Social intelligence is the capacity to
effectively navigate and negotiate
complex social relationships and
environments. Social scientist Ross
Honeywill believes social intelligence
is an aggregated measure of self- and
social-awareness, evolved social beliefs
and attitudes, and a capacity and
appetite to manage complex social
change. Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey
believes that it is social intelligence,
rather than quantitative intelligence,
that defines humans.
The original definition by Edward
Thorndike in 1920 is "the ability to
understand and manage men and women,
boys and girls, to act wisely in human
relations". It is equivalent to
interpersonal intelligence, one of the
types of intelligence identified in
Howard Gardner's theory of multiple
intelligences, and closely related to
theory of mind. Some authors have
restricted the definition to deal only
with knowledge of social situations,
perhaps more properly called social
cognition or social marketing
intelligence, as it pertains to trending
socio-psychological advertising and
marketing strategies and tactics.
According to Sean Foleno, social
intelligence is a person’s competence to
understand his or her environment
optimally and react appropriately for
socially successful conduct.
Hypothesis 
The social intelligence hypothesis
states that social intelligence, that
is, complex socialization such as
politics, romance, family relationships,
quarrels, collaboration, reciprocity,
and altruism, was the driving force in
developing the size of human brains and
today provides our ability to use those
large brains in complex social
circumstances. That is, it was the
demands of living together that drove
our need for intelligence generally.
Archeologist Steve Mithen believes that
there are two key periods of human brain
growth that contextualize the social
intelligence hypothesis. The first was
around two million years ago, when the
brain more than doubled, from around
450cc to 1,000cc by 1.8 million years
ago. Brain tissue is very expensive
metabolically, so it must have served an
important purpose. Mithen believes that
this growth was because people were
living in larger, more complex groups,
and had to keep track of more people and
relationships, which required a greater
mental capacity and so a larger brain.
The second growth in human brain size
occurred between 600,000 and 200,000
years ago, when the brain reached its
modern size. This growth is still not
fully explained. Mithen’s believes that
it is related to the evolution of
language. Language is probably the most
complex cognitive task we undertake. It
is directly related to social
intelligence because we mainly use
language to mediate our social
relationships.
So social intelligence was a critical
factor in brain growth, social and
cognitive complexity co-evolve.
Measurement 
The social intelligence quotient or SQ
is a statistical abstraction similar to
the ‘standard score’ approach used in IQ
tests with a mean of 100. Scores of 140
or above are considered to be very high.
Unlike the standard IQ test, it is not a
fixed model. It leans more to Jean
Piaget’s theory that intelligence is not
a fixed attribute but a complex
hierarchy of information-processing
skills underlying an adaptive
equilibrium between the individual and
the environment. Therefore, an
individual can change their SQ by
altering their attitudes and behaviour
in response to their complex social
environment.
SQ has until recently been measured by
techniques such as question and answer
sessions. These sessions assess the
person's pragmatic abilities to test
eligibility in certain special education
courses, however some tests have been
developed to measure social
intelligence. This test can be used when
diagnosing autism spectrum disorders,
including autism and Asperger syndrome.
This test can also be used to check for
some non-autistic or semi-autistic
conditions such as semantic pragmatic
disorder or SPD, schizophrenia, dyssemia
and ADHD.
Some social intelligence measures exist
which are self-report. Although easy to
administer, there is some question as to
whether self-report social intelligence
measures would better be interpreted in
terms of social self-efficacy.
People with low SQ are more suited to
work with low customer contact, because
they may not have the required
interpersonal communication and social
skills for success on with customers.
People with SQs over 120 are considered
socially skilled, and may work well with
jobs that involve direct contact and
communication with other people.
Differences from intelligence 
Nicholas Humphrey points to a difference
between intelligence and social
intelligence. Some autistic children are
extremely intelligent because they are
very good at observing and memorising
information, but they have low social
intelligence. Similarly, chimpanzees are
very adept at observation and
memorisation, sometimes better than
humans, but are, according to Humphrey,
inept at handling interpersonal
relationships. What they lack is a
theory of others' minds. For a long
time, the field was dominated by
behaviorism, that is, the theory that
one could understand animals including
humans just by observing their behavior
and finding correlations. But recent
theories indicate that one must consider
the inner structure behaviour.
