Handbook of Intelligence: Social Intelligence

The term social intelligence was first used by Dewey (1909) and Lull (1911) but the modern concept has its origins in Thorndike’s (1920) division of intelligence into three facets pertaining to the ability to understand and manage ideas (abstract intelligence), concrete objects (mechanical intelligence), and people (social intelligence). In Thorndike’s classic formulation: “By social intelligence is meant the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls – to act wisely in human relations” (p. 228). Similarly, Moss and Hunt (1927) defined social intelligence as the “ability to get along with others” (p. 108). Vernon (1933) provided the most wide-ranging definition of social intelligence as the “ability to get along with people in general, social technique or ease in society, knowledge of social matters, susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group, as well as insight into the temporary moods or underlying personality traits of strangers” (p. 44). By contrast, Wechsler (1939) gave scant attention to social intelligence in the development of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). He did acknowledge that the Picture Arrangement subtest of the WAIS might serve as a measure of social intelligence because it assesses the individual’s ability to comprehend social situations (Campbell & McCord, 1996). In Wechsler’s (1958) view, however, “social intelligence is just general intelligence applied to social situations” (p. 75). This dismissal was repeated in Matarazzo’s (1972, p. 209) fifth and final edition of Wechsler’s monograph, in which social intelligence dropped out as an index term.