Social Intelligence: A Concept in Search of Data

Abstract

300 students from Grades 6, 9, and 12 (equally represented by males and females at each grade) were administered the Otis IQ test and six of Guilford's tests of social intelligence. The data were analyzed to ascertain the relationship between IQ and social intelligence and the effects of sex and grade level on social intelligence. The hypothesis that social intelligence increases with age was supported by the significant main effects which indicated that twelfth graders quite consistently scored higher than ninth graders who, in turn, scored higher than sixth graders. Females scored significantly higher than males on two of the six Guilford measures. The majority of the correlations between IQ and social intelligence were significant and those for the ninth grade students, in particular, were sufficiently high to raise questions about the independence of these two types of intelligence.