Having strong social skills is not only important to foster healthy personal relationships, but to maintain our physical and emotional health. Let’s look at the harmful effects of its deficit.
Social cognition includes all thoseskills that allow us to understand all social agents and interact accordingly with them. This abstract and subjective term encompasses the set of cognitive and emotional processes with which we analyze, interpret, remember and put into practice everything learned in situations that involve two or more human beings.
To be able to execute these cognitive processes, people must develop social skills, which could be defined as competencies whose purpose is to enable and facilitate communication and interaction with other people, from a socially accepted point of view verbally or non-verbally.
We are facing a very difficult concept to address, becausethere is no socio-psychological consensus that defines exactly what a social skill is. In any case, we can quantify what happens when the individual lacks the social skills necessary to develop in an anthropic environment. Here we tell you everything about this topic.
- We recommend you read: “The 6 best social skills courses”
How does a lack of social skills affect people?
The social learning that allows us to develop these skills is based on operant conditioning, a theory that postulates that the behavior of human beings is modulated by environmental change based on their actions. Put more simply, operant conditioning deals with the following premise: if a person receives a positive response to an act, he will be more likely to repeat it.
According to the U.S. Employment and Training Administration (ETA), the most important social skills can be summarized in the following list:
- Coordination: coordination is a consequence of cooperation between social groups. At the individual level, it is about adjusting personal actions to the acts of others, with an indicated response time.
- Tutoring: teaching and helping others play a specific role.
- Negotiation: used to resolve differences, gain advantages, obtain own benefits or improve a common event.
- Persuasion: convincing a person through arguments and/or rhetoric to think or act in a certain way.
- Service orientation: actively seek methods of personal growth and experiencing a psycho-social evolution with the environment.
- Social perception (empathy): being able to understand the feelings of others and act accordingly.
These are some of the pillars of social skills, but not all. Below, we explore some concrete points where a lack of social skills can be a problem. Don’t miss it.
1. Deficit of social skills and health
According to the studyIndirect Effects of Social Skills on Health Through Stress and Loneliness, the deficit of social skills can be positively correlated with impaired physical and mental health. Two specific variables, loneliness and stress, are the events that link both aspects. It’s not hard to understand why.
Stress, for example, causes sporadic increases in blood pressure, negative changes in intestinal motility, favors the presence of skin formations (due to interactions with androgens) and even a slight picture of immunosuppression. The less social skills a person has, the more lonely and stressed they will be in certain situations, which can translate into quantifiable physical and psychological health problems.
2. Social rejection
A person without social skills, specifically those that relate to empathy and more “humane” acts, is at risk of social exclusion orpeer rejection, a very common term in American sociological studies.
For example, it has been observed that young children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at greater risk of social exclusion than other neurotypical people. Peer rejectiondue to lack of social skills is especially interesting in children, as it is estimated that 10 to 15% of school-age children are completely removed from the typical social dynamics of the environment.
3. Difficulty in conflict resolution
To resolve conflicts, it is necessary to have multiple social skills, among which empathy, persuasion and negotiation stand out. However, anyone involved in resolving a disparity should keep in mind that this event is a process of solution between two or more parties, not just trying to convince the other of what you want.
In this social tug-of-war, you need to be empathetic to know why the other person is struggling. Assertiveness, succinct persuasion and the ability to reach a middle ground are essential to achieve correct conflict resolution. In case one of the parties does not present these developed skills, it is very likely that it will not achieve its mission and cause frustration and / or anger in the rest of those involved.
4. Difficulty in decision-making
Making decisions is one of the most stressful tasks that can be posed to a human being in today’s society. As the philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte put it in his day, “Man is condemned to be free.”
To be able to make decisions correctly, it is necessary topresent developed social skills, especially of the coordination/tutoring type. Making decisions sometimes only affects ourselves, but in some cases these can compromise the future of entire social groups.
The existence of continuous failures when making decisions in social areas can lead to costly errors, failed systems, weakened communication with the rest of the components and reduced productivity. Therefore, learning to control the mind and evaluate the environment is essential to know what to do at the right time.
Summary
We have presented you 6 of the most important social skills from a productive point of view, and what happens when they fail or the person has not developed them enough. Many of the effects of these deficits are immediate (communicative breakdown, anger, etc.), but others are only beginning to be noticed in the long term, such as the mental and physical damage caused by social exclusion.
In short, developing social skills is essential for both self-and common well-being, in all ages and environments. Without them, individual quality of life can be drastically diminished.
If you are interested in developing social skills with professional psychological assistance, please contact us. At UPAD Psychology and Coaching we have been helping people interested in enhancing their communicative skills, emotion management and conflict resolution for many years both personally and professionally, and we attend face-to-face and online by video call.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.