Social Intelligence: Introduction and Overview for the Army's Human
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________________________________________________________________ Social Intelligence: Introduction and Overview for the Army’s Human Dimension Initiative ________________________________________________________________ White Paper February - 2016 Human Dimension Capabilities Development Task Force Capabilities Development Integration Directorate Mission Command Center of Excellence (MC CoE) Social Intelligence Introduction and Overview for the Army’s Human Dimension Initiative February 2016 Primary Author: Joseph Rodman Author’s Editor: William Hardy Contract Team Lead: Don Kroening Human Dimension Capabilities Development Task Force (HDCDTF) Mission Command - Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate (CDID) 806 Harrison Drive Building 470, Fort Leavenworth, KS 660627-2302 913-684-4521 https://combinedarmscenter.army.mil/sites/hd/HD_Library/HD_Dashboard.aspX Produced by BooZ Allen Hamilton for the United States Army Contract: W911S0-11-D-0012-0007 ii Executive Summary This is the first of three papers that the Human Dimension Capabilities Development Task Force (HDCDTF) will be producing on social intelligence in 2016. The first paper, presented here, will discuss the historical and theoretical development of social intelligence. The intent is to sketch an outline of eXisting research that has attempted to define social intelligence in order to provide readers with the appropriate conteXt— including the important findings, challenges and limitations that others have revealed and encountered—to consider as the Army, and particularly its Human Dimension efforts, develops and eXecutes its interest in the concept. The second paper, to be published in May 2016, will eXamine how scholars and practitioners have distinguished social intelligence from emotional intelligence. The two concepts have received significant attention—both scholarly and popular—over the past several decades, appeal to similar interests and often seem to serve similar purposes. As such, it will be important to discuss how social intelligence and emotional intelligence overlap and diverge. The third paper, to be published in August 2016, will investigate methods that the Army might consider implementing or learning from that attempt to (1) assess social intelligence in individuals and (2) develop or improve social intelligence (or components of social intelligence) in individuals. Supporting Objective #1.2 (“Social Intelligence”) in The Army Human Dimension Strategy, which charges the Army to, “Develop trusted Army Professional as effective team members who thrive in compleX social environments, adapt to diverse cultures, communicate effectively, and build relationships,” provides the catalyst for the series and serves as the ultimate goal of its research.1 Social intelligence provides a powerful framework for understanding human behavior in social conteXts. Although the specific components that comprise social intelligence remain debatable, the concept is generally accepted to consist of two broad functions, social awareness and social action, which help individuals achieve a personally-valued goal in a social setting. Social intelligence’s long research tradition, particularly that which focuses on its role in job performance and leadership effectiveness, has significant overlap with current and future U.S. Army interests. This includes the Army’s renewed emphasis on the Human Dimension and its goals of developing effective leaders and optimizing human performance to prepare for the operational environment of the future. As the Army eXplores the utility of social intelligence to help it succeed now and in the future it may benefit from lessons that have been established in the eXisting literature in order to conceptualize social intelligence in it own terms and for its own specific purposes. The first step in establishing social intelligence’s role in the Army is to define the concept. This is critical to standardize its use and clarify why it is relevant and important 1 Department of the Army, The Army Human Dimension Strategy 2015: Building Cohesive Teams to Win In A Complex World: Cognitive DominanCe, RealistiC Training, Institutional Agility, 2015, 8. iii to the specific needs and interests of the Army. The popularity and intuitive nature of social intelligence make it especially vulnerable to misuse and misinterpretation, rendering the task of establishing its bounds in the Army particularly important. One hundred years of research on social intelligence, including important work by and for the Army, reveals that this has been a challenging endeavor. Despite the lack of consensus on the precise composition of social intelligence, however, it is clear that there are broad features of its basic principles that correspond to skills, traits, attributes, and competencies that the Army has already established as critical to Soldier performance and leader effectiveness in eXisting doctrine and publications. This includes “interpersonal tact,” “mental agility”, “social empathy,” and “interpersonal adaptability.” In order to formulate an appropriate Army-specific definition of social intelligence that meets its interests and needs it is logical and instructive to draw upon eXisting and accepted skills, traits, attributes and competencies that have been established in the Army through empirical research and cited in doctrine. As such, the HDCDTF proposes the following recommendations: § The Human Dimension Task Force should solicit an eXtensive and empirical study of the role of social intelligence in the Army. The intent should be to: o Identify, through empirical evidence, the skills, traits and attributes that comprise social intelligence in an Army conteXt. This includes cognitive and behavioral features. o Determine how these features correspond to or overlap with eXisting Army doctrine on leadership, decision-making, and Soldier performance. o Determine what specific features of social intelligence are required to achieve Army success in the operational environment of the future. § Informed by the study above, the Army should establish a single definition of social intelligence as it relates to the Army’s interests and needs. This definition should incorporate eXisting and relevant (e.g., those that are social in nature) skills, traits, attributes, and competences that have been identified in various doctrine and publications as essential to Army leadership and performance in order to ensure relevance and consistency between efforts. The intent of an official definition of social intelligence is not to establish new or original requirements for professional development in the Army, but to provide a useful framework with which to conceptualize eXisting efforts. The eXtensive body of research on social intelligence that is reviewed here should inform the definition. Notably, the definition should include two parts: one acknowledging the cognitive component of social intelligence, and one acknowledging the behavioral component. Once this definition is established, we suggest that social intelligence be integrated in future versions of key publications and doctrine where appropriate to standardize an understanding of the concept and to serve as a tool to better understand how certain social skills are required for effective leadership and more optimal performance. iv § The HDCDTF’s two subsequent papers on social intelligence, the first eXamining the difference between social intelligence and emotional intelligence and the second investigating methods and tools to assess and develop it, should serve to inform and guide the two recommendations above. v Table of Contents Introduction 1 Significance 2 Academic Background on Social Intelligence 5 Theoretical Basis 6 Early Interest (1920-1950) 7 Waning Interest (1950-1980) 9 Transformation of Psychological Research Perspectives and Interests (1950s & 1960s) 10 Structure of Intellect Model (1960s) 13 Renewed Interest (1980-present) 15 Implicit Theories of Intelligence 16 Intelligence as a System 17 Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences 17 Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence 19 Multidimensional ConceptualiZations 20 Multitrait-Multimethod Approaches 22 Personality View 24 Summary of Contemporary Social Intelligence Research 24 Social Intelligence and Leadership 26 Social Intelligence and the Army 30 Doctrine 31 Social Intelligence Research in the Army 33 Conclusion 36 AppendiX A - Definitions of social intelligence 39 AppendiX B - Components of social intelligence from various models and measures 40 AppendiX C - Related concepts and their definitions 42 AppendiX D - Traits, attributes, competencies, and characteristics identified as important to 43 Army leadership and/or performance and relevant to social intelligence References 44 vi Introduction While there continues to be debate about the precision of various definitions, social intelligence is generally accepted to be a combination of social awareness (also called social perception) and effective social action to achieve some desired goal in a social setting. Social intelligence has been proposed as a useful concept that can predict or eXplain variations of individual effectiveness in social situations. The first use of the term can be traced back nearly a century, but more rigorous attempts to accurately outline an empirically based practical and theoretical framework of social intelligence have been more recent. Research on social intelligence has a broad array of specific interests and applications—essentially any conceivable circumstance