Sociability a characteristic of intelligence?

[Femto]

Do you consider one's ability to socialize effectively a characteristic of high intelligence? I think I do, but I continually see supposed brilliant people who are awkward and inept at having any reasonable conversation.

I think I am talking about overall intelligence.

If this is the case, any guesses about the most intelligent professionals (can of worms...maybe)?

[Karma]

I think it's only partially true. A person's sociability is not only determined by her intelligence but also by many external factors: her past experiences, her mood, what's going on in her personnal life at the moment, etc.

I think the most intelligent thing is to take this into consideration when judging someone's intelligence by his social skills.

[blind_synergy]

If UWaterloo is any indication, no. Oh god, no.

[bj89]

Ahh you are stirring up the old adage of "is it one intelligence or many?"... I will not touch on the subject, although I will say that med schools are looking for people who are well rounded, meaning they possess both high intellect and sociability!

[janeway]

I think that it definitely takes intelligence to socialize well. There is more to being sociable than mood and affability - you need to be able to interpret you conversational partner's facial expressions, tone and words, ask them interesting questions, tell funny jokes etc.

Stupid people cannot be excellent socializers, yet intelligent people are not automatically good at interpersonal interaction.

[Karma]

Originally Posted by janeway

Stupid people cannot be excellent socializers, yet intelligent people are not automatically good at interpersonal interaction.

I know plenty of stupid people who are good socializers. They socialise well on their level.

[Prateek]

I've always heard punning is a decent indicator of some sort of intelligence...

Just not sure which kind

[janeway]

Originally Posted by Karma

I know plenty of stupid people who are good socializers. They socialise well on their level.

On their level, sure, but they're not an excellent socializer in general. A truly excellent socializer can socialize extremely well with anybody (or most people) who cares to talk to them.

[nosuperman]

"Intelligence can be best defined as the characteristic that is measured by intelligence tests" - every prof in psych

Its generally used to predict academic success but there are multiple models of intelligence used for different purposes. Most intelligence models boil down to some combination of a general gift/talent/above average ability, mixed with some sort of task-commitment (you have to apply the ability) mixed with some measure of creativity... so social skills generally aren't included as a necessity.

Lewis Terman's giant study on 140+ IQ kids found that they were usually more socially inclined than their non-gifted peers. This isn't surprising because raw language skills make up a decent chunk of what we measure as intelligence in the west. Other cultures favour other values... ours is vary language-centric.

In terms of the issue with the OP, two scenarios come to mind. The first is that these people aren't that intelligent. They may have mastered something through thousands of hours of training but that is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence, its more an indicator of aptitude and practice.

The other possibility is that they're so intelligent they find it hard to relate to people who aren't on their level. We have societies like Mensa (98th percentile IQ) TOPS (99th) OATH (99.99) Prometheus (99.997) and Mega (99.9999?) because these people need to be able to relate to others like themselves.

The IQ difference between someone who is only mildly gifted and the average person is the same as the average person vs. someone with mild mental retardation.

So it might not be that they can't carry a conversation, it might just be they can't carry one with the general population. That or the aptitude thing - they just learned a lot by sitting in a basement cellar reading their life away missing out on social opportunities during their formative years.

[Ikky43]

Well you would need social intelligence to socialize. Intelligence comes in varieties, it is not a singular thing.