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A Really Big Picture View of Social Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, author of the widely read book titled Emotional Intelligence, has written a new book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, which deals with a topic that has been of interest to social scientists for a very long time, namely, how people perceive, react, and interact with the social world in which they live. When I was offered the opportunity to review this book, I agreed without much thought. My willingness was based on the title of the book; I had been reading literature on social intelligence and had begun to conduct some research in the area. As such, I felt confident that I would be able to provide a competent review of the book. But, the book wasn’t at all what I expected. Rather than focusing on the relatively narrow concept of social intelligence or on the more broadly defined domain of social effectiveness (which is a set of individual differences constructs proposed to be associated with engaging in socially effective behaviors), the book covers a wide range of topics emanating from the field of social neuroscience. So, rather than providing a traditional book review, and assuming that others also may form an expectation about the book on the basis of its title, I would like to discuss the book within the context of theory and research on the psychological concept of social intelligence and the more broadly defined domain of social effectiveness. In a formal sense, the scientific study of individual differences in social capabilities began in 1920 when E. L. Thorndike discussed, in an article appearing in Harpers Magazine, the notion of social intelligence, which he discussed as the “ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls—to act wisely in human relations” (p. 228). Since that time, numerous research efforts have explored the social intelligence construct (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Ford & Tisak, 1983; Kosmitzki & John, 1993; Marlowe, 1986; Silvera, Martinussen, & Dahl, 1991; Walker & Foley, 1973; for a review of the history of social intelligence, see Landy, 2006), though definitions of the construct and associated measurement approaches have varied to a notable degree across these perspectives. In addition, many researchers have proposed and investigated an