Any Opinions on Daniel Goleman's Book: Social Intelligence?

[Kaylee]

Any opinions on Daniel Goleman's book: Social Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/Social-Intelligence-Science-Human-Relationships/dp/0558303528/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9253997-3060150?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174509942&sr=8-1)(2006)? I’m reading it now and find it interesting but its not my field. I'm wondering how seriously I should take what he has to say.

I remember a while back that we had a thread about his book Emotional Intelligence (1995) and IIRC some of the posters here (don't recall who) said that it seemed to be pretty obvious that some of his sources did not actually back up his opinions on the subject, and that he was being intellectually dishonest by implying that they did. (Unfortunately I can't find the thread.)

If I wanted to find out what Goleman's peers thought of his latest writings, where could I get started?

[fuelair]

Is he either quoting or crediting Howard Gardner. If not, get/borrow the latest edition of Multiple Intelligences and read the real thing, no woo, no silliness, no "self-help" - real information, research based, cool on a stick!!

[Kaylee]

Goleman barely mentions Gardner (just very briefly in one of the appendixes) and after doing a quick search it seems that Gardner is a major player in the field. Hmmm, interesting. Thanks for recommending him and his book; I just requested it from my library online.

Re Goleman -- a quick google search tells me that he's also a psychologist who has taught and has written books for the public -- but as far as I can tell, he has not done any original research himself. I don't have a problem with that but the only endorsements I see for him are from newspapers and I haven't found any from scientists who have actually done any research in the field. I find that suspicious and it makes me suspect that his books may not be worth reading.

[Dave1001]

Shera, I share your interest in scientific, empirical study of social intelligence. I'm curious what the cutting edge neuroscientists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, etc. are discovering on this topic. In fact, the last website I was on was for the International Encyclopedia of the social sciences doing searches on these topics.

[Kaylee]

Cool, I'll check it out.

I've read Malcolm Gladwell's books: The Tipping Point and Blink. I enjoyed them and I thought he made sense, but I don't know how much credibility he has among psychologists and neuroscientists.

I think one of the reasons that I'm interested in social intelligence is because since I'm a member of a national hearing loss association I've had the opportunity to meet many severely hard of hearing and deaf people who happen to have widely divergent levels of social skills and social intelligence -- and its interesting to theorize which events and people in their lives, and even the educational theories they were exposed to, are responsible for this.