Social perception: relationships with general intelligence, working memory, processing speed, visual spatial ability, and verbal comprehension
Abstract Social perception is important because it can affect the way intelligence is expressed during social interactions at school, home, and work. This study (N 800) of adolescents and adults (age range 16 91) examined which specific aspects of intelligence are associated with social perception (a composite of affect labelling, linking prosody to facial expressions, and interpreting the intent of a speaker) Women scored higher on social perception than men. Verbal comprehension (VC) perceptual reasoning (PR) working memory (WM) and processing speed (PS) accounted for 20% of the social perception variation, significantly (p .05) more than did Full Scale IQ alone. VC had the largest effect on social perception, followed by PS and PR. WM had a non significant effect on social perception. Implications for theory and research on intelligence and emotional intelligence are discussed along with implications for educational practice.