Social Intelligence Definition

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Social intelligence is a construct used in a variety of literature. While non-academic literature takes a more liberal approach to this term, academic literature debates over defining this concept and whether or not social intelligence is intelligence. However, there is still conflict in defining intelligence (Legg & Hutter, 2007). There are multiple definitions of intelligence. Many of which have common elements, such as defining intelligence as a capacity to adapt to and interact with different environments, and an ability to reach goals (Legg & Hutter, 2007). Thorndike (1920) differentiated between different applications of intellect, based on whether it applied to objects, ideas, or people. Therefore, based in the common elements in definitions …show more content…
Particularly, TRACOM Group (2015) defines social intelligence as “the ability to understand and manage our behavioural style, mindset, and emotional intelligence to optimise interpersonal relationships”. They identify three sub-constructs. TRACOM identifies two cognitive factors, mindset and emotional intelligence, and one behavioural component, which is behavioural style. This is similar to what Thorndike (1920) stated, in that there are two major components to social intelligence, a cognitive component and a behavioural component. The mindset component refers to mental and emotional resilience. The behavioural component is loosely defined as how people express their emotions, and how acting a certain way will influence how people respond to such behaviour. Emotional intelligence refers to an awareness of one’s emotions and the emotions of others. TRACOM provide training aimed at increasing the abilities related to these constructs. Regarding emotional intelligence, one’s ability can be improved to create positive interactions by strengthening relationship skills. One’s mindset can be developed to recognise instinctive reaction that can hold relationship skills back. Finally, understanding how one behaves and then learning how to adjust such behaviour to others’ can improve one’s behavioural style. However, their …show more content…
Social understanding was proposed as the core ability of social intelligence, which is related to recognition and processing of social stimuli, emotions, mental state and observed behaviours- Additionally, they suggested social memory, social perception, social creativity, and social knowledge as abilities underlying social intelligence. These impacted on social behaviour, but the behaviour itself was still influenced by moderating variables, such as values, norms and personality. They also argued for the multidimensionality of social intelligence. This echoes the view of Schneider and Newman (2014) in that intelligence itself is not one-dimensional. According to Conzelmann, Weis and Süß (2013), social intelligence is a multidimensional construct as there is less overlap with other forms of intelligence in tests if tasks are of a certain nature, such as nonverbal task. Therefore, they suggested that the structure of the test was essential to distinguish the underlying forms of intelligence used to complete the

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