The book is mostly anecdotal stories along with some neuroscience and common sense examples on what healthy and pleasurable social experience are like. It also provides some explanations for why things go wrong along and the negative effects it has on our health. He also goes into how our upbringing, genes, and personality factors into things. Ultimately, to be 'socially intelligent' is to attune to others and to be mindful of the choreography of communicating as there is an intricate process occurring between our biology and how we're influencing and interpreting a social experience with non-verbal cues and our demeanour being as valuable as to what and how we say things.

His cheat sheet for 'social intelligence':

1) Social Awareness

- Primal empathy i.e. feeling with others; sensing nonverbal emotional signals
-Attunement
-Listening wth full receptivity; attuning to a person
-Empathetic accuracy: Understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and intentions
-Social cognition: Knowing how the social world works

2) Social Facility

-Synchrony: Interacting smoothly at the nonverbal level
-Self-presentation: Presenting ourselves effectively
-Influence: Shaping the outcome of social interactions
-Concerns: Caring about others' needs and acting

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3.5/5