Mastering Social Skills: Enhance Your Interpersonal Interactions

Posted on Dec 8, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

The Importance of Social Skills

Social skills, like many other behaviors and habits, are learned throughout life by two processes: the development of the individual and the process of learning. This learning process occurs throughout life and allows the person to constantly adapt to different situations. In interactions, the answers depend on what they learn in their previous relationships with the social environment.

Dimensions of Human Behavior

Thinking (rationally or unreasonably) about a given event, each person may react differently, interpreting and evaluating it from their own perspective.

There are positive thoughts, rational and adapted to reality, that let and boost positive feelings, leading the person to action.
There are other thoughts, irrational or distorted, that can cause negative emotions.

Feeling: This is in constant interaction with thoughts.

Appropriate emotions: These arise from realistic assessments and facilitate change toward goals.
Inappropriate emotions: These are a product of a biased evaluation that alters behavior.

Action: Behavior is determined by what people think and feel, influencing interpretation and feeling.

Relationship between: The collection of events influences thinking, in turn, this influences the feelings experienced, and these influence how one acts. Thus, the three dimensions are closely related and are influenced by the characteristics of the person.

The same schema applies when referring to social skills. There are internal processes in the subject that generate a range of emotions and feelings associated with certain relationship situations, determining the person’s behavior in their social relations. Given cognitions and emotions can facilitate social interaction, as can positive self-verbalizations. However, some cognitions may interfere with the learning of socially responsible behavior.

Basic Concepts Related to Social Skills

Adaptive behavior: These are the skills required by a subject to function independently and successfully in the social environment in which they live. These include:

The basic skills of personal autonomy.
Instrumental skills necessary to function in the community.
Interpersonal skills or social abilities.
Vocational, occupational, or work skills.

Social Competence: This refers to the assessment made by a social agent of an individual’s ability to adapt their social behavior to a given situation. It is, therefore, an evaluation or trial.

Socio-emotional competence: This is the ability to bond, express emotions, and emotionally control behaviors appropriate for each context.
Socio-cognitive competence: This is the knowledge that one has about social people, situations, events, etc.
Social behavior: This includes capabilities for cooperation, participation in groups, etc.

Assertive behavior: Assertive behavior involves knowing oneself, knowing what others want, and what they expect in a given situation. It implies respect, both for oneself, expressing one’s own needs and defending one’s own rights, as well as for the rights and needs of others.

According to Caballo: Socially skilled behavior is the set of behaviors emitted by an individual in an interpersonal context that expresses feelings, attitudes, desires, opinions, or rights of that individual in a manner appropriate to the situation, respecting these behaviors in others. It usually resolves immediate problems of the situation while minimizing the probability of future problems.

Features of Social Skills

Social skills are specifically aimed at enhancing the achievement of social objectives. They aim to achieve the following objectives:
- To be strengthened in situations of social interaction.
- Improving or maintaining a relationship with another person in interpersonal interaction.
- Avoiding social blockage or socially caused reinforcement.
- Maintaining self-esteem and decreasing stress associated with interpersonal conflict situations.
Socially competent behaviors are not part of the subject’s personality; they are acquired throughout life.
The objectives pursued by social skills are understandable for that specific situation.
Environmental characteristics influence their effectiveness.
Social skills are practical and cultural.
Social skills should be involved when there are surpluses or deficits in social behavior, since they can be objectified and specified.

Types of Social Skills According to the Subject’s Goal

Skills that Facilitate the Establishment and Development of Interpersonal Relationships

Conversational skills: These are a set of skills that allow one to make friends. Some sequences of skills might include getting close enough to talk with the other person, asking for personal information, and evaluating how the other person responded, etc.
Compliment skills: These are used to establish positive relationships and are based on the ability to make nice compliments about the actions of others.
Heterosocial skills: These are all social skills that allow the establishment of appointments.
Prosocial play skills: These skills serve to facilitate the development of children with their peers.

Social Skills Used in the Interpersonal Context to Avoid Getting Social Reinforcement

These skills allow the subject to achieve objectives that are not in themselves interpersonal in nature.

Social Skills that Prevent the Loss of Reinforcement

This is the ability to say “no” because one does not always have to agree on everything.

Mixed Components

Emotional message. Active listening: Hearing is to perceive sound vibrations, while listening is to meet, understand, or give meaning to what is heard, but also to hear the feelings, ideas, or thoughts behind what is being said. To achieve this understanding, one must have empathy.

Elements that facilitate active listening:

Psychological provisions (internally prepared to listen).
Express that we are listening to the other person.

Items to avoid in active listening:

Do not get distracted.
Do not interrupt the person who is speaking.
Do not judge.
Do not offer premature solutions.
Do not reject what the other person is feeling.
Do not tell your story when the other person needs to talk to you.
Do not counter-argue.
Avoid the “expert syndrome,” where you have the answers to the other person’s problem even before they have told you half of it.

Recommendations to take into account for active listening:

Prepare with a positive attitude.
Focus attention on the subject.
Avoid distractions.
Set aside prejudices and opinions and just actively listen.
Listen with your ears but also with your eyes and the rest of your senses.
Pay attention to nonverbal signs that the other person shows.

Active listening skills: Show empathy, listen carefully to the emotions of others, try to get under their skin, and understand their motives. It is not about showing joy; it is simply about being able to put ourselves in their place.

