Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Cognitive curiosity, cognitive ability, melancholy, and introversion predict social psychological skill, a new Yale study shows.
[...] The authors asked more than 1.000 subjects about how people think, act, and feel in social contexts. The two psychologists began the survey [...] by asking: “Can you accurately infer how most people feel, think, and behave in social context?” Gollwitzer and Bargh did a series of experiments to try and identify traits of those who accurately answered the questions.
[...] The key predictors of social psychological skill were the willingness to tackle a complex problem and cognitive ability, the authors claim.
Interestingly, the authors also found that lonely individuals, as well as individuals with lower self-esteem, tended to answer questions more accurately. Likewise, introverts answered more accurately than extroverts.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by splodus on Wednesday March 21 2018, @12:58AM
If you are ‘lonely’ and/or have ‘low self-esteem’ you are given to introspection. To question your perceived shortcomings that have led to a lack of friends, and feelings of not being as well-liked as your peers. You examine the way you feel about things yourself, and perhaps get some insight into the mental processes involved?
And you consider issues such as ‘what is it that allows that guy to make a fool of himself, but apparently not care?’ ‘How come those chaps always get invited to the party, but not me?’ And you build mental models of how other people react in various situations in an attempt to understand your own situation.
If you are ‘introvert’ you need to figure out how to turn down invitations, to parties or just to hang out with friends, without offending people. Again, you need mental models about how others feel (because, of course, you don’t want them to think you just don’t like them! You can’t cope with the social interaction right now, but you want to be invited next time; because you might well be up for a party next week!)
It makes a lot of sense to me. The self-confident, the extroverts – they don’t need to dwell on this stuff! There’s no need for them to, perhaps, worry so much about how others are feeling, or how others might react to their actions?
(I’m not saying it’s a Bad Thing either way! It’s just an observation, and chimes with the results here, I think?...)