Learn to listen to people. Conversations have a natural pause inserted between concepts that is an opportunity for the other person to respond. Do not talk over anyone, instead wait for that pause.
Does anyone else have difficulty with this?
In group conversations, I'm frequently unable to talk at all because that pause seems to be too short for me to notice. To me, it seems like person B magically knows when person A is about to stop talking and takes up the conversation the second A stops, no pause in between. I've had to learn to be more aggressive and less afraid to interrupt people, otherwise it might take half an hour before I get anything said.
It's particularly annoying when I come up with a comment to something that's being said, but by the time I'm able to say anything the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. This happening once or twice wouldn't be an issue, but half a dozen times during the same conversation starts to get frustrating.
I think the most important advice in learning how to function socially is: study people. Watch them, analyze them, try to figure out why they do things. Examine both positive examples - people who function well in social settings - and negative examples.
Most people are fascinated by other people, and so will learn about them without prompting. I think the problem with socially awkward folk is that they find humans and social situations uninteresting and thus not worthy of study.
Regarding the "if people don't laugh at your joke" thing, but applying more generally: I am frequently genuinely uncertain that I have been heard, where by "heard" I don't mean the metaphorical "understood and respected and acknowledged", just the part where I make sounds and these are registered in others' ears. Partly this is my own audio issues throwing off my calibration, partly it's how often people ask me to repeat things.
So when I get zero feedback of any kind for an utterance, my impulse is to repeat it, perhaps in different words, until someone reacts, but by then the reaction often seems to be annoyed. So this is obviously suboptimal, but I need to be able to distinguish between "I am inaudible/incomprehensible" and "my utterance has been deemed valueless". (Ideally I'd be able to tell why my utterances have been deemed valueless but that's a secondary issue.)
I used to operate under a similar heuristic. Eventually I figured out that 90% of the time, if someone didn't respond to me, it's because they couldn't think of anything to say or it wasn't funny or interesting. Occasionally someone might miss something I said, the but the utility-hit of ALWAYS repeating myself (and being annoying 90% of the time) is not worth the benefit of occasionally repeating something useful.
Or put it this way: If you're about to repeat something, first think about how important it is and the consequences of it not having been heard. Then divide that importance by 10. If the result is more significant than sounding annoying by repeating yourself, then go ahead.
Do not approach within arm's reach (fingertips ourstretched) without them facing you. This is the approximate 'personal space' boundary. As soