Why I study... Social skills

I did not go into psychology to solve my own problems, it was to understand someone else's. I had a friend at school who was very shy and socially unskilled (as we would now say), and this obviously caused him difficulties and made him unhappy. But what was it? What was wrong with him? This was one of a number of experiences that sensitised me to social interaction, and to the subtle cues and processes which make it up. It was one of the reasons that I abandoned the physical sciences for psychology, but it didn't tell me the answer. And I studied social psychology, but that didn't tell me either.

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