What are social skills
Social skills in psychology are a set of observable behaviors and habits and thoughts and emotions that promote effective communication, satisfying relationships between people and respect for others, which leads to a better feeling of well-being. In other words, it is a set of guidelines for the functioning of people that help them in their relationships and respect for the rights of others and their own. In this article we will elaborate the types of social skills.
What are social skills for? The importance of social skills and social skills to relationships is undeniable. They are fundamental in people’s daily lives, as they provide well-being and quality of life, in addition to facilitating the development and maintenance of healthy self-esteem. On the contrary, people with poor social skills may experience stress, discomfort and often negative emotions (frustration, anger, feeling of being rejected or devalued…), in addition, people with social disabilities are more predisposed to suffer psychological changes such as anxiety and depression .
Thus, in order to define skillful behavior, three dimensions of social skill must be taken into account. First, the behavioral dimension, which refers to the type of social skill. Second, the personal dimension, linked to the person’s cognitive variables. Finally, the situational dimension, referring to the environmental context.
Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language, and our personal appearance.
A social skill is any competence that facilitates interaction and communication with others where social rules and relationships are created, communicated, and changed verbally and non-verbally. The process of learning these skills is called socialization.
For socialization, interpersonal skills are essential to relate to each other. These skills are nothing more than interpersonal acts that a person uses to interact with others, which are related to the categories of dominance vs. submission, love vs. hate, affiliation vs. aggression, and control vs. autonomy.
The proper execution of these skills is beneficial to learn to express yourself and understand others, to take into account the needs and interests of everyone, to try to find the most satisfactory solution for everyone when faced with a problem or to provide support. All of these behaviors are essential to living in society.
Social skills are the tools that allow people to communicate, learn, ask for help, meet their needs in an appropriate way, get along with others, make friends, develop healthy relationships, protect themselves and, in general, be able to interact with the society in a harmonious way. Social skills build essential character traits such as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. These traits help to build an internal moral compass, allowing individuals to make good decisions in thought and behavior, resulting in social competence.
- Social skills are goal-directed.
- Socially qualified behaviors are interrelated in the sense that a person can use more than one type of behavior at the same time, for the same objective.
- Social skills must be appropriate to the communication situation. Different social skills will be used for professional and personal communication.
- Social skills can be identified as certain types of behavior by which an individual can be judged for their social skills.
- Social skills can be taught, practiced, and learned.
- Social skills must be under the cognitive control of the individual. Learning them involves learning when to use certain behaviors, as well as what behaviors to use or how to use them.
Social skills are goal-oriented with main and sub-goals. For example, a workplace interaction initiated by a new employee with a superior employee will first contain a primary goal. This will gather information, and then the sub-objective will be to establish a relationship in order to obtain the main objective.
Types of social skills
1. Basic social skills
Basic social skills are the first skills that people acquire and are fundamental to being able to initiate communication and to maintain it. Some of these skills are: knowing how to start, maintain and end a conversation , knowing how to ask questions, etc.
2. Advanced social skills
These are the skills people learn after acquiring the basic social skills above. Among the complex social skills, we can find: knowing how to share an opinion, assertiveness , knowing how to ask for help , knowing how to apologize, giving and following instructions, among others.
3. Emotional social skills
These skills are characterized by being closely linked to the management and identification of feelings and emotions. We can find: identify and express feelings and emotions, empathy, respect, among others.
4. Social negotiation skills
They are those social skills that promote conflict management in an appropriate way. We found skills such as the following: negotiation, conflict resolution, altruism, sharing with others, etc.
5. Organizational social skills
These skills are beneficial to be able to organize people’s daily lives correctly, avoiding causing stress, anxiety and other negative aspects. Within this typology of social skills, we can distinguish: decision-making capacity, organizational capacities, among others.
Social skills list
The most important social skills to be able to maintain healthy and quality interpersonal relationships are those mentioned in the following list of social skills :
- Empathy : is the ability to understand what happens to other people (put yourself in others’ shoes).
- Assertiveness : Assertiveness is the ability to express one’s opinions and thoughts based on respect and defending one’s rights.
- Respect : Ability to tolerate people, their opinions, their thoughts, and their actions, even if those thoughts, opinions, and others are not shared.
- Active listening: Active listening is the ability to listen carefully to other people, demonstrating that they are being heard.
- Negotiation : ability to negotiate with others about different interests or specific benefits, so that all parties to the negotiation benefit.
- Communication and expressive skills : ability to communicate and express one’s feelings in relation to certain situations. In addition, communication also includes the ability to listen to other people, being able to establish satisfying conversations.
- Comprehension : ability to understand social and personal situations and respond to them assertively.
- Self -control : ability to understand and interpret particular feelings and respond to them, controlling one’s impulses.
- Conflict resolution : ability to understand the reality of a conflict and seek alternatives to resolve it, avoiding aggression. A good way to resolve a conflict can be negotiation
We hope you have understood the types of social skills.
