Social skills are skills a social animal uses to interact and communicate with others to assist status in the social structure and other motivations. Social rules and social relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways creating social complexity useful in identifying outsiders and intelligent breeding partners. The process of learning these skills is called socialization.

Examples

---

• Verbal communication
  • Small talk or conversation
  • Sharing and discussing ideas (politics, religion, sports, music, weather, fashion, and movies are all common topics.)
  • Teaching or learning
• Nonverbal communication
  • Active listening
  • Body language
• Both verbal and nonverbal
  • Conflict resolution
  • Intercultural relations

Traits that help social skills appear more polished

---

• Verbal
  • Smoothness of delivery (lacks stuttering, awkward pauses, etc.)
  • Intelligible speech (not too loud or soft, avoiding monotone but not dropping off the end of sentences)
  • Using muscle words to help describe ideas in conversation.
• Non-Verbal
  • Confident stance (standing up straight but not at attention)
  • Relaxed manner (not too tense, not falling asleep)
• Other
  • Diplomacy is an important skill
    • Disagreements will happen, how one handles them will show one's personality
  • Ability to feign interest
  • Sometimes a fresh start with new people is helpful
  • Social skills will not fix everything, just help your interactions with others

Social ineptitude

---

Social ineptitude is a lack of social skills. A person who is considered to lack social skills is said to be socially inept. However, the use of the term social ineptitude is widely considered slightly disrespectful. People who suffer from autistic spectrum disorders or pervasive developmental disorders such as autism and Asperger syndrome may suffer from impaired social interaction, and are often described as socially inept. A belief in one's own social ineptitude, either real or imagined, is one of the diagnostic criteria for avoidant personality disorder. Another word which can mean socially inept is shy, though a shy person can be aware and adhere to social conventions, just as those who are bold can often be socially incompetent.

See also

---

• Anti-social
• Social anxiety
• Social behavior
• Social cognition
• Social reality
• Social space
• Introversion and extroversion
• Systems intelligence
• Intercultural competence
• Metacommunicative competence

External links and references

---

• Some Facts Psychologists Know About… SOCIAL SKILLS
• Teaching Social Skills
• Encouraging Social Skills in Young Children
• National Association of School Psychologists on Social Skills
• Non-escalating Verbal Self-Defense
• Speech Therapy and Social Skills resources

Group processes | Human communication | Zoosemiotics

Soziale Kompetenz | Habilidades sociales | Soft skills | 社会技能