Social Intelligence and the Frontal Lobes

Neu­ro­science has dis­cov­ered that our brain’s very design makes it socia­ble, inex­orably drawn into an inti­mate brain-to-brain linkup when­ev­er we engage with anoth­er per­son. That neur­al bridge lets us impact the brain—and so the body—of every­one we inter­act with, just as they do us.

You can read more from the pro­logue of Daniel Gole­man’s new book Social Intel­li­gence. A review on Amazon.com reads:

… Our reac­tions to oth­ers, and theirs to us, have a far-reach­ing bio­log­i­cal impact, send­ing out cas­cades of hor­mones that reg­u­late every­thing from our hearts to our immune sys­tems, mak­ing good rela­tion­ships act like vitamins—and bad rela­tion­ships like poi­sons. We can “catch” oth­er people’s emo­tions the way we catch a cold, and the con­se­quences of iso­la­tion or relent­less social stress can be life-short­en­ing. Gole­man explains the sur­pris­ing accu­ra­cy of first impres­sions, the basis of charis­ma and emo­tion­al pow­er, the com­plex­i­ty of sex­u­al attrac­tion, and how we detect lies. He describes the “dark side” of social intel­li­gence, from nar­cis­sism to Machi­avel­lian­ism and psy­chopa­thy. He also reveals our aston­ish­ing capac­i­ty for “mind­sight,” as well as the tragedy of those, like autis­tic chil­dren, whose mind­sight is impaired.

Social intel­li­gence is one of the eight mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences pro­posed by Howard Gard­ner. It involves the inter­per­son­al skills involved in cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing social rela­tion­ships with oth­er peo­ple. In high­ly inter­con­nect­ed, com­plex soci­eties, these skills become quite impor­tant for sur­vival and success.

Social and exec­u­tive lev­el skills like per­son­al­i­ty, moti­va­tion, the abil­i­ty to plan and fol­low a process with sev­er­al steps, the abil­i­ty to orga­nize actions over time, social graces, and the abil­i­ty to behave appro­pri­ate­ly for the social sit­u­a­tion reside in the frontal lobes of your brain – the last part of the human brain to evolve, and the part of the brain that makes humans so unique­ly human. Dam­age to the fron­totem­po­ral area can cause these social skills to suf­fer, even if oth­er apti­tudes improve with dimin­ished high lev­el control.

Oth­er links:
Take a sur­vey from MITA to help deter­mine clues to your strongest intelligences
Ned Herrmann’s Whole Brain Mod­el for thinking
Edward de Bono’s think­ing strategies
Exer­cise your frontal lobe
Anoth­er clas­sic brain puz­zle
Learn­ing and teach­ing strate­gies for dif­fer­ent intelligences