Are We Socially Intelligent?

If you’re not paying attention, the mind can be a tricky labyrinth. The less you know about it, the more inexplicable and frightening it becomes. For example, why do seemingly benign elephants wreak havoc upon villages? In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert explores the aberrant nature of these elephants and correlates them to their traumatizing upbringing, deprived of community and kinship. The biochemistry of the human mind, analyzed in “Love2.0” by Barbara Frederickson, serves as a worthy addendum to Siebert’s conjecture. “Love2.0” explains that the brain, hormones, and nerves work in unison to build emotional fortitude, stimulate oneself, and express positivity resonance. Siebert’s ideas of elephant culture and trans-species psyche can put Frederickson’s theory of emotions into practice. The absence of certain hormones within elephants, provided their fragmented community, can explain their volatile outbreaks. Alternatively, the reinstitution of human parental roles into elephant culture can help reconstruct their broken emotional states of elephants and rebuild their resilience; this healing process can also extend to humans.

Another similar theory proposed by Patterson in 1982 deals with providing information, regulating interaction, and expressing intimacy. “However, Patterson (1982) also proposed two other functional categories, social control and service-task functions, neither of which is identified in the earlier classification systems” (Edinger and Patterson, 1983, p. 31). The main function, and more readily accepted is social control. Social control, or attempting to change the behavior of another, is unique because it describes a motivational contrast with the function of intimacy (Edinger and Patterson, 1983, p. 31). Intimacy, or the underlying affectionate reaction towards another, also deals with negative and positive reactions. The positive affect could result in concern for, liking, love, or interest in another; however, the negative ends results in dislike or hate (Edinger and Patterson, 1983, p 31). “…The social control function is characterized by independence of affect and nonverbal behavior…in some cases the real affect is opposite to the affect represented behaviorally; for example, when smiling at, gazing at, and standing close to a disliked superior to win favor with that person”(edinger and Patterson, 1983, p. 31). In this case, by standing close, smiling at and gazing at a disliked superior the person is using intimacy to gain

“Real estate is a year-round opportunity to help countless people realize the American dream” (“Why Real Estate”, 2012). Eighty-five percent of buyers believe that home purchases are good financial investments, and a majority of homebuyers and sellers rely on the services and expertise of real estate professionals to assist them with their transactions (Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 2010). “The primary job description for an agent is communicating with potential clients to determine what kind of property they are looking for” (Richard, 2012). This means, setting up interviews with clients to see if the agents firm possesses property that meets the client’s specific needs. Once it is apparent exactly what the client is looking for, the agent sets appointments to show houses to clients and many times the agent physically accompanies couples while showing off properties.

Nature and nurture both rely on the brain to help organisms make relationships, learn, and develop over time. Neuroscientists have recently tested the brain: “Neuroscience has discovered that the brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever engaged with another person”(Goleman). The relationships that people are involved in help mold them: “Relationships have the power to not only mold human experience but also human biology”(Goleman). Relationships impact people on an emotional level and people are easily influenced by the internal state of the people that surround them. Interactions with others affect the brain and body of everyone that is interacted with. The brain is also referred to as the social brain: “The social brain is

Brain Bigelow, John La Gaipa and William Corsaro have both made important contributions into understanding how children interpret “friendship”. Bigelow and La Gaipa carried out one of the first studies from what was a very under researched area. Bill Corsaro, a key figure in childhood studies, was particularly successful in gaining access into young children's worlds which has helped shape a further picture of this somewhat intriguing definition. Brace and Byford (2012)

Moreover, Frederickson goes further in her research, claiming that love itself may reshape an individual. That is why she claims, “love can affect you so deeply that it reshapes you from the inside out and by doing so alters your destiny for further loving moments” (Frederickson, 121). The truth is that in order to become an individual, a person needs to communicate and interact with other people and the world around. People often agree that it is mainly communication with families and friends that shape person’s character and individuality. Every interaction that occurs in person’s daily life strongly affects people’s characters and their vision of the world. That is why communication or interaction with people may be viewed as one of the main things that shapes people’s identity.

Human interactions with each other and with other objects such as products of technology create relationships between human beings themselves, and between human beings and these objects. Through these relationships, most people have either met acceptance or rejection from the people or things they have related with. Some of these are as a result of differences in what is conventionally accepted as normal while others are just as a result of unfulfilled expectations from the relationships created. In his article “son,” Andrew Solomon discusses how, at an early age, his parent-to-child relationship with his mother modified his identity and the struggle between his real identity formation and the expectation which his mother and the society had.

