Exactly what are social skills?

Post Reply New Topic

Apart from getting on with other people and saying the right thing?

Is your googler broken?

No I’d just like these people.

Plus I’d like as many threads as you...

...And what makes Aspergers not come across well?

so called social skills are bunch of bs mostly, its their way or their highway.

I will google "Social Skills for you ... oh, look ... this one was at the top of the page:

 Link 

Googling "List of Social Skills" put  This List  at the top of the page.

• Effective communication
• Conflict resolution
• Active listening
• Empathy
• Relationship management
• Respect

There is even a section on how to improve your social skills.

you are on a roll

Sometimes, it is easier to point someone toward the answers than to try to explain it all to them.

Thank you for your help figuring it out a bit!

I know effective communication would mean social skills, so how do Aspergers effectively communicate?

There are many words similar to empathy, which we DO have...

What is conflict resolution, I thought people just didn’t get on or stopped seeing each other?

Google solves all of life's problems - humans no longer needed : - )

What Exactly does "Exactly" mean in this context.
Asimov used to write a science-non-fiction column for a well known science fiction magazine. He was writing science fiction, and also had a PhD in "Science" (Biology) at right around the time of the A-bomb. When the "boys in the lab" actually discover something that stops a world war a lot of people who never gave a "hoot" about science are suddenly aware that "science" is something very important and something they know (relatively) nothing about. A guy who has a PhD and also knows how to write clearly about popular science topic can find himself in the right place at the right time.
So he wrote one article on what "exactly" IS life - and if you can some up with a good definition what does it tell you about what is alive and what is not - scientifically speaking. He made a useful observation: what something is defined (typically) by two things: what it is made of, and what it does.

The words "social skills" are about skills that are social and, in this context (and many others) social means "people".
But what is a skill - what color is it, how much does it weigh, is it bitter or bland? On one hand a skill is something you can reliably do, but is also something you know. And a skill must be useful - so what counts as a useful people skill.

As a computer scientist I often ask this question: how could I make a computer do that. Strangely this way of asking a question is often jarring in it reveals that: I don't really know WHAT "that" is. For example: is the dollar amount on my Automatic Teller receipt my bank balance, or is it a representation of my bank balance? If I call the "bank by phone" feature of my bank they tell me a different balance - is THAT my bank balance? If I phone the bank during business hours and the bank representative uses her computer to look up my balance and tell me it - is THAT my bank balance - or it it only my bank balance when I actually have the cash in my hand? Or can use my bank card at the super market?

For me: social skills are memories of learned behavior that I can use in certain situation - or perhaps cannot use. Memories, I think are encoded in nerve patterns in my brain which are influenced by my body's experiences through the 5 senses - but also in my ability to reason from those experiences. Plato uses The Allegory of the Cave to describe these things - at least that is how I think about it. In the Allegory a man lives in a cave his whole life and the cave is so shaped that he can see shadows cast by a fire outside of the cave of things which are happening outside of the cave. The shadows give him ideas of what might be outside of the cave, but he doesn't really know those things until he travels outside of the cave - on the other hand he doesn't completely know nothing about them.

Asimov's definition of life had to do with being made of at least one (or more) RNA or DNA molecules and being capable of taking action to meet its basic needs (eating, and so on). He points out that having the parts and not the actions does not mean "life" because a dead man has all of the same parts of a living man, but the living man is able to take the actions. He then goes on to use his definition to explore such questions as "is a virus alive".

People skills are really tricky - because people are really complected and hard to understand. One way of understanding people is to use something like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and apply them to yourself (myself) and other people and then try to figure out how to make them work together.

If you work bottom up from quantum particles to atoms to molecules to cells to organs to people - things get very complicated along the way in very unpredictable ways at times. If you work top down - from personal experience, and theories of language both verbal and non-verbal - politics and day-to-day living - and try to come up with realistic models and theories things also get very complicated in various ways - and very different ways.

Another challenge with people skills that the rules are always changing - sometimes gradually and naturally, sometimes by more directed and planned and even conflict oriented ways.

I would be interested to see more discussion on this thread. I hope more people share thoughts.

Effective communication is forming your message in a way the other person understands - and understanding their messages. In particular, it's very useful to know which parts are the most important.

No. This way no human relationships would remain. People get into conflicts in countless everyday situations.
There are many tactics useful for conflict resolution. Some of them:
- negotiations;
- compromise;
- understanding even if disagreeing;
- clarifications (particularily useful among autistic people );
- active listening (encouraging the other person to explain);
- letting off steam, apologizing and getting back together (useful only in well-tested friendships);
- and many others.

The OP seems to be taking an heuristic approach to social skills -- which skills to use under what conditions -- when the most effective way to learn social skills is by trial-and-error.

While there are many books and other resources for describing social skills, they are all useless when confronted with a social situation that requires an immediate response -- one cannot stand there, frozen in panic, while trying to remember which paragraph of which page in which book describes the situation and how to react to it.

