Social Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, whose Emotional Intelligence sold more than five million copies, turns to an emerging science of human connection. Drawing on biology and neuroscience, he argues that people are wired to connect, caught in a neural ballet that links one brain to another. Daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses and strangers shape the brain and affect cells throughout the body, and good relationships act like vitamins and bad ones like poisons. Goleman also looks at first impressions, charisma, sexual attraction and how people detect lies, and at a dark side running from narcissism to Machiavellianism and psychopathy. His conclusion is hopeful: people lean by nature toward empathy, cooperation and altruism, provided they cultivate the social intelligence that supports them.

Corneliu Bodea, CEO of Adrem, called it the key to understanding how societies react and why they do.