HOW
DO WE DEVELOP OUR SOCIAL COMPETENCE?
The
way people behave is somewhat determined by the atmosphere which surrounds
them; this means that we learn a large part of our behaviour and we
adapt to the demands of the context.
Social
competence is not an exception, and there is a lot to learn from it;
throughout life we learn and configure ourselves to relate to other
people. In this learning process there are two fundamental variables
involved:
•
The suitable behaviour that we learn (what people do, think, say,
feel....)
•
The behaviour of others, the relationships that others have compared
to our own.
There
are three ways to learn:
1)
Through behavioural consequences: behaviour
is learned according to the consequences that it has. This type of
learning follows some rules, these are the most important:
•
All behaviour which we find positive tends
to repeat itself in the future. The positive consequence
can be material; if we look at children for example, you give them
sweets to behave. However, usually the consequences are social acknowledgement,
inner satisfaction, keeping friends, doing activities with friends,
keeping a job...A large portion of our social behaviour can be explained
by the results; why do we listen carefully to our friends? Partly
because we are interested in what they have to say, but without
a doubt, because we want the relationship to last and also because
we want to tell our friends about our happenings.
This
same mechanism is responsible for the fact that we maintain behaviour
which throughout time is not good; later on we will talk about people
that usually give preferance to other people's desires rather than
their own; the positive consequence of their behaviour is to avoid
conflicts.
•
Behaviour
which doesn't get any reward tends to disappear.
If we persistantly call someone who we are interested in and they
don't pay any attention to us, more often than not we will stop
calling them. This law of learning partially explains the mechanism
why there are many people that hardly have a social network: without
trying to relate to others they haven't received a reply, they stop
trying, they don't see any sense in continuing.
•
With
determined conditions, behaviour which receives negative consequences
usually disappears.
Imagine a mum that wants to her daughter to arrive home early when
she goes out. Everytime she asks, her daughter gets furious and
shouts, sometimes even the neighbours hear her. More often than
not she will stop asking her daughter. Think also about children.
Will they learn how to express pleasure and sympathy if they have
not experienced these feelings?
2) Through
observation: A lot of behaviour is learned through observation,
imitating how others behave. This is especially true with children.
A child which is not particularly socially skilled has clearly not
been exposed to enough experiences and models which have taught him
how to behave in an adequate way. However, if from a young age we
observe people solving arguments without being aggressive, and correctly
showing their emotions....it is more likely that we will be like this
when we become adults.
3)
Through associating situations and from stimulus:
when we see an unpleasant situation, the simple fact that we
have seen similar situations, with similar stimulus can therefore
make us feel as bad as we did the first time. A person that has been
in a car crash, can start to feel nervous even getting into a car
again, even though the engine is not on. This same learning mecanism
is applied with positive emotions: looking at a photo or our partner
which can make us feel happy, or getting home after a day at work
can have a relaxing effect.
Often,
we are not able to say the things that we want because our level of
anxiety is very high in determined situations. It's not that we are
not capable of thinking of an adequate message, it's that anxiety
stops us from acting how we desire.
