Understanding Social Intelligence
Social intelligence is the ability to understand the thinking of one's self, introspection, and the awareness of others' thinking. Social intelligence comprises two primary facets of Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory.
Like generalized psychological intelligence and the other facets of multiple intelligence theory social intelligence is an ability that is largely crystalized from early childhood. Also like other measures of intelligence practice as both an observational skill and motivation will greatly improve persons who naturally measure high in social intelligence but produces degrading benefits the lower a person naturally measures in social intelligence. For example empathy is a skill that can be greatly improved by persons who measure high in social intelligence, but would be absent or a struggle to develop in persons who do not otherwise measure high in social intelligence.
Self-Orientation
Self-orientation is the direction at which a person directs their social intelligence skills. This can be measured as strictly self-oriented on one extreme and obsessive caring on the other extreme.
People that score low in social intelligence tend to be extremely self-oriented. If a person lacks the ability to both perceive others and introspect they will find it extraordinarily challenging to consider the needs of other people. On one hand they lack both the ability and motivation to read the emotional state of other people and simultaneously cannot process or recognize that deficit due to their own missing introspection.
Extreme self-orientation is commonly associated with mental health disorders. Several symptoms of ASD and some forms of extreme ADHD. For example one of the top diagnostic criteria of ADHD concerns whether a patient socially injects themselves into existing conversations merely to impose inclusion or to talk about themselves.
Extremely low self-orientation is also generally considered a pathological disorder, typically a form of OCD. Extremely low self-orientation is the rare combination of high agreeableness, high social intelligence, and a well developed obsessive disorder centered upon caring for others at non-deliberate harm to the self.
Empathic and Narcissistic
Empathic and narcissistic personality traits tend to largely align with self-orientation, but not absolutely so. Empathy is both the skill and desire to read the emotion states of both one's self and other people. High empathy requires strong observational skills, high social intelligence, awareness of complex social relationships, and greater than average conscientiousness.
Empathy does not require high agreeableness. A person can be a strongly empathic and yet not interested in social harmony. Compare that to sympathy which does not require high social intelligence and primarily seeks to share agreement experiences. For persons with high social intelligence the differences between empathy and sympathy are striking, but for people with low social intelligence these qualities cannot be differentiated as empathy remains elusive. For some persons with disorders linked to low social intelligence harming or disrupting persons with low agreeableness conduct, perceptions of meanness, becomes a primary motivation to restore social harmony. Such agreeableness motivated disruptions are generally perceived as tantrums by persons with high social intelligence and yet simultaneously as justified and necessary by persons with low social intelligence.
Narcissism is the absence of empathy. Narcissism is generally considered a disorder, but once narcissism becomes a primary motivating factor, the attainment of self-oriented desires at expense or harm to other persons, it becomes a diagnostic criteria of several mental health disorders. Narcissism is largely considered a processing disorder, the inability the process typical social norms, and is generally associated with low social intelligence.
It is possible for some people to have low social intelligence and still learn to observe emotional qualities of other people, or at least pretend to. This is generally referred to as masking. Masking is a common trait of sociopathic and psychopathic personalities as a means to temporarily appear charming as necessary to extract selfish desires. Masking is also common in autism where people pretend to operate with what they believe to be normal behaviors. Autism masking is generally ineffective as other people continue to see the autism person as less authentic and the autism person cannot perceive the ineffectiveness of their masking due to poor introspection and other processing disorders.
Low Social Intelligence
Low social intelligence generally accounts for most of the behaviors and disorders already described. Low social intelligence people are generally harmful and should be carefully monitored. These harms may or may not be deliberate, but manifest either to compensate for absent typical social processing or as a means of self protection in the face of social processing uncertainty. For example consider the phrase throw under the bus. The scenarios described by that phrase tend to be common among people with low social intelligence as a means of resolving social complexity they cannot otherwise process and is typically obvious to third party observers as a conduct disorder or toxic leadership. The thrown under the bus scenario will likely not even be realized by the low social intelligence actor until they are made aware by a third party and even then will be discarded in the case of narcissism.
In context of multiple intelligence theory low intelligence in one facet typically presents degraded performance to the other intelligence facets. This is true of social intelligence as well. People with low social intelligence and high self orientation may have high academic intelligence and yet struggle to measure things at even a most elementary practice. The cost to perform evidence gathering as a deliberate action becomes too mentally taxing as an action of objectivity in opposition from self orientation. This phenomenon frequently presents as a desire to achieve easiness without consideration for the resulting labor.
Autism is frequently linked with low social intelligence, but in many cases this is hasty generalization. It is important to bear this distinction in mind because while low social intelligence is harmful persons on the autism spectrum without low social intelligence are not immediately harmful and may provide unique performance benefits not available to typical people.
High Social Intelligence
High social intelligence is a common character trait among strong leaders. High social intelligence provides a deeper reasoning about the communications and emotional motivations people. It also allows for superior performance regarding influence and motivation to express organizational goals.
As a 30 year US Army Reserves veteran I can testify that the US Army Reserves is an organization that strongly values leadership expressed through high social intelligence cultural norms. In 2021 the US Army published a variety of advertisements referred to as The Calling campaign. The goal of the advertisements was to express the inclusive culture of the US Army and inclusivity as a primary component of its internal leadership. Many people who have never served in the military perceived these advertisements as soft and feminizing. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas responded by publishing a video of a Russian army hazing incident as a demonstration of what military culture should look like.
For people who have served in the US Army these commercials merely expressed facets of military cultural we soldiers routinely expect from strong leaders. For low social intelligence people who have never served in a military these commercials expressed ideas contrary to their, often misinformed, understanding of what they imagine military cultural to look like.
High social intelligence, especially empathy, does equate to kindness or social harmony. People without high social intelligence frequently error on this. Sometimes these errors are merely ignorance and sometimes they are deliberate for self-satisfying motivations. People with high social intelligence can read and convey striking differences between empathy and kindness. This allows a leader to simultaneously save face and invalidate disagreements.
Low social intelligence people cannot see that distinction thereby limiting them to only perceiving communications along a single dimension of kindness and often inserting their self-orientation where it irrelevant. These distinctions are important because there are numerous situations where kindness is antithetical to conflict resolution and expressed guidance. This is another indication where low social intelligent people demonstrate harm, through misreading situations and communications, resulting in unwanted conclusions of their own invention.
