Each person is immersed in a web of social connections. The quality of a person’s position in the social web is determined by the number of connections, the emotional strength of those connections, and identity of the people in those connections. The quality of a person’s life is to large extent, based upon this connectivity. For example both George Bush Junior and John Kerry, found that a strong web of connectivity in the higher socioeconomic circles at Yale, gave them a real shot at the U.S. presidency. People were astounded that both belonged to the same obscure fraternal organization. Some spoke of deep dark conspiracies, perhaps involving airplane contrails. In reality, this only emphasizes importance of weaving oneself a favorable position in the web social connectivity. On the opposite side of the spectrum, a person who has a small wispy web of social connections, may find herself sleeping in the gutter.
As such, social connectivity may be the single most critical thing in the development of a person’s life. Social intelligence provides the ability to build the silky the threads that make up this web. There exists a multitude of ways to define and measure human abilities. An old stand-by is Alfred Binet’s concept of IQ. However it’s now increasingly recognized that there is effectively, a multitude of definable intelligences. This can include everything from abilities in athletics to those in music. A definable measure of intelligence that is of great importance, is that of social intelligence – sometimes expressed with the concept of social IQ. This is also sometimes expressed as charisma IQ, as it’s fundamentally about a synergy of behavioral elements which result in a person’s ability to connect emotionally with people and to be sufficiently interesting to facilitate these connections. This is likely to be the most important of all intelligences in enabling a person to thrive in the current world.
In current ideology, it’s quite popular to high-light traditional IQ as being central to success in the modern world. Actually, according to statistical analysis, it may explain something like 16% of the variation when correlating IQ to monetary income. I would be surprised if correlated more strongly with any other measure of success. I’m inclined to propose an alternative theory that, the modern environment of the urban electronic age, actually expands the importance of social IQ. The average citizen seems to be a hyper-socialized individual in a great sea of people. People are exposed to electronic socialization even when they’re not exposed to each other. The task for the average developing child, is to integrate all of this in preparation for an ultra socially competitive world in which there can be relatively few enduring aspects of community and which one is thrown into the living sea of humanity and asked to start spinning those silken threads of social connection that are so essential for life. Social IQ is so essential for personal success, that it behooves us to try to understand more about it, and if possible, expand it for ourselves. One might expect that social IQ is amongst the least heritable of intelligences. But this doesn’t mean that we can easily change our social IQ beyond the state of childhood.
Relevant questions are: What are the constituent components of social IQ? What is the cause of existing variation in social IQ? Is it realistic to expect to significantly rise the social IQ of any person? How poor is the prognosis for those who have very low social IQs? Is it possible for someone at the middle of the spectrum to gain a very high social IQ through learning? Interestingly enough, it’s the last question that many professional pick-up artist instructors claim to answer. The claim is often made, that if the client learns their system, he will have a plethora of exceptionally beautiful women will parade to his bedroom. By definition, such a man would have a true genius social IQ. The ability to spontaneously generate emotional connections appears to be at the core of social intelligence. But how does this process really happen? We seem to be in a society in which, a person forges many strong emotional connections with other people, or becomes disconnected.
There’s a need for social IQ discussion groups to germinate and provide a forum for people to study the science and the art of social connectivity. To send a message concerning this topic, click here to email: Rose City Social Intelligence Discussion. Feel free to share your insights!
- The psychologist Daniel Goleman has provided a conceptual framework for understanding social IQ.
The elements of this framework are as follows:
Social awareness:
1) primal empathy
2) attunement
3) empathic accuracy
4) social cognition
Social facility:
1) synchrony
2) self-presentation
3) influence
4) concern
An interesting article on Social Intelligence can be seen here on Wikipedia.
There’s a social skills class that’s offered every quarter at PCC at Sylvania. It’s called “Meet fun people”.
Contact email: Rose City Social Intelligence Disscussion
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