General intelligence linked to emotional, social context of life

A study has revealed that the general and emotional intelligence are also a contribution of the brain parts that helps with the optimal social functioning, linking intelligence to social context of life.

Aron Barbey, the lead author said that they were trying to understand the nature of general intelligence and to what extent human's intellectual abilities were grounded in social cognitive abilities.

Barbey stated that humans depend at an early stage of their development on social relationships and the social interdependence continues into adulthood and remains important throughout the lifespan.

He added that the ability to establish social relationships and to navigate the social world was not secondary to a more general cognitive capacity for intellectual function, but that it may be the other way around and intelligence might originate from the central role of relationships in human life and therefore might be tied to social and emotional capacities.

As per Barbey, the evidence suggested that there was an integrated information-processing architecture in the brain, that social problem solving depends upon mechanisms that were engaged for general intelligence and emotional intelligence.

He further said that this was consistent with the idea that intelligence depends to a large extent on social and emotional abilities, and they should think about intelligence in an integrated fashion rather than making a clear distinction between cognition and emotion and social processing, which makes sense because human lives are fundamentally social.

This study is published in the journal Brain.