Social intelligence is about how to fit in, charm people, and allow socializing to help rather than hinder you in achieving your goals. Luckily, there are fairly predictable ways to do this, and that’s because we have millennia of data and behavioral patterns to study. Most of the tactics can relate in some way back to primitive, instinctual ways humans navigated the world. We’re the same as we were back then—we just have fancier clothes now.
It’s been hypothesized that our brains actually grew and developed as a result of needing to be social—for hunting, for procreation, and for general survival tactics. Communication is what sets us apart from most of the animals in the world.
At the heart of it all, this simply means that human are social animals. If we go into isolation, we go crazy. If we feel loneliness for an extended period of time, it literally kills us. The more we are around people, the happier we tend to feel in general, and this becomes especially apparent when we study the elderly.
