conditions of the testing laboratory.” So observed Edward Thorndike, the Columbia University psychologist who first proposed the concept, in a 1920 article in Harper’s Monthly Magazine. That short interaction offers a masterly display of “social intelligence.” By keeping cool, the aspiring artist resisted the pull to anger from the other’s sarcastic taunt and instead brought the other boy into his own more friendly emotional range.
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Maybe I can show you a few things about how to play.” Maybe I can get a little better at it if I keep trying.” At that, the first boy, his disdain now utterly disarmed, says in a friendly tone, “Well, you’re not really that bad. Then, pointing to his antagonist, he says, “Now you- you’re great at soccer- really fantastic! I’d like to be that good someday, but I’m just not. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.Īfter a pause, he adds, “But I’m great at art-show me anything, and I can draw it real good…”
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