No, smooth social interaction requires an instinctive understanding of human behavior, which may be automatic for 'normies', but must be learned by the rest of us; and experience is the best teacher.

Of course, if a single rejection is enough to devastate someone so badly that they retreat to their mother's basement and resolve to never try again, then maybe that someone would be better off to give up, completely forget about socializing, and stick to video games.

But if a person sincerely wants to learn how to get along with others, then the one best way to do so is to put one's self in social situations, relax, socialize, and not fall down a well of despair when things go wrong.

The French call it "Je ne sais quoi", which translates into "I do not know what", and implies a state of mind in which one remains both engaged and aloof during social interactions -- you may appear indifferent to what is going on, but you are very much aware of what others say and do.

Someone asked a similar question to OP's question on another forum (not a Wrongplanet forum)

The question was basically stated this way:
How do I learn how to improve at social skills as an adult. By the way I am also ADHD and when I buy books I find I don't read them (basically TL;DR) so if you can recommend any youtube videos that would be great.

I responded this way:

Peter,

Look at the wrongplanet.net forums and resources.

I read a book called "Look Me In The Eye" written by an adult on the spectrum.
I found it helpful - I buy a lot of books and read parts of them.
Some I have for a while and never quite get around to. Some I find
are too heavy on the problem and too light on the solution.
Biographies are better for me and hold my attention (or
autobiographical books by real people)
If you get books and don't read them - do you read magazines? I have
been getting the CHADD magazine "Attention" for years. I flip through
it read some articles and skip others.
I find the articles are short and accessible, but they tend to be
beginner stuff which is easy to outgrow quickly. Also the articles
are very short and often to superficial for my liking. Good news is
the short articles are good for my hyperactive-mind - the bad news is
they are too short for my feeling that I know nothing about a subject
unless I know EVERYTHING about a subject.
For "social skills" the stuff I find on line for that topic tends to
be aimed at practitioners (clinicians) or parents of severely
handicapped kids on the spectrum.
If you like youtube here are some other search keywords or phrases you
can search for:
etiquette
business etiquette
doing business in the unites states
(these cover some of the "unwritten" social rules that folks with
Autism and folks who grew up in a country with DIFFERENT "unwritten"
social rules - don't know)
people skills
soft skills
non-verbal communication
how to read non-verbal communication
how to win friends and influence people
7-habits
game theory
BATNA
negotiating skills
body language
boundaries
personal space
dating for dummies
flirting for dummies
romance for dummies
"how to" (anything you want to know goes after this)

The trick to finding good resources on the internet is knowing the
secret handshake of search engines:
one words searches usually don't find what you want
two word searches often don't find what you want
three word searches are usually best - or more if you see it helps.
quote phrases
when you do a search, read the first 20 hits carefully (yes, 20 - or
even 40) - LOOK FOR KEYWORDS that are more specific, that are unusual,
that are unique to what you really want to find.
when you find a good article save it - or the link to it.
think about what you are finding and WHAT YOU ARE NOT FINDING - ask
yourself why - what other words could you be using.

Having good social skills means not asking too many redundant questions.

I read an article which compared the usual method of learning social skills to teaching someone to drive by putting him behind the wheel of a car then pushing the car into traffic and letting the beeping of the other cars teach him everything he needed to know.

The point of the analogy, I think was this - there might be another way. For a person who's internal mental world is very different than the typical person he has to interact with - or who has muted or hyper-sensative non-verbal language reading ability - he might never learn this way. It is very hard to figure out other people when you are very different from them, or when your built in apparatus for experiencing and interpreting those people and their communication is a-typical. Frankly understanding people is hard for NTs too. People are complicated. The DSM criteria for ASD basically say that there are observable differences in the way ASD people interact with others when compared to NTs. The internal experience of these externally observable differences is really not covered. Sometimes, for me, interacting with people hurts. Sometimes, for me interacting with people is a wonderful and fulfilling experience. My personal experience is that the times when it hurts are lessened by studying the subject as if I were studying a scientific subject. I have improved by practicing techniques I have read about, almost like learning a foreign language (which is something else I find very hard to do). The times that hurt - hurt enough that I am still a bit skittish around people and have developed some defensive behaviors that are at times necessary to my health and well being, but at times are exaggerated and inappropriate to to the situation. Once burned twice cautious. I remember reading an article or post someplace where someone said he improved most by finding a therapist and discussing specific social / people experiences he had with the therapist and having the therapist provide missing pieces, explanations and unwritten or unspoken rules that might apply in similar future situations. It seems to me there is more than one way to skin this cat.

That's weird. The people who have the most friends and I consider the most socially skilled have none of these skills.

They can't convey any thoughts.
Cause arguments for fun
Never listen
Have no empathy for others
Destroy relationships with endless gossip and rumours
Respect nobody.

Looks like unhealthy social environment.