This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Social awareness—your ability to accurately read others’ emotions and understand what drives their behavior—is a core component of emotional intelligence that helps you pick up on social cues others miss.
Developing social awareness is more complex than simply observing others, according to Bradberry and Greaves’s research in Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Here’s a look at social awareness and tactics for improving it.
Originally Published: January 1, 2021
Last Updated: January 5, 2026
Editor’s note: This article is part of Shortform’s guide to emotional intelligence. If you like what you read here, there’s plenty more to check out in the guide!
Social Awareness and Emotional Intelligence
Social awareness is your ability to accurately read other people’s emotions and understand what drives their behavior. This skill enables you to pick up on social cues that others might miss—like noticing that your normally chatty coworker is unusually quiet today, or observing that someone’s smile doesn’t reach their eyes, or sensing tension in a room the moment you walk in. Bradberry and Greaves note that someone with high social awareness can tell the difference between a colleague who’s focused and one who’s upset, or recognize when their boss is stressed even if she hasn’t said anything. This skill requires you to shift your attention away from your inner experience and focus completely on observing others.
| The Complexity of Social Awareness Since the time of Bradberry and Greaves’s writing, neuroscientists have learned a lot more about how social awareness works in the brain—and it turns out to be more complex than simply “reading” others’ emotions. Your brain doesn’t process social information in isolation: It integrates what you observe (facial expressions, tone of voice, body language) with your own expectations and past experiences. For example, you might interpret someone’s ambiguous facial expression as happy if you know they just received good news, but as anxious if you know they’re waiting for medical test results. Your expectations shape what you perceive, often automatically and unconsciously, which means truly objective observation is impossible. This suggests that developing social awareness may require more than just focusing outward on others, as Bradberry and Greaves recommend. You also need to develop metacognitive awareness—the ability to observe the process of perception. When you catch yourself making an assumption about someone (”My colleague is in a bad mood today” or “This person doesn’t seem very competent”), pause and ask whether you’re responding to actual social cues or to your own expectations about people who look, dress, or speak a certain way. This kind of monitoring can help you separate what you’re observing from what you’re assuming. |
People with high levels of social awareness:
- Give others the opportunity to speak
- Actively listen
- Pick up on cues that reveal emotion
- Adapt to the emotional climate
- Develop empathy for the people around them
If you are socially aware:
- You put yourself into the shoes of other people and try to understand their perspective.
- You adapt to your environment, adjusting the way in which you interact to yield a productive result.
- People want to work with you as you respect their perspective and try to find solutions to please all parties involved.
Tactics to Develop Social Awareness
Tactic #1: Listen attentively. Listening isn’t just about hearing words. Tone, volume, and pacing all signal subtext and emotion (for instance, if a person speaks quickly and quietly, they may be intimidated). Stay focused on the conversation at hand. Half-focused listening prevents you from picking up important information and makes the other person feel disrespected.
Tactic #2: Practice empathy. Looking at a situation from someone else’s point of view helps you understand their behaviors, gives you the tools to more effectively interact with that person, and identifies issues before they develop. When trying to step into someone else’s shoes:
- Think of how they’ve responded to specific situations in the past
- Consider their past experiences and background
- Observe how they behave in different environments
Tactic #3: Observe body language. Body language provides subtextual information that can reveal a person’s emotional state (for example, if someone can’t keep eye contact with you, they may be uncomfortable or lying). This allows you to make more informed decisions when interacting with them. Key emotional indicators include the behavior of someone’s eyes, the authenticity of their smile, and the tension in their body.
Tactic #4: Live in the moment. Though reflecting on the past and planning for the future are both necessary exercises, allowing them to dictate your day-to-day behavior prevents you from interacting with your surroundings. Keep your head clear by staying focused on the present moment. This will help you make more effective connections and deepen interactions with those around you.
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