Comments | erratio: Time for some wild speculation

erratio

Time for some wild speculation

Oct 16, 2010 11:12

I was thinking about nerds and social skills. Specifically, the way that nerds (and other classes of socially inept people) tend to have poor social skills because there are two sets of rules on how to behave in social situations. The first is the conventional set, which everyone hears: just be yourself and people will like you, people value ( Read more... )

social interaction, opinions, thought experiments

Comments 7

bobsiow October 21 2010, 12:03:29 UTC

i'm pretty sure that's the underlying issue with social disorders, as well as general social awkwardness.

eg. inherent lack of empathy in people with asperger's syndrome. depending on how severe the case, they generally have trouble picking up on tonal and visual cues.

i read an article a couple of years ago about studies in using scripted-television/videos to help develop the social skills of people with autism.

bobsiow October 21 2010, 12:11:22 UTC

also i know you were drawing a connection with 'nerds', but i have to say that i suspect many a socially-awkward nerd is in fact somewhat autistic.

i'd also say that the arguably-autistic tendency to fixate on facts, order and logic would explain their chosen disciplines of study as well.

mme_n_b October 28 2010, 21:05:37 UTC

This would also explain why nerds seem to have been nearsighted since childhood more often than the average person. It's actually the other way around - nearsighted children lack the visual clues to learn, and so are more likely to be nerds.

I'm not sure ... anonymous November 29 2010, 19:22:24 UTC

... it's necessarily visual learning which is at fault. Often nerds are very good visual learners - e.g. at absorbing the written word through their eyes. I think it's actually auditory learning which is more linked to empathy. People who learn better from real people lecturing rather than skipping class and reading the course notes at home. I think. Not sure I contributed to the overall debate, but at least I put a non-critical point half-way to bed.

Re: I'm not sure ... erratio November 30 2010, 04:17:53 UTC

Ah, but my point was that nerds often don't look at people due to isolation and social anxiety, so they don't get as many chances to observe faces and body language. Auditory cues kind of suck compared to visual, as shown by the way that most people find it more difficult to read mood and turn-taking cues over the phone.

Re: I'm not sure ... anonymous January 2 2011, 20:35:47 UTC

Agreed, but I'm also not sure that socially anxious people are denied opportunities to observe social behaviour. I think it's more that when you are socially anxious, you don't feel entitled to participate in social behaviour and/or you believe that social behaviour is somehow wrong. Socially confident people can make the most out of a trip to the supermarket. Socially anxious people could be at the hottest party in town and convince themselves that they must stare at a wall at the back until they are allowed to go home.

Re: I'm not sure ... erratio January 2 2011, 21:03:46 UTC

My own experience is that there's some of both going on. Some nerdy types genuinely find implicit social rules to be difficult to pick up (for whatever reason - I don't think I agree with my original theory anymore), which leads to negative feedback when they get it wrong, which in turn leads to a lot of uncertainty in new situations. But you're definitely right that a larger part of it is about just not being afraid, more than knowing the right signals. I've known people who blatantly break social conventions all the time but still get along with others just fine.

Oh and tangentially, social anxiety blocks the ability to learn social cues - the brain does not learn well while distressed, and if you're distressed every time you're in a social situation then you could be staring at the most skilled person the entire time and not learn a single thing about how they do it.