Social Awareness

According to Goleman, social awareness is the proficiency in managing relationships and building networks, and the ability to find common ground and build rapport. Hallmarks of social skills include effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness, and expertise building and leading teams (Goleman, 1995). In order to explain further on social awareness we need to examine the sub-dimensions within social awareness: primal empathy, attunement, empathetic accuracy, and social cognition.

48 2.3.1.1.1 Primal Empathy

Primal empathy is a low road capacity that concerns the ability to sense the emotions

of another from fleeting expressions. According to Goleman (2006), it is entirely nonverbal and largely intuitive while neuroscientists believe that it is activated by mirror neurons. Therefore, the premise of primal empathy is that even though a person may not be talking, he/she will still be leaking emotions and sending signals, which can be rapidly, automatically and spontaneously sensed by those around.

There are two prevalent measure of primary empathy. The first is the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity dubbed the PONS, which measures the individual reading of micro expressions. If the individual scores high on the PONS then it is likely that he/she will be rated higher by colleagues in the work place as being more interpersonally sensitive. In general, it was reported that women scored on average 3% higher than men. The second measurement for primal empathy is the “Reading the Mind in The Eye test” designed by Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright and Jolliffe (1997). Those who scored high are judged as having gifted empathy while those scoring poorly may have autism. In any event, empathy appears to improve with age and life experience (Goleman, 2006: p. 85-86).

2.3.1.1.2 Attunement

Attunement is essentially focused on attention and alignment with another’s feelings

and thoughts while listening to the other. Rather than listening to respond, and to make our own point, we instead listen fully to understand another perspective. It is listening without agenda. The result is a conversation that is created mutually in

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response to what the other feels, says and does. Attunement is the foundation for genuine rapport. Without it, individuals merely talk at each other intently only on serving their own needs. Listen fully requires the attunement and alignment with the feelings of the other. While it appears to be a natural talent, it can be developed by cultivating the intention to focus attention on the act of listening (Goleman, 2006: p. 86-88).

Attunement has been identified in various professional fields as among the top skill

of those who were assessed as outstanding in their field. It also involves questioning in order to understand the background situation of a person. This phenomenon can be seen in psychotherapy sessions in which a client felt truly listened to by the therapist. Emotions are aligned and physiological synchrony results as neural circuits are connected and we have the sense of being on the same wavelength as the other (Goleman, 2006: p. 86-88).

2.3.1.1.3 Empathic Accuracy

Empathic accuracy builds on the low road of primal empathy but brings in element

of high road ability in that it requires one to explicitly understand what someone feels and thinks. This cognitive process engages the pre-frontal neocortex area of the brain while primal empathy engages an intuitive, nonverbal gut feeling. Empathic accuracy requires a subject to accurately guess the thoughts and feelings of another. William Ickes, a psychologist from the University of Texas believes it is the quintessential expertise making up social intelligence, distinguishing the highest performers across professional fields. Empathic accuracy is not just observed in

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professional contexts, but can be observed in successful marriages in which a partner can feel the discontent of the other and also pinpoint the actual source of the discontent. It also can potentially mean the difference between life and death; for example when confronted by a mugger, or in a war situation (Goleman, 2006: p. 88- 90).

One experiment to measure empathic accuracy involves two people in a waiting room. They were asked to wait while a preparation for an experiment was made. Secretly, they were observed chatting with one another. After approximately six minutes, they were then taken to separate rooms and shown the video of the conversation in the waiting room and asked to write down what their thoughts and feelings were at each point and what they think the other person was thinking and feeling. A comparison between the two accounts indicates how empathically accurate each subject (Goleman, 2006: p. 88-90).

2.3.1.1.4 Social Cognition

Social cognition is the final aspect of social awareness and concerns knowledge of

how the world actually works. Those with an aptitude for social cognition would know how to behave in various social circumstances; for example, at a five star restaurant. They would be adept at decoding a plethora of social signals across multiple contexts in order to make sense of social events. For example, social cognition is involved in solving social dilemmas such as where to seat adversaries at a formal dinner, or how to interpret a person’s comment at a dinner party: witty repartee or sarcasm? Smooth interactions require an implicit understanding of

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unspoken norms, which can differ between cultures and groups. It is important to note that social cognition incorporates not only the cognitive knowledge of social situations, but also what we do in these situations. In this way, a person who might have knowledge of a social situation but cannot mobilize this knowledge in the form of social facility may be considered socially awkward (Goleman, 2006: p. 90-91).

Thus, all the aspects of social awareness: primal empathy, attunement, empathic accuracy builds on each other and culminates in social cognition. This in turn forms the foundation of social facility: our ability to use what we know of others to facilitate smooth interpersonal interactions. Therefore, social awareness is an important aspect in a student’s life as it enables him/her to socialize well with peers and this in turn helps the student to be engaged in group work. It is during these group sessions that a student may learn to strategize his/her learning from peers.