Unfortunately I think social grace can only be trained to a small degree, for reasons similar to ASD not being curable. Some people just have a natural social grace, others are much more socially awkward, and removing their social inhibitions too much may make them “cringe” or even “creepy”.
For what it’s worth, I definitely had a period where my social anxiety had gone down and then I did some dumb stuff that people experienced as cringe and creepy for a while (causing my anxiety to shoot up again for a bit after some of them reacted extremely negatively). But then after a while, it got better as I learned from the feedback.
Children usually don’t have very much social grace either but then they get better at it over time, which suggests that it’s a trainable skill like any other.
I think it’s trainable mainly in the indirect sense: If someone has a lot of social grace, they can pull off things (e.g. a risque joke in front of a woman) that would be perceived as cringe or creepy in people with significantly less social grace. These latter people can become less cringe/creepy by learning not to attempt things that are beyond their social grace capabilities. (Which reduces their extraversion, in contrast to treating anxiety, which boosts extraversion.)
I think already children show significant differences in social grace. I remember a kid in elementary school who got bullied a lot because of his often obnoxious behavior. He had both very low social grace and very low social anxiety. I assume with time he learned to become less outgoing, because that wasn’t working in his favor. Outgoing behavior can be scaled down at will, but social grace can’t be easily scaled up. Even people who are good at social grace don’t explicitly know how to do it. It’s a form of nonverbal body/intonation language that seems to be largely innate and unconscious, perhaps controlled by an (phylogenetically) older part of the brain, e.g. the cerebellum rather than the cortex.
Of course that’s all anecdotal and speculation, but I would hypothesize that statistically the level of social grace of a person tends to stay largely the same over the course of their life. The main reason is that I think that lack of social grace is strongly related to ASD, which is relatively immutable. It seems people can’t change their natural “EQ” (which includes social grace) much beyond learning explicit rules about how to behave according to social norms, similar to how people can’t change their natural IQ much beyond acquiring more knowledge.
Unfortunately I think social grace can only be trained to a small degree, for reasons similar to ASD not being curable. Some people just have a natural social grace, others are much more socially awkward, and removing their social inhibitions too much may make them “cringe” or even “creepy”.
For what it’s worth, I definitely had a period where my social anxiety had gone down and then I did some dumb stuff that people experienced as cringe and creepy for a while (causing my anxiety to shoot up again for a bit after some of them reacted extremely negatively). But then after a while, it got better as I learned from the feedback.
Children usually don’t have very much social grace either but then they get better at it over time, which suggests that it’s a trainable skill like any other.
I think it’s trainable mainly in the indirect sense: If someone has a lot of social grace, they can pull off things (e.g. a risque joke in front of a woman) that would be perceived as cringe or creepy in people with significantly less social grace. These latter people can become less cringe/creepy by learning not to attempt things that are beyond their social grace capabilities. (Which reduces their extraversion, in contrast to treating anxiety, which boosts extraversion.)
I think already children show significant differences in social grace. I remember a kid in elementary school who got bullied a lot because of his often obnoxious behavior. He had both very low social grace and very low social anxiety. I assume with time he learned to become less outgoing, because that wasn’t working in his favor. Outgoing behavior can be scaled down at will, but social grace can’t be easily scaled up. Even people who are good at social grace don’t explicitly know how to do it. It’s a form of nonverbal body/intonation language that seems to be largely innate and unconscious, perhaps controlled by an (phylogenetically) older part of the brain, e.g. the cerebellum rather than the cortex.
Of course that’s all anecdotal and speculation, but I would hypothesize that statistically the level of social grace of a person tends to stay largely the same over the course of their life. The main reason is that I think that lack of social grace is strongly related to ASD, which is relatively immutable. It seems people can’t change their natural “EQ” (which includes social grace) much beyond learning explicit rules about how to behave according to social norms, similar to how people can’t change their natural IQ much beyond acquiring more knowledge.