Note: This article is by Vanessa Van Edwards, who tells us about her experience in following some principles to enhance social intelligence.
Social Intelligence
Social Intelligence, The New Science of Human Relationships by Dr. Daniel Goleman has some great scientific information about social intelligence.
Social Intelligence (SI)
It is the ability to build relationships and delve into social environments successfully.
Our society places great emphasis on the intelligence gained from books, knowledge, and the rate of mental intelligence. Still, our relationships affect a much larger part of our lives. In this article, you will notice that your social intelligence is much more important than your intelligence gained from books, and building strong social relationships is worth this effort, and you will find that:
- Strong relationships improve our immune system and help fight diseases.
- Loneliness and poor relationships are the prime sources of stress, health problems, and depression.
- Our relationships affect every area of our lives, from colleagues to spouses to friends to children.
Your Social Brain
Dr. Goleman asserts that we have specific structures in our brains that are built to improve relationships:
- The spindle cell is the fastest functioning neuron in our brain that guides our social decisions. More spindle cells exist in human brains than in any other type of cell.
- Mirror neurons help us predict the behavior of people around us by unconsciously mimicking their movements, feeling their emotions, and moving as they move.
- When a man gets a look from a woman he finds attractive, his brain releases dopamine, a chemical that makes us feel happy.
9 ways Dr. Goleman says you can improve your social intelligence
1. Initial Conversations
Several processes occur before we speak our words. While our brains receive subtle expressions, tones of voice, gestures, and pheromones, and people with a high degree of emotional intelligence have a greater awareness of their initial conversations. Goleman identifies two aspects in this awareness:
Social awareness: How do you respond to others?
- Primary Empathy: Sensing the feelings of others.
- Harmony: Listening with full acceptance.
- Accurate Empathy: Understanding other people's thoughts and intentions.
- Social Perception: Understanding the social world and creating a network of relationships.
Facilitate Social Communication: Knowing How to Conduct Smooth and Effective Interactions
- Compatibility: Interacting smoothly.
- Introducing yourself: Knowing how you look or what impression you give to others.
- Impact: The product of social interactions.
- Anxiety: Taking care of the needs of others.
2. Social Stimuli
Let's start with your social awareness, people and places evoke different emotions, and this affects our ability to communicate, so think about a time when you felt excited and energized through interaction. Now think about a time when you felt overwhelmed and defeated after the interaction. Goleman offers a theory on how our brain processes social interactions:
The unconscious is our intuitive, emotion-based way of processing interactions, the way we read body language and facial expressions and then form instinctive feelings toward people.
Consciousness is our logical and critical thinking for interaction. We use consciousness to communicate, tell stories, and build relationships.
These two are very important as our subconscious guides our inner feelings and instincts. For example, if people did not attend your birthday parties when you were a child, you may feel constriction and pain due to anxiety when thinking about your birthday as an adult, even if you have many friends who attend it. Awareness tells you that you have grown and that things have changed. Still, the unconscious always causes you social anxiety.
These are called social stimuli. You must be aware of unconscious social stimuli to help you make decisions based on relationships. Knowledge of unconscious social stimuli helps in the work and function of consciousness. Here's how you can identify your stimuli:
- What types of social interactions are you afraid of?
- Who are you worried about spending your time with?
- When do you feel like you can't be yourself?
3. Your Safe Base
Whether you are a socialist or a quiet introvert, everyone needs space to recover energy. Goleman suggests creating a “safe base” to achieve this, a place, habit, or activity that helps us process feelings and events. A safe base is helpful for two main reasons. First, it gives us space to recover energy before interactions so that we do not feel overwhelmed. Second, it helps us process and learn from every social encounter.
After a presentation, a meeting, a party, or a date, do you set aside enough time to reflect and review everything that happened right or wrong?
Some of the questions I ask during this review and investigation
- What happened so well?
- What went wrong?
- What would I have done differently?
- What did you learn from this interaction?
Possible ideas for a safe rule in which you can conduct a review or investigation
- In the car while driving home.
- In a diary while blogging before bed.
- In a workbook while writing down ideas.
