Social Intelligence

Applied social intelligence

It may be tempting to think of a socially intelligent person as
someone who knows how to organise and act at parties. It may also be
possible that you remember the age-old wisdoms that are in the old Dale
Carnegie classic on “How to win friends and influence people”. While
these wisdoms still apply today, this article gives a short reflection
on the implications of some recent research in the area of social
intelligence.

So what is social intelligence?

Kinga and Istvan (2012) highlight that EL Thorndike defined social
intelligence as the ability to understand and act wisely in human
relations in 1920.

Social intelligence is the social part of the intelligences and
comprises mainly of two components, which is

1. social awareness that describes what we sense about others,
   and

2. social facility, which is more, related to the expression or
   reaction to these observations.

Social awareness consists of primal empathy, attunement, empathic
accuracy and social cognition, while social facility is made up of
synchrony, self-presentation, influence and concern (Goleman, 2006).

Zirkel (2000) operates from the premise that social intelligence is
closely related to one’s own, personality and individual behaviour.
Those with social intelligence are fully self-aware and also understand
their environment. This enables them to control their emotions and make
decisions about their goals in life. Her model centred on the term
“purposive behaviour” which is deliberate action taken after evaluating
one’s environment, opportunities and risks and the goals set. Social
intelligence assists in creating a sense of identity for the individual,
emphasizes self-management and interpersonal skills and focuses on
thinking and resultant behaviour within social contexts.

So what do we do with this social intelligence then?

Furtner, Rauthmann and Sachse (2010) showed that social sensitivity
and emotional expressivity seem to be important for self-leaders,
whereas the importance of emotion regulation seems negligible.
Self-leaders are effective in regulating their thought and behaviour
patterns, which might not necessarily be associated with emotional
control. To pursue one’s goals it is important to be expressive in, and
sensitive and reactive to one’s social environment (i.e., external
orientation, interpersonal view) even though one’s own emotions might
not be the focus of regulation strategies (i.e., internal orientation,
intrapersonal view). In short, self-leaders need to be socially
intelligent and emotionally expressive in interpersonal situations in
order to get ahead.

Sorjonen, K., Hemmingsson, T., Lundin, A & Melin, B. (2011) found
that when adjusting for social position, people that have a high social
standing to start of will tend to have higher intelligence and level of
education than people with a lower social position of origin. This is
jarring as it lays waste to the claim that working hard and seeking to
attain merit alone determines what you achieve in life. We simply
respond differently to people that has social intelligence and there is
also more opportunity for people with social intelligence to get ahead
in life. So to overcome this – you have to build social skills and the
ability to interact with people at higher levels of society.

This begs the question of what type of behaviours should drive a
socially intelligent person.

Experiments were done with chat robots and it was shown that positive
feedback in conversations increased the perception of friendliness and
that mimicry increased the perception of intelligence of the robot
(Kaptein, Markopoulos, Ruyter and Aarts, 2011). So to come across as
friendly, give compliments and to sound smarter, listen to and work with
the ideas of the other person in order to get to an acceptable outcome
for both parties. It is always important to operate from the other
person’s point of view when attempting to direct an outcome.

From the idea of praise as a system of reward, it may be then assumed
that reward is an important part of social interaction and that it
should be applied liberally to situations to make it work to your
advantage. This is an assumption that is increasingly being disproven by
research. The use of extrinsic motivation/rewards to foster “desired”
behaviours is more often that not, counter-productive. Deci and Moller
(2005) draw from a range of studies to observe that people are less
inclined to engage in an activity after receiving a reward than those
who had not received one. Reward undermined intrinsic motivation and
diminished the sense of self-determination and autonomy. In contrast,
the use of other positive feedback was found to enhance engagement
within the activity.

These examples highlight the dangers of automatically assuming that
praise and rewards build teams and teamwork. A thoughtful approach is
needed in their application else they create division. This has massive
implications for performance management systems and may prove finally
why most of them do not work. It also explains why values based
organisations are more successful than those with structured job
descriptions. It also explains why we think that conversations that
focus on money or external rewards are fake and why people generally
disengage when these come up. An understanding of what drives people
allows us to employ social intelligence in the workplace and direct the
efforts of staff and the organisation as a whole.

Keating, Harper and Glew (2011) suggest a framework for reflecting on
how social intelligence can be used to remove the toxic elements from a
workplace. This starts with self-reflection around areas such as empathy
and looking at how each of us as a leader acts and reacts in the
workplace.

Empathy

• Do you understand what motivates other people, even those from
  different backgrounds?

• Are you sensitive to others’ needs?

Attunement

• Do you listen attentively and think about how others
  feel?

• Are you attuned to others’ moods?

Organizational awareness

• Do you appreciate the culture and values of the group or
  organization?

