Social skills

A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socialization. For socialization, interpersonal skills are essential to relate to one another. Interpersonal skills are the interpersonal acts a person uses to interact with others, which are related to dominance vs. submission, love vs. hate, affiliation vs. aggression, and control vs. autonomy categories (Leary, 1957). Positive interpersonal skills include persuasion, active listening, delegation, and stewardship, among others. A healthy social interest that involves more than being in a group is required for well-adjusted social skills. Social psychology is the academic discipline that does research related to social skills and studies how skills are learned by an individual through changes in attitude, thinking, and behavior. A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called socialization. For socialization, interpersonal skills are essential to relate to one another. Interpersonal skills are the interpersonal acts a person uses to interact with others, which are related to dominance vs. submission, love vs. hate, affiliation vs. aggression, and control vs. autonomy categories (Leary, 1957). Positive interpersonal skills include persuasion, active listening, delegation, and stewardship, among others. A healthy social interest that involves more than being in a group is required for well-adjusted social skills. Social psychology is the academic discipline that does research related to social skills and studies how skills are learned by an individual through changes in attitude, thinking, and behavior. Social skills are the tools that enable people to communicate, learn, ask for help, get needs met in appropriate ways, get along with others, make friends, develop healthy relationships, protect themselves, and in general, be able to interact with the society harmoniously. Social skills build essential character traits like trustworthiness, respectfulness, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. These traits help build an internal moral compass, allowing individuals to make good choices in thinking and behavior, resulting in social competence. The important social skills identified by the Employment and Training Administration are: Social skills are goal oriented with both main goals and sub-goals. For example, a workplace interaction initiated by a new employee with a senior employee will first contain a main goal. This will gather information, and then the sub-goal will be to establish a rapport in order to obtain the main goal. Takeo Doi in his study of consciousness distinguished this as tutemae, meaning conventions and verbal expressions and honne, meaning true motive behind the conventions. Deficits in social skills were categorized by Gresham in 1998, as failure to recognize and reflect social skills, a failure to model appropriate models, and failure to perform acceptable behavior in particular situations in relation to developmental and transitional stages. Social skill deficits are also a discouragement for children with behavioral challenges when it comes to adult adjustment. Social skills are significantly impaired in people suffering from alcoholism. This is due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. The social skills that are impaired by alcohol abuse, include impairments in perceiving facial emotions, prosody perception problems, and theory of mind deficits. The ability to understand humor is also impaired in alcohol abusers. Impairments in social skills can also occur in individuals who suffer from fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. These deficits persist throughout the affected people's lives, and may worsen over time due to the effects of aging on the brain. People with ADHD and hyperkinetic disorder often have difficulties with social skills, such as social interaction. Approximately half of ADHD children and adolescents will experience peer rejection, compared to 10–15 percent of non-ADHD youth. Adolescents with ADHD are less likely to develop close friendships and romantic relationships; they are usually regarded by their peers as immature or as social outcasts, with an exception for peers that have ADHD or related disorders themselves, or a high level of tolerance for such symptoms. As they begin to mature, however, it becomes easier to make such relationships. Training in social skills, behavioral modification, and medication have some beneficial effects. It is important for ADHD youth to form friendships with people who are not involved in deviant/delinquent activities and/or significant mental illness/developmental disabilities in order to reducing emergence of later psychopathology. Poor peer relationships can contribute to major depression, criminality, school failure, and substance use disorders. People with autistic spectrum disorders are often deficient in social skills. This is most likely the result of the lack of theory of mind, which enables the person to understand other people's emotions. The concept of social skills has been questioned in terms of the autistic spectrum. In response for the needs of children with autism, Romanczyk has suggested for adapting comprehensive model of social acquisitions with behavioral modification rather than specific responses tailored for social contexts. Individuals with few opportunities to socialize with others often struggle with social skills. This can often create a downward spiral effect for people with mental illnesses like anxiety or depression. Due to anxiety experienced from concerns with interpersonal evaluation and fear of negative reaction by others, surfeit expectations of failure or social rejection in socialization leads to avoiding or shutting down from social interactions. Individuals who experience significant levels of social anxiety often struggle when communicating with others, and may have impaired abilities to demonstrate social cues and behaviors appropriately. The use of social media can also cause anxiety and depression. Internet is causing many problems, according to a study from the National library of Medicine, National institute of health, with a sample size of 3560 students. Problematic internet use may be present in about 4% of high school students in the United States, it may be associated with depression. About one third of respondents (28.51%) reported spending fifteen or more hours per week on the internet.