- While thinking with a partner.
- Talking and discussing with a friend.
4. Broken Links
One of the biggest dangers in social intelligence is the lack of empathy, and Dr. Goleman calls it broken links. The philosopher Martin Buber coined the concept “I-It,” which occurs when one person treats another as something rather than a human being.
Imagine that you just lost a family member and received a phone call from a friend who offers you condolences. Immediately, you feel that the caller is forced to speak out of duty, and they seem distracted.
During the call, you can hear the sound of pressing their phone's keyboard, and their wishes seem cold and insincere as if they are saved by heart, and this call may make you feel worse, not better.
This interaction makes you feel like an “object” or an item on a to-do list, and any other word would seem tepid and indifferent.
For me, I had a friend who emails me every 60 days for lunch. His messages were so similar that I felt like a calendar alarm clock setting him, or I was just an item on his to-do list - he felt like we “should” have lunch together to keep in touch, and our lunches were routine, predictable, and boring. So, I stopped accepting his invitations.
- Don't react because you feel "you should."
- Refuse commitments if you can.
- React sympathetically or not at all.
5. Positive Infection
When someone smiles at us, it is difficult not to smile back. The same is true of other facial expressions. When our friend is sad and begins to cry, our eyes often tear. It is because of the work of our mirror neurons, which are part of our response to others based on the unconscious.
If the mood is captivating and eye-catching, gravitate toward people who make you feel the same way.
6. Adaptability
The unconscious automatically reflects the state of the people around us. This is how empathy works. Our brain copies the state of the people around us so that we feel as they feel, which, in turn, helps us understand them, where they came from, and even be better at predicting their reactions.
“Many subconscious pathways pass through mirror neurons, activating neurons in a person based on something that another person experiences in the same way as the same person, and whether pain - or pleasure - is expected or visible in another person, the same neuron activates.” Dr. Goleman says.
Sometimes, awareness may stumble or encounter some blockages. For example, if our partner is angry about something, we try to stay calm, then we try to calm them down, which may make it worse.
An angry person may feel that you “do not understand” them because you are fighting your instinct to reflect their discomfort. Sometimes, you must allow yourself to adopt their emotions and put yourself exactly where they are. It may give you a new glimpse of their point of view and help them realize that you feel the same way.
7. Beware of three types of toxic characters
Goleman identifies three toxic characters to watch out for: the narcissistic personality, the Machiavellian personality, and the psychopathic or antisocial personality.
7.1. Narcissistic Personality
When someone has an exaggerated view of themselves, a great ego, and a sense of entitlement.
7.2. Machiavellian Personality
When someone constantly manipulates and exploits the people around them.
7.3. Psychopathic Personality
When a person is reckless and has high cruelty and selfishness.
Goleman summarizes the slogan of the three poisonous characters as follows: Others exist only to admire and love me.
8. Mental Blindness
Can you usually guess what someone will say? Are you good at anticipating other people's behavior? And you think you're adopting your instincts?
You may have strong social awareness and insight if you answer positively to these questions, but you may also be mentally blind if you respond negatively. Mental blindness is the inability to feel what is happening in someone else's mind. The key to sight is empathy.
“In short, self-indulgence in all its forms kills compassion, not to mention compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world shrinks where our problems and preoccupations stand out greatly, but when we focus on others, our world expands, and our problems take a marginal place in our minds, and then they seem smaller, and increase our ability to communicate, or act based on compassion.” Dr. Goleman says.
Goleman argues that we are compelled to be altruistic. We are naturally kind, yet sometimes we forget how altruism makes us feel good about ourselves.
Dr. Baron Cohen an experiment to gauge your level of empathy is known as the empathy quotient. I value this test because it was designed for adults with Asperger's syndrome or autism spectrum disorder.
9. Goleman's recipe for healthy social relationships
“The most striking finding concerning relationships and physical health is that people who are socially integrated - married, have close family and friends, belong to social and religious groups, and are widely involved in these networks -recover more quickly from illness and live longer, with nearly eighteen studies showing a strong correlation between social cohesion and mortality.” Dr. Goleman.
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