Social skills

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Social skills are skills a social animal uses to interact and communicate with others to assist status in the social structure and other motivations. Social rules and social relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways creating social complexity. From an evolutionary psychology perspective this useful in identifying outsiders and intelligent breeding partners. The process of learning these and other related skills is called socialization.

Amongst humans social skills may be seen as enabling the growth of social capabilities and attainment of human rights

Examples

• Verbal communication
  • Small talk or conversation
  • Sharing jokes
  • Sharing and discussing ideas (politics, religion, sports,etc are all common topics.)
  • Teaching or learning
• Nonverbal communication
  • Active listening
  • Body language
• Both verbal and nonverbal
  • Conflict resolution
  • Intercultural relations

Properties of polished social skills

• Basic
  • Verbal
    • Smoothness of delivery (lacks stuttering, awkward pauses, etc.)
    • Intelligible speech (not too loud or soft, not dropping off the end of sentences)
    • Uses muscle words to help describe ideas in conversation (words designed to "grab" the attention of the listener)
    • Variable tone (avoidance of a monotonous tone)
    • Asks open-ended questions
  • Non-verbal
    • Active listening
    • Confident stance (standing up straight but not at attention)
    • Relaxed manner (not too tense, not falling asleep)
    • Body language in sync with the verbal message
    • Leans forward while talking
    • Open stance (not close hands)
    • Touching conversation partner (only in appropriate situations, as this can be misinterpreted)
    • SmilingSmile (but not overdoing)
    • Remembers and uses names during conversation

• Complex
  • Skilled in diplomacy (how one handles disagreements)
  • Ability to feign interest
  • Expressing empathy in thought by giving accurate and kind feedback to show you understand.
  • Expressing feeling empathy by sharing the names of the feelings the speaker might be experiencing such as frustration, anger, hurt or love.

Social ineptitude

Social ineptitude is a lack of social skills. A person who is considered to lack social skills is said to be socially inept. However, the use of the term social ineptitude is considered derogatory by many. People who have pervasive developmental disorders such as autism and Asperger syndrome may have impaired social interaction, and are often described as socially inept. Many people with mental disorders (such as Schizophrenia) also tend to be socially inept. A belief in one's own social ineptitude, either real or imagined, is one of the diagnostic criteria for avoidant personality disorder. Additionally, the criteria for social ineptitude varies from culture to culture. A simile for social ineptness is shyness, though a shy person can be aware and adhere to social conventions, just as those who are bold can often be socially incompetent.

Social ineptitude may also be simply a part of a person's character. Some believe that social ineptitude should be accommodated, not exterminated.

See also

• Adaptive behavior
• Affective education
• Aggression Replacement Training
• Anti-social
• Competence
• Emotional Intelligence
• Introversion and extroversion
• Intercultural competence
• Listening (interpersonal)
• Male female relations
• Metacommunicative competence
• Social anxiety
• Social behavior
• Social cognition
• Social reality
• Social space
• Social skills training
• Systems intelligence

Key texts

Books

• Argyle, M, Trower, P, Bryant,B and Marzillier, J (1990)Social Skills and Mental Health. Routledge.ISBN 0415012627

Additional material

Papers

• Google Scholar

External links and references

• Some Facts Psychologists Know About… SOCIAL SKILLS
• Teaching Social Skills
• Encouraging Social Skills in Young Children
• Information on Social Skills for Male College Students
• National Association of School Psychologists on Social Skills
• Stategies for teaching social skills to children

Jon D. Williams Cotillions, teaching young people social skills for over 58 years]

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Category Social skills