• Do you understand social networks and know their unspoken
  norms?

Influence

• Do you persuade others by engaging them in discussion and
  appealing to their self-interests?

• Do you get support from key people?

Developing others

• Do you coach and mentor others with compassion and personally
  invest time and energy in mentoring?

• Do you provide feedback that people find helpful for their
  professional development?

Inspiration

• Do you articulate a compelling vision, build group pride, and
  foster a positive emotional tone?

• Do you lead by bringing out the best in people?

Teamwork

• Do you solicit input from everyone on the team?

• Do you support all team members and encourage
  cooperation?

Wawra (2009) shows that social intelligence is also critical in
intercultural situations. Social neuroscience demonstrates the
importance of non-verbal communication and emotions for satisfying human
interactions in general. Emotions are more crucial in communication
encounters where the participants do not share the same cultural
background.

Culture makes it more difficult to interpret the other person’s
non-verbal communication and emotions correctly. In an intercultural
encounter – just like in any other interaction between humans – we can
trigger emotions in our conversation partners and vice versa through our
verbal and above all non-verbal behaviour, without being aware of it.
Yet those emotions may unintentionally influence the outcome of such
interactions. In the end, it depends to a great extent on our emotions
whether the outcomes of intercultural negotiations will be perceived as
successful or not. When negative emotions outweigh positive ones, this
will usually result in unsuccessful, unsatisfying and unrewarding
encounters. But the more that positive emotions outweigh negative ones,
the more successful, satisfying and rewarding intercultural
communication will be.

The important contribution of social neuroscience to intercultural
communication research is that emotions are much more important in
intercultural encounters than has been recognized so far: Emotions are
at the heart of intercultural negotiations and not a peripheral aspect.
With more businesses embracing cultural diversity it is an important
time to educate on how to be more culturally aware.

To add to this perspective, Hampel, Weis, Hiller and Witthoff (2011)
showed that if you are more anxious that this decreases your social
perception and memory. So if you want to remember the conversation and
the names of the people – be less stressed about it. This allows you to
start more meaningful conversations that increase your likelihood of
remembering what is happening. This applies to more than names – in
general, people will pick up on your anxiety and this will affect the
outcomes of decisions.

All these tools and strategies apply to the workplace where having
meetings behind computers and with many distractions are less productive
as it is a method by which to hide behind our own social fears.

Conclusion

Becoming more socially intelligent is a process in which we need to
investigate our understanding of what motivates, drives and influences
people. There are many insights in literature of what motivates and
recent research is challenging some of our traditional conceptions of
what applies to management. Once we get to understand others and
ourselves better we can start shaping our own social intelligence and
use this competency to achieve our individual and collective goals.

References

Deci, E.L., & Moller, A.C. (2005). The concept of competence: A
starting place for understanding intrinsic motivation and
self-determined extrinsic motivation. In A.J. Elliot & C.S. Dweck
(Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 579–597). New York:
The Guilford Press.

Furtner, M, Rauthmann, J, & Sachse, P 2010, ‘The Socioemotionally
Intelligent Self-Leader: Examining Relations Between Self-Leadership And
Socioemotional Intelligence’, Social Behavior & Personality: An
International Journal, 38, 9, pp. 1191-1196

Goleman, D. (2006). Social Intelligence, The new Science of human
Relationship, Hutchison, London

Hampel, S, Weis, S, Hiller, W, & Witthöft, M 2011, ‘The relations
between social anxiety and social intelligence: A latent variable
analysis’, Journal Of Anxiety Disorders, 25, 4, pp. 545-553

Kaptein, M, Markopoulos, P, Ruyter, B, & Aarts, E 2011, ‘Two acts
of social intelligence: the effects of mimicry and social praise on the
evaluation of an artificial agent’, AI & Society, 26, 3,
pp. 261-273

Keating, R, Harper, S, & Glew, D 2013, ‘Emotional intelligence
dilutes the toxins. (Cover story)’, Industrial Engineer: IE, 45, 6,
pp. 30-35

Kinga, S, & István, S 2012, ‘Relationship between Social
Creativity and Social Intelligence, and their Cognitive Correlates’,
Transylvanian Journal Of Psychology, 13, 1, pp. 39-62

Sorjonen, K, Hemmingsson, T, Lundin, A, & Melin, B 2011, ‘How
social position of origin relates to intelligence and level of education
when adjusting for attained social position’, Scandinavian Journal Of
Psychology, 52, 3, pp. 277-281

Wawra, D 2009, ‘Social Intelligence’, European Journal Of English
Studies, 13, 2, pp. 163-177

Zirkel, S. (2000). Social Intelligence: The Development and
Maintenance of Purposive behavior. The Handbook of Emotional
Intelligence. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.