Does Being Smart Mean You Don’t Have Any Social Skills?

I have long been interested in what makes people feel like they don’t belong. This feeling of not quite “getting it” myself led to my actively exploring the topic in graduate school — and the selection of my coursework — and in most of the writing I have done for the last 25 years or so.

I developed a theory, probably not unique to me, that emotional intelligence, or EQ (1) rather than being an inborn ability, is a skill that needs to be taught and facilitated in individuals who deviate significantly from the norm in their intellectual intelligence (IQ). Emotional Intelligence is also what we mean when we refer to “social skills.”

The issue of feeling normal or fitting easily into our environments so that we feel like we belong and are welcome, is a deep and pervasive issue for many highly intelligent, gifted, people of all ages.

As I studied and learned more about what high intelligence is, I saw that when children’s mental ages (2) are considerably different from those with whom they must spend the majority of their time, their opportunities for effective and rewarding social interaction are minimized. If interventions, purposeful or serendipitous, are not available, effective communication and interpretation of social cues cannot easily be developed.