Research at the Center for Social Skills
Our research focuses on what exactly constitutes social skills and how they can be assessed. The aim is to gain a differentiated understanding of social skills and to develop suitable methods for assessing them.
What exactly are social skills?
In our research, we advocate a behavioral understanding of social skills
Social skills encompass the entire range of skills (competencies) that promote effective functioning in interpersonal situations and manifest in how well people manage to display certain behaviors when the interpersonal situation requires it.
We distinguish three overarching core areas of social skills: Agency Skill, Communion Skill and Interpersonal Resilience.
More on the conceptualization and the three core areas
How can social skills be assessed?
There are various approaches to assessing social skills (e.g. via questionnaires, situational judgment tests). Our focus lies on the behavioral assessment, as social skills become visible in actual behavior.
More about assessing social skills
Where can I find more detailed information?
We regularly publish the results of our research in scientific journals.