He asserts that the connection problem is a result of having distant relationships, not the cause of it. Turkle does not agree. Instead, her position is that shared distant connections make it difficult to create authenticity in relationships. She further believes that technology is one of the biggest threats sustaining shared connections with others. She defines the shared connection as “a love relationship that involves coming to savor the surprise and the rough patches, of looking at the world from another’s point of view, shaped by history, biology, trauma, and joy. Computers and robots do not have these experiences to share” (268). No matter how smart or swift technology can be, it will never fulfill the need to maintain relationships with others. Hence, having relationships with technology, such as computers or robots, is incongruent with the physical and emotional experiences felt by human beings. On a basic level, technology can be a good choice because it can help people who are not good at having relationships with others. Technology can encourage and teach others to communicate, but this may not be as beneficial as one would hope. No matter how well people can communicate with technology, they may still have trouble with relating to others. The only way to

The process of neural coupling makes people have empathy. Empathy is something that you gain when you feel other people’s emotions. It can only be earned when you understand one’s pain. According to Fredrickson, these conscious acts can only be reached by sharing a unified connection. When talking to people, you typically share a smile or you attentively pay attention to their expressions. By doing so, you can reach the level of happiness that you deserve. Yet, Gilbert would say that all these emotions are not possible. You have to rely on your unconscious during these types of moments. These are rare moments that you typically share between family, friends, or strangers. Usually, we rely on our psychological immune system to make us happy. If the process is typically unconscious, how do we know that what we are feeling in Love 2.0 is a real connection between a stranger or soul mate? This concludes that Fredrickson’s theory needs to be assisted by Gilbert’s.

Everyone knows someone, and that someone knows someone else. Even in isolation, one still has past connections, whether with forgotten friends, deceased relatives, or estranged parents or children. Sometimes these connections are infinitely intricate; the delicate dance between fussy in-laws, or the deep emotional bond between a mother and her children. Sometimes they are more casual; insults tossed between old friends with no venom to the words, or the mutual acceptance of the “we must work together, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it” relationship between annoyed co-workers. Our massive web of connections is like the unfathomably huge network of connections between the pieces and parts of a cell. But unlike a spiderweb or a cell, we do not know every individual strand of our connections, just as the girl in Griffin’s essay does not know every connection, no matter how vague, that she has with her Jewish friend. Nevertheless, the two children are connected—through their friendship, through their heritage, and through hundreds or even thousands more that neither of them know—and neither do

1. Humans have three different layers of different friends and intimates that we can hold a capacity for which was based off of our sizes of the neocortex, or more exact the frontal lobe. A vague explanation of the neocortex and frontal lobe of humans is the neocortex controls our sleep, memory, and learning and our frontal lobe is our primary motor cortex. “…Dunbar discovered that the number grows and decreases according to a precise formula, roughly a ‘rule of three’.” Konnikova, (236) Based off of the “rule of three” humans on average have 150 casual friends, people I may talk to or invite out from time to time.

Everyone wants to be loved by everyone. Our brain craves to be loved. No one understands what's going on in the brains of those who are in love, or when we get butterflies-in-the-stomach, romantic love. A researcher Helen Fisher spent her academic life trying to figure out what happened to the brain when in love and she found that in the brain areas that associated with dopamine and norepinephrine production light up. Both are brain chemicals associated with pleasurable activities and excitement. In the article named" 6 Tips for Being More Socially Intelligent" written by Eric Barker, he gives six tips to more liked by people. As I read the article, it started giving me tips on how to more loved by people and the different kinds of skills

Social interaction plays an important role in people’s life starting from the early childhood as infants interact with their caregivers and build the emotional attachment that is the base for future relationships. By social interaction with others children learn how to communicate, play and behave in particular situation. Berk (2009) proposed the overview of the literature that concentrates upon the early attachment and its importance. Knowing the influence of social interaction on child development in the first few years, the essay is going to elaborate upon the implication of social interaction on the development of cognition. Cognitive development as Lee & Gupta (eds.) claimed is the term that refers to acquisition and development of

If I was asked what it means to be human I’ll say that we are smarter than everyone else because that’s what science has proven. However, science was created by humans and is there really one answer to what makes us human. To me, being human is understanding the position of yourself and willing to make room for improvement. The theme of the semester seemed difficult at first but what made it unique was that there aren’t any wrong answers. I believe that this was the perfect theme for a digital story because everyone experienced different things and the way we support our responses determine the quality of our work. From a Ted Talk done by Verna, she explained that from a young age we are taught to not interact with strangers. But, how are we going to know who they are, when we are taught to avoid them. From the piece written by Charles Duhigg, the power of weak ties is the links that kept people connected during the civil rights movement. In addition, ties are involved in defining humanity because they create communities that come together for a common interest. In the civil rights movement, blacks formed groups to protest day in and out because of inhumane actions done by the whites. To compare, my digital story explained how Detroit is a beautiful place but is struggling while thousands of people are working to get it back in the charts. Examples like these are exactly what does it mean to be human, because together humans have the strength to achieve anything.

Human relationships are the foundation of human life, they strongly influence other individual’s behaviour (Bercheid et al., 2000). There are different types of relationships such as co workers, friendship, marriage which all involve a connection and therefore is an important characteristic of the formation of human relationships (Salisch 1996). The purpose of this essay is to explore research within human relationships and the relevant social psychological theories that have been linked with this conflicting topic. The theories that will be discussed throughout this essay will be the attribution theory, social learning theory, social exchange, attachment theory, evolutionary theory and the breakdown of relationships. This would initially