DEFINITION
OF SOCIAL SKILLS
To
define what socially skilled behaviour is, we can base it on:
•
Contents : What are we expressing? Feelings,
desires, needs, complaints....
•
Consequences : What is it that we are
getting thanks to our socially skilled behaviour?
The
numerous definitions that different experts have contributed delimit
the contents, consequences or sometimes both apects of socially skilled
behaviour.
Some
of these defintions are:
•
Rimm, 1974: “Interpersonal behaviour that implies the honest and relatively
direct expression of feelings".
•
Alberti and Emmons, 1978: “ Behaviour which allows a person to act
according to his most important interests, to defend himself without
inappropriate anxiety, to comfortably express honest feelings or exercise
the personal rights without denying other's their rights.".
•
Mc Donald, 1978: “Expression manifests from preferences (through words
or action) in a way which makes others realize.
•
Kelly, 1982: “Mixture of identifiable and learned behaviour which
individuals use in interpersonal situations to obtain or maintain
the reinforcement of their environment".
Experience
shows that socially skilled behaviour should be defined through objectives
or aims we want to ahieve, like the consequences of them. We will see
things clearer with an example:
“Marta
wants her work colleague to keep the desk that she shares with her colleague
tidy, because she has found on a few ocassions that she has not easily
been able to find documents or materials that she needs. She is worried
about how to tell her colleague, she doesn't want to upset her. For
her, it is important that her colleague accepts what she is saying and
doesn't get upset as they have to work together many hours a day, and
she doesn't want to ruin their good relationship".
This
situation in everyday life illustrates that it is important to achieve
our objectives, mainintaing a good atmosphere with our social relationships.
Therefore,
a good definition of social skills would be one that contemplates both
aspects. The following authors try to capture this when they define
socially skilled behaviour in the following way:
Phillips,
1978: “Degree in which a person can communicate with others in a way
that satisfies their own rights, needs, pleasures and obligations with
a reasonable degree without dammaging the rights, needs, pleasures or
similar obligations of another person and in which they share with others
a free and open interchange".
Caballo, 1986: “Mixed behaviour emitted by an individual in an interpersonal
context that expresses feelings, attitudes, desires, opinions or rights
of this individual in an adequate way to the situation, respecting other
people's behaviour, and who generally resolves problems immediately,
whilst they minimize the probability of future problems".