Reformulated: Through this ability, we inform the other person of our degree of understanding or need for further clarification.

Environmental Elements

Physical variables: These may be natural or produced by people; they include human constructions.
Sociodemographic variables: Some of the most important are sex, age, marital status, family, occupation, etc.
Organizational variables: These are basically all variables that order or standardize the behavior of the inhabitants of a given environment.
Interpersonal variables: These categories are involved in interpersonal relationships as well as the existing social climate characteristics.

Cognitive Components

For an individual to express certain social skills, it is essential to know how to do it and want to do it. These are the cognitive variables.

Perceptions of the Communication Environment

Discriminates between different communication environments according to the degree of formality, warmth, privacy, etc.

Cognitive Variables

According to Caballo, there is a difference between the following cognitive skills:

The ability of an individual to transform and use information proactively.
Knowledge of appropriate business conduct.
Knowledge of social customs.
Knowledge of different feedback signals.
The capacity to know how to get into the other person’s place.
The ability to solve interpersonal conflicts.

Coding strategies and personal constructs:

Social and adequate personal perception: This alludes to rational/irrational thoughts.
Fundamental attribution error: Assuming that a person’s behavior is primarily the result of their personality and their way of being.
Attributing one’s own behavior to situational or external causes.
Attributing rewards for positive behaviors or results, but blaming external causes for negative ones.
Assuming that a person’s behavior is due to them as such rather than the role they play.
Giving too much importance to physical signals, such as dress, etc.
Following stereotypes of certain social groups.

Information processing skills and memory: These are used to analyze, interpret, and store the information received.
Personal constructs, or schemas: These regulate experience and allow one to learn from it.

Personal expectations: These refer to the forecast made by people on the consequences arising from their behavior.

Expectations of self-efficacy: A person’s security in their ability to perform a specific behavior.
Expectations of outcome: The possible consequences of behavior can be positive or negative.
Feelings of helplessness or defenselessness.

Preferences and subjective values of stimuli: This refers to the value that the subject gives to stimulation and the consequences of their behavior. These values depend on beliefs, interests, etc.

Self-regulatory systems and plans: These refer to the active role of the subject.

Self-instruction: The self-verbalization that the subject uses to deal with situations successfully.
Self: Self-esteem: The assessment made by the person of their own value, appropriateness, and competence.
Self-concept: What you think about yourself, the subjective representation of what you believe about yourself.

Locus of control: Allocation of the coincidence of the impact of behavior to external or internal causes.

Perceptions of Communication in the Environment

Perceptions of the formality of the situation.
Perceptions of a warm environment.
Perceptions of familiarity.
Perceptions of privacy.
Perceptions of constraints.
Perceptions of distance.

Characteristics of the Evaluation of Social Skills

The assessment of social skills aims to produce a series of changes in the individual’s behavior with the aim of achieving an improvement in their social relations.
The social skills assessment process will be carried out taking into account an assessment of responses or motor behavior, cognitive and socio-emotional aspects.

Interview

This is especially interesting in the evaluation of social skills because it is already a subject’s social interaction with another person, which can highlight the user’s difficulties in relating to others.

What they say, how they say it, how they behave: The central part of the interview should focus on the actual social behavior of the subject, issues such as:

Specification of the antecedents and consequences of different behaviors, cognitions, and interpersonal problems that may be involved in mediating the expression of socially inadequate behavior.
User expectations.
Motivation needed for change.
Modifications they would like to achieve, etc.

Semi-structured interview: This is the most effective for social skills. It aims to achieve the following objectives:

Detection of the real problem of the subject and how it affects their life.
Knowledge of the history of the relationship between the user and their current status.
User expectations regarding motivation and interest in treatment.
User’s ability to follow the treatment.

Problems:

Limited reliability due to the perception and memory of the subject regarding their social behavior.
Limitations of the interviewer as an evaluator.
The interviewer can exert influence on the behavior of the interviewee.
The interview may not be representative of the range where the subject presents problems with social skills.

Self-Observation: Self-Report

They are one of the most used assessment strategies in the investigation of social skills. The person records what they think about themselves in relation to their social conduct. From the self-report, a single total score can be obtained, from the sum of the answers to all these situations, responding to the general level of social skills of the person. Questionnaires can differentiate the following:

Those that evaluate social skills.
Those that evaluate social anxiety.
Self-reports related to cognitions.

Drawbacks:

Possible disagreements between what the person says about their behavior and what they actually do.
The total score hardly predicts the conduct of the person in a specific situation.
The complexity of human behavior is difficult to reflect in an item.
There may be recall bias in remembering past behaviors and thoughts.
People may have problems identifying their own cognitions in hypothetical situations.
It is difficult to capture a person’s social behavior with a scale, inventory, etc.

Self-registration: Allows the subject to be their own observer. It helps to record behavior, thus overcoming the difficulties of the person to remember past situations. The number of social interactions made within a specific period must be registered. It is important to record the information as soon as possible; the more time that passes, the greater the possible lack of reliability.

Drawbacks: Possible lack of reliability and responsiveness.

Behavioral Measures

All assessment procedures that consist of observing the actual behavior of the subject in an ideal social interaction. The subject is observed live, but there are many observation tools. The demand that is made to the subject can vary, from acting as normally as they would like to acting out a role of how they think they should act. There are two types:

Structured interactions (role-playing).
Semi-structured interactions.