In “Social Intelligence” (2006) Goleman states that humans are purely social animals, wired to connect, and we can only be happy and successful when we learn to bond and get along with other people

TPM Strategic Take: We’re also here to gain status and achieve goals
Goleman focuses on the communion side of socialization. But for our readership of ambitious men, socialization is also about agency. Our social intelligence includes positive dominance, calibration, and agentic goal-achievement. Status is also crucial to a man’s mental health.
See more: ‘social skills vs. power skills‘.

Exec Summary

• For a happy and fulfilled life master the art (and science) of social relationships
• You can control your feelings

Summary

About the Author:
Daniel Goleman is a journalist who contributed for twelve years to The New York Times.
He is most famous for having coined the concept of “Emotional Intelligence”, a construct that is controversial in psychology but that has caught on with the general population.
Daniel Goleman is also the author of “Emotional Intelligence” and “Primal Leadership“.

Quote from ‘Social Intelligence’

1. The High & Low Road

Daniel Goleman argues that there are two different parts of the brain which he refers to as the low road and the high road.

• Low Road

The low road sets his camp in the amygdala and works at a higher speed based on raw feelings we infer from other people.

It is responsible for the “first impressions”, which we form unconsciously noticing.

• High Road

The high road, you guessed it, is instead the conscious, thinking part of the brain.
Now the interesting thing is that there’s an interplay of these two roads.

Use the High Road to control the Low Road 

The low road can unconsciously make us sad or scared. But we can then consciously use the high road to override the low road feelings and sensations with whatever we prefer.

Goleman gives us the example of a woman who was sad after seeing a picture of a funeral, only to switch to happiness when she was told to think it was a wedding instead.

And the greatest the activity in the pre-frontal cortex, the more muted the amygdala was during the appraisal, which means: the higher the high road speaks, the more it takes away the low road mic.

TPM Note: The “High Road” is your Executive Control. When someone tries to bait you into an emotional reaction (a Low Road trap), your ability to engage the pre-frontal cortex is what keeps you in control. High social intelligence is the ability to remain “High Road” while others are drowning in their “Low Road” impulses.

2. How to erase your fears

Not only we can override the low road, but we can also change it.

Our memories are in part reconstruction: every time we recall them, the brain rewrites them. And how our brain rewrites them is correlated to our current concerns, understanding, and feelings.

So If when you recall a memory you have a flare-up of the same fear, then that fear will deepen.

But if you put yourself in a calm, confident state, the fear loosens its grip, and the memory is re-encoded with less power over you.

3. How to control the Low Road

This is the essence of exposure therapy: if you relax and then confront your fears and repeat them, you will reach a point where you will overcome your fear.

MEANING: you can get rid of unhelpful feelings! 

4. Mam VS Woman’s Brain

Under stress a woman’s brain releases more oxytocin, bringing women to seek out people interactions, which in turn releases more oxytocin.

Men are the opposite: under threats, they tend to go alone.

Also, women place positive relationships as the main source of their happiness while for men independence and a sense of personal growth are more important than relationships.

5. Power & emotional pull

In a relationship, the party with less power will converge emotionally toward the party with more power.

I picture it a bit like a gravitational pull: two celestial bodies will influence each other, but the bigger one will exert a stronger force on the smaller one.

Also, Goleman says, people in the relationship have different power in different realms and there’s usually a tacit agreement on who’s got more power on which subject.

This is important, and something which you can indeed probably see in your own relationships.

6. Mimicking does not create rapport

You probably heard the trick of mimicking the other person’s body movements and gestures to make them like you, right?

Bet you thought you could do that on your dates and make him/her like you, right? ;)

Well, Goleman affirms that intentionally mimicking the other person’s movements does not create rapport by itself and can actually feel off (if you want to get close to someone, you will likely mimic body language unconsciously anyway).

7. How to create rapport

Goleman then affirms the 3 ingredients to create rapport are:

• Mutual attention ;
• Shared positive feelings;
• A well-coordinated nonverbal duet

CONS

A bit basic

Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman deals with many topics (read below) without always going as deeply as I had hoped

Scatterbrained

Too many topics for one book.
Ask me a year from now “Have you read Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman” and I’ll tell you “yeah, and it was good.. But, honestly… I can’t tell you exactly what topics it covers”.

No new ground broken

If you are interested in psychology and people, many topics in “Social Intelligence” will be either common sense or familiar -Hedonic treadmill; Ultimatum Game-.

⚠️ Much empathy, but little power

Social intelligence isn’t just bonding and connecting. It’s also gaining status, Machiavellianism and strategies, smart cooperation, and, as well, manipulation dynamics.
These skills aren’t ‘nice to have’, they are foundational for both self-defense and for personal success.

Review

Social Intelligence is a valid take on the concept of social skills with good takes on human relationships, and some helpful insights for self-development.

I actually preferred this book it to its more famous sibling Emotional Intelligence, yet we must also highlight that this is a partial representation of social intelligence, and largely missing the agentic and ‘darker’ side.

If you are looking into Social Intelligence, check out these more advanced articles:

• Best social skills books (and courses)
• Why men need power skills, not just ‘social intelligence’