Both Nicholas Humphrey and Ross
Honeywill believe that it is social
intelligence, or the richness of our
qualitative life, rather than our
quantitative intelligence, that makes
humans what they are; for example what
it is like to be a human being living at
the centre of the conscious present,
surrounded by smells and tastes and
feels and the sense of being an
extraordinary metaphysical entity with
properties which hardly seem to belong
to the physical world. This is social
intelligence.
Additional views 
Social intelligence is closely related
to cognition and emotional intelligence.
Research psychologists studying social
cognition and social neuroscience have
discovered many principles which human
social intelligence operates. In early
work on this topic, psychologists Nancy
Cantor and John Kihlstrom outlined the
kinds of concepts people use to make
sense of their social relations, and the
rules they use to draw inferences and
plan actions.
M Babu defines social intelligence as
"the ability to deal efficiently and
thoughtfully, keeping one’s own
identity, employing apposite social
inputs with a wider understanding of
social environment; considering
empathetic co-operation as a base of
social acquaintance."
More recently, popular science writer
Daniel Goleman has drawn on social
neuroscience research to propose that
social intelligence is made up of social
awareness and social facility. Goleman’s
research indicates that our social
relationships have a direct effect on
our physical health, and the deeper the
relationship the deeper the impact.
Effects include blood flow, breathing,
mood such as fatigue and depression, and
weakening of the immune system.
Educational researcher Raymond H.
Hartjen asserts that expanded
opportunities for social interaction
enhances intelligence. This suggests
that children require continuous
opportunities for interpersonal
experiences in order to develop a keen
'inter-personal psychology'. Traditional
classrooms do not permit the interaction
of complex social behavior. Instead,
students in traditional settings are
treated as learners who must be infused
with more and more complex forms of
information. The structure of schools
today allows very few of these skills,
critical for survival in the world, to
develop. Because we so limit the
development of the skills of "natural
psychologist" in traditional schools,
graduates enter the job market
handicapped to the point of being
incapable of surviving on their own. In
contrast, students who have had an
opportunity to develop their skills in
multi-age classrooms and at democratic
settings rise above their less socially
skilled peers. They have a good sense of
self, know what they want in life and
have the skills to begin their quest.
The issue here is psychology versus
social intelligence—as a separate and
distinct perspective, seldom
articulated. An appropriate introduction
contains certain hypothetical
assumptions about social structure and
function, as it relates to intelligence
defined and expressed by groups,
constrained by cultural expectations
that assert potential realities, but
make no claims that there is an
"exterior" social truth to be defined.
This perspective pursues the view that
social structures can be defined with
the warning that what is mapped into the
structure and how that information is
stored, retrieved, and decided upon are
variable, but can be contained in an
abstract and formal grammar—a sort of
game of definitions and rules that
permit and project an evolving
intelligence. Two halves of the coin:
one half psychology; the other half
social. Unfortunately, most references
to social intelligence relate to an
individual's social skills. Not
mentioned, and more important, is how
social intelligence processes
information about the world and shares
it with participants in the group(s).
Are there social structures or can they
be designed to accumulate and reveal
information to the individual or to
other groups. The bigger question is how
groups and societies map the environment
into a social structure. How is that
structure able to contain a worldview
and to reveal that view to the
participants? How are decisions made?
See also 
References 
External links 
The Social Intelligence Lab
The Preeminent Intelligence - Social IQ,
Raymond H. Hartjen
Socially superior, Times Online
Social Intelligence: the New Science of
Success, Dr. Karl Albrecht, Wiley 2005.
The Social Intelligence Profile -
self-assessment instrument by Dr. Karl
Albrecht.
Daniel Goleman's blog and current
research
Social Intelligence, John Kihlstrom and
Nancy Cantor, in R.J. Sternberg,
Handbook of intelligence, 2nd ed..
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press.
"Is Social Intelligence More Useful than
IQ?". Talk of the Nation, NPR. October
23, 2006. 
A Treatise on Messaging and Society
Today: The Genesis of the Social
Intelligence Architect and the Advent of
the Integrated Media Services
Organization.
