Correlation Between Social Skills and Income?

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In connection with the poll in Love and Dating "Income/Employment Status and Sexual/Relationship Success", at:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt138298.html

It would be really interesting to see if there is in fact a correlation between level of social skills ( necessarily self-evaluated ) and income.

I think it's fairly obvious that there would be a correlation between degree of executive function/dysfunction and income, because it would be hard to hold down most higher-paid jobs without a reasonable grasp of time and resource management, ( and is the main reason why I have been unable to pursue a career; I have had so much trouble taking the big picture into account, breaking big tasks up into smaller units to do over a long time period, planning stages of work, etc that I was already floundering at school ), but perhaps social skills are less closely connected to one's ability to train and advance in some careers, perhaps it is possible to earn a lot without social skills.

Anyway, please vote for the option which best describes your situation over the last couple of years! Thank you very much!

NB. Unlike the poll in Love and Dating this poll is for both men and women ( on the spectrum ).
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Last edited by ouinon on 22 Sep 2010, 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'd say I have 'good' social skills for an Aspie, and I'm an actuary, where social skills seem to be less important. Pay's good.

i deleted the stuff i wrote in this post because it was not easy to read.
i saved it in a notepad file and i will refine it tomorrow and re-post it i think when i am happy with it's legibility.

I look forward to that!

Thank you very much everybody who has voted so far. Please carry on voting!
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I read an article on the web some time ago about research showing a correlation between social skills and income. However, intelligence and education level were also taken into account. The essence of the research showed that there were a lot of highly educated and intelligent people who had low paid jobs due to their social skills holding them back.

It's kind of a no- brainer there; in order to work with other people you have good relational skills so you can get along with co-workers and the boss. I read an article in working world magazine and it said being able to compromise, communicate ideas or concerns with a boss or co-worker was important especially the part of being emotionally intelligent.

I disagree with the relationship between social skills and income. I hire people for their technical prowess, and not how well they interact with the team. At some point social skills may be important, but pretty much anything above 60,000 IMO requires specialization and not the ability to play well with others.

Using a ratio of 30:1 (engineers to managers) and you're looking at 30 highly skilled engineers to one person who has the requirement of being able to interact. The team of 30 will form into their own little cliques/cadres (with the prodding of the manager) and get crap down. It doesn't mean they have to like each other, understand each others cultures or even talk to each other on anything but a professional basis.

A few people will help smooth over the personal issues (as will a good leader/manager) but as we move up the payscale... I really don't give a hoot as to your friendliness (can't tell during the interview process anyhow) and just want to know if you're up to the job.

Right now I am not sure what to vote for. I consider my social skills to be good for an aspie but they are poor compared to an NT. Even my husband has better social skills than me. I have a job and I work. I work by myself.

I think we are below average income.

If you think they are good for an aspie but poor for an NT then maybe "Adequate/bare minimum social skills" would be the closest fit?


This is precisely what I have been wondering about. I can understand that, as Tallyman and others have said, social skills probably correlate with income over the whole population, but perhaps high incomes taken separately don't necessarily correlate with good social skills.

It may be that average income does correlate with social skills, because most/many mid-range jobs will require more of a mix of skills, and so you are less likely to have an average income if have poor or only just adequate social skills, but the sort of work which is most highly paid may divide up into two kinds, jobs which need social skills and those which don't so much if at all.

This might then explain why on the poll in Love and Dating ( link in OP ), looking at "income/employment status and sexual/relationship success" there are several highly paid people with no sexual partners ... ie. it is level of social skills rather than money which is making the difference to degree of sexual success ... Otherwise why aren't all, or almost all, of the highly-paid people sexually successful?

There are already a few "low(er) social skills and high income" votes; at time of posting 10 people have voted for high/above average income, of whom 4 see themselves as having good/excellent social skills, 3 as having adequate skills, and another 3 as having poor social skills ... which certainly suggests that high income does not correlate particularly with good social skills ...

But it would be good to have more votes to get a clearer/more conclusive picture.

Thank you very much everyone who has voted so far! Please carry on voting!
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Odd that I see this, because I was just wondering if I should change career paths. I am a student, and have worked as a writer for a publication geared towards CEOs of large financial firms. I am comfortable with business people, and find them very accepting IF you have something they want or need.

Around my fellow students, it's a different matter. They talk merely to socialize with each other, and I am totally lost. It makes me question if I am going into the wrong industry.

In response to the OP, though, I'm not sure we can associate income and autism just yet. Those on the spectrum are often found in careers where people value their expertise. There are poor people on the spectrum, but there are many poor NTs with excellent social skills. I know a few myself.

This is not a random poll. No valid conclusions could be drawn from it.

ruveyn

I have decent business-related social skills, and can communicate very well with people on a business level. However, I'm a 100% failure at personal social skills. Our income is OK, but more from careful spending and wise investing than earning, so I can't say it's due to social or communications skills; one way or the other.

Charles

It *entirely* depends on the job. For instance, for a technical job I soared through the interview with flying colors. Nobody cared how I interacted with people, just that I spoke like I had a brain in my head and knew what I was doing.

For every *other* job I've had an interview for? I've never gotten past the interview, and I *know* it's because of how socially awkward I was during the interview. I just had absolutely no grasp, even after studying 'what to do during an interview'. It just absolutely escaped me to use basic etiquette.

That's why I plan on being a Historian and minding my own business in libraries and museums and universities most of the time, and maybe someday I'll be a professor where I can rant about my topics of interest endlessly and their grade depends on them listening to me. Hahahahaha.

What do the incomes correspond to in money, or roles?
I think social skills have hampered my career. If you're looking at all jobs from the lowest to the highest irrespective of age I would be in one of the lower brackets. Given my PhD it is maybe £10k less than other PhDs. Given people of all qualifications it could be a lot worse, I'm not on minimum wage but below the average graduate salary.

It could be said that no valid conclusions could be drawn from a random poll either, yet they are granted greater credibility because of little more than the fact of their common usage and acceptance.

Conclusions drawn from polling randomly still do not account for an entire population and are still utterly reliant on making baseless assumptions and broad generalizations about the people who were not polled.

In fact, any poll which does not take input from an entire population draws equally invalid conclusions, only given validity by the presentation of their results by people deemed trustworthy. Regardless of how trustworthy someone is, or how scientifically minded they appear, they are no more capable than anyone else of magically making very limited data from a small group of people accurately represent the rest of a population for which no data actually exists.

Guesswork is never a valid conclusion, regardless of how supposedly intelligent or credible the guesser has been made to seem, when they simply do not have the information required to draw such a valid conclusion.


The thing is though, this is a poll of WP members, not autists in general, so for our purposes the information can definitely contribute to a significantly valid conclusion, for our purposes. It's only invalid if taken literally with no other considerations, or if an attempt was made to apply it to people who were not actually polled. (Like supoosedly credible statisticians do all the time, to earn a living rather than to present genuinely valid conclusions)

My social skills are average. I don't know if I would be more successful if they were better because they might have been a bit better at one time, when I was trying to be social.
A lot of people who are successful have a certain amount of good luck. It's not luck entirely, you have to earn your degree and work hard, but some of it is luck, no denying it.