social intelligence Flashcards
what argments are there for multiple intelligences
IQ does not provide a full account of indivudal differences in life success
suggestion that interpersonal skills (social intelligence) as independent from IQ and that these can be more important irl than academic abilities
is there a definition of social intelligence
difficult to categorically say whether social intelligence is distinct from emotional intelligence
idea of ‘dealing with others’
how does Thorndike (1920) conceive of social intelligence
thorndike (1920): ability to read people like a book, manage others, act wisely in social relationships, contrast with mechanical and abstract intelligence
How did Vernon (1933) talk of social intelligence
ability to get along with people in general
social techniques
ease in society
knowledge of social matters
susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group
insight into the temporary moods / underlying personality traits of strangers
ability rather than preference (resembles knowledge of social matters) - personality?
is it objectively testable - can we have a correct answer (accurately identifying anotheres emotions)
different from cognitive abilty?
predicts unique variance/ life outcomes?
What is Gardner’s 1983 theory of multiple intelligences
there are different types of intelligence and these are entirely distinct
intrapersonal intelligence concerns self-awareness, personal cognisance, personal objectivity, the capability to understand oneself, relationship to others, the world and one’s needs and reactions to change
interpersonal: perception of other’s feelings, ability to relate to others, interpretation of behaviour and communications, understanding the relationship between people and their situations, including other people
what types of intelligence have been proposed
visuo-spatial, linguisitc/verbal, logical/mathematical, bodily/kinesthetic, musical , interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic
notes factor analysis of these produced 3 factors: general intelligence, kinesthetic and musical
what is the measurement problem with social intelligence
need to make sure we do not confound social intelligence with personality
social intelligence is mutlfacited and there is great variation in the types of skills it encompasses (Happe & Frith, 2014)
what early tests exist for social intelligence
GWIST: judgement in social situations, memory of names and faces, recognition of the mental states behind words (Hunt, 1928)
PONS: films clips of a woman in an emotional state, must identify emotion (Rosenthal, 1979)
select faces and voices displaying the same mental state (Guildford & Hoepfner, 1971)
Photographs of 2 people in 2 conditions, asked to identify friends or strangers and who was supervisor (Sternberg & Smith, 1985)
what is the proposed structure of intelligence for testing g
verbal intelligence and performance intelligence
verbal intelligence includes vocab, similarities, synonyms, digit span, arithmetic, comprehension
performance intelligence includes block design (visualisation ability), symbol search(information processing speed and visual perception), matrix reasoning, digit-symbol substitution
what is the proposed structure of social intelligence s
representation of another’s cognitive state and representation of another’s emotions
representing anothers cognitive state includes theory of mind, imitation, social attention , biomotion perception (human figure moving from limited stimuli), social leanring, metacognition
representing anothers emotional state includes: social reward, affective touch (emotional facets of tactile sensation), empathy
both include the self-other distinction (representaiotn of our own actions, sensations and emotions and others
are social abilities correlated?
are they independent of g?
GWIST.54 correlation with equivalent IQ test (Hunt, 1928)
FA of GWIST and other IQ tests failed to show a distinct social factor (Woodrow, 1939)
no relationship between IQ tests and PONS and no relationship between friend and supervisor task (Sternver & Smith, 1985)
tests of social ability correlate .28 on average, tests of social ability and IQ tests correlate .33 on average (Keating, 1978) –> no distinct social factor, IQ can explain some of the differences in social ability
Seven social factors independent of traditional measures of intelligence (Schneider et al., 1996)
FA of the large battery of 5 social tests (social interest, social skills, empathy, emotionality, and social anxiety) that were distinct from verbal and abstract intelligence
need better tests
lack of non-social condition
low ecological validity
expliciti vs implicit social cognition
why is there so much variance across studies
variance in aptitude tested, face recognition, emotion recognition, ToM, social motivation
variance in assessment method: self-report, objective tests
self-report measures require self-awareness (correlated with personality especially extraversion, openness and agreeableness)
what is implicit mentalising
the ability to represent the mental state of the self and othres
(referred to as ToM, cognitive empathy, mind reading)
what are the two mentalising systems
implicit system: efficient, automatic, early developing
explicit system: cognitively demanding, late developing
kids under 4 are not able to explicitly mentalise
is mentalising domain-specific or domain-general
domain-specific proponants argue that implicit mentalising effects reflect specific processing of mental states that is an innate ability
domain-general proponents argue for submentalising processes where effects relfect non-social processing due to attentional cueing and perceptual novelty (issue of poor experimental research)
