Skip to content →

Social Skills Training

(6-5-18)

The eternal triangle: where to enter the circle

thoughts emotions behaviors

Liberman’s View of Social Skill Training

“In a general sense, social skills are all the behaviors that help us to communicate our emotions and needs accurately and allow us to achieve our interpersonal goals.”

(Liberman, DeRisi, & Mueser, 1989, p. 3)

Breaks down into three-stage process:

1st stage: receiving skills: “those skills that are necessary to attend to and perceive accurately the relevant social information contained in situations.” (p. 3)
“Examples of receiving skills include identifying appropriate people with whom to interact, accurately recognizing the feelings and desires that other communicate, hearing correctly what another person has said, and knowing what one’s personal goals for an interaction are.” (p. 3)

Sizing up a situation

2nd stage: processing skills: “we must choose the response that is most likely to be successful in achieving our short- and long-term goals.” (p. 3)

“Problem solving involves generating a list of possible solutions (i.e., potentially effective behaviors), evaluating the relative merits of each solution in terms of their anticipated consequences, selecting the best solution or combination of solutions, and deciding how to best put the plan into action.” (p. 3)

3rd stage: sending skills: “the actual behaviors involved in the social transaction.” (p. 3)

“Sending skills include both the verbal content or what is said, and how the message is communicated to others.” (p. 3)

nonverbal behaviors: “appropriate facial expressions, gestures, postures, and eye contact” (p. 4)

paralinguistic skills: “voice volume, fluency and pacing, affect, tone, latency to respond, meshing of responses in conversation, and interpersonal distance” (p. 4)

Priority

  1. Eye contact
  2. Posture
  3. Voice loudness
  4. Voice tone
  5. Gestures
  6. Verbal content

Content

  • ask for something
  • say “no”
  • express feelings (I statement)
  • express opinions (I statements)
    • “I feel . . . .”
    • “I want . . . .”
    • “I like . . . .”
    • “I think . . . .”

Plan

  • assessment
    • report
    • observation
  • intervention
    • increase awareness
    • instruct
    • model
    • rehearse
  • feedback
    • increase awareness
    • support, encourage, expect change
      • Always begin feedback by identify a positive action that can be honestly praised, followed by one (or at most two) behaviors to work at improving
  • homework
    • Distinguishing between behavior and its consequences
    • In speaking of “selective negative focus” in dysfunctional thinking, Persons (1989) makes the following useful observation:
      • “One way to fall into this trap is to confuse one’s own behavior, e.g., ask for a date, which is a positive behavior, with the outcome of the action, which in this young man’s case was negative. Because the outcome was negative, the young man views his behavior as negative, and criticizes it. However, the fact that the outcome was negative doesn’t mean the behavior was negative or inadequate in any way.” (p. 114)
    • Always have a “Plan B”
      • Prepare clients in how to escape as rapidly and gracefully as possible from embarrassing situations
    • Consider that you can never fully predict or anticipate all possible outcomes–A cautionary tale
  • assessment [back to beginning of loop]
Skip to toolbar