Resources for social skills and decision making

99ctayn

I want to find some resources on social skills.

What I mean by that is
A) basic social skills unspoken rules that are not easily picked up unless you have them explained - AND - decision making in a social context

But also, and this is harder to explain, but bare with me,

Various mindsets/mental models/heuristics/metaphors/etc that can guide one to have a better understanding of those rules and decision making processes and people/life skills. What I mean is use of metaphor specifically designed for interactions between people or for decision making.

One example is aesops fables
- have read some of these and they have greatly resonated with some aspects of my life and saved me a lot of trouble

Other examples:

Gender metaphors (please suspend political correctness arguments for this example)
- so I heard a lot of women say that men are rudimentary at conversations (and science confirms this) and this is seen as sort of negative by some people. But one person interestingly categorized it into gender roles: men are better at starting conversations and women are better at keeping them going because they're more talkative. He used the metaphor that women are "like a flower" so they will make the conversation more interesting but a guys role is more to give it direction. (Edit: I'm talking about courtship with dating/meeting new people for the first time here, not generalizing people into specific roles)

Attitude
- one person told me the best athletes don't worry about winning a particular game or making a particular shot. They are more concerned with getting good enough to make all the shots they can get good enough to make. I heard that quote once and it resonated with me.

The last 2 examples are not as strong but That's why I'm asking for good resources

So yeah, I am basically looking for 1. Concrete but unspoken rules and 2. The less deterministic, metaphorical kind of stuff.

I am looking for books, articles, or even your own opinions

Thank you!

Enc

There isn't a guidebook to understanding subtext. It's a matter of experience. You usually learn that stuff through socialization over your formative childhood years, especially in school contexts. If you are looking at it through a research lens you are looking for basic learning processes and cognitive theory, but reading books and articles about such isn't going to help you learn that stuff in a practical, usable way.

Just go talk to people.

Kilgore Trout

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at but it sounds like you might be looking for some stuff that is covered in the general category of "personality types" and "people management". Some quick google fu leads to things like:

http://www.masterclassmanagement.com/ManagementCourse-ManagingPersonalities.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannylerner/2013/03/05/understand-peoples-personalities-and-become-successful/#3a8c1fda6a8b

https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_aQHOBxNPg

Enc

So Personality Theory is more of a pseudo science than science in most applications. While there is substantial research behind things like Myers Briggs and Strong Interest, they are not meant to be used in the ways these articles and (though the video is fairly accurate) are showing and usually you want to speak with someone actually trained in the personality inventory to ground it in what is actually useful.

Most things reflect these inventories as essentially more complicated facebook "what color are you" quizzes and with about as much rigor. Same with the online paid inventories you can find here and there. In reality, it is more of a tool for psychological assessment to your reactions to the results than the results themselves.

Calica

Paging Dr Nerdlove is a blog/advice column geared mostly toward love, sex, and dating, so it may or may not be what you're looking for; but it has a lot of very straightforward advice on being aware of and respecting other people's nonverbal signals, and also recognizing the kinds of signals you may be sending without realizing it.

As far as attitudes, there's always the classic.

For the gender roles thing, be sure you're not conflating is and ought. Stuff like that is so broad as to be useless in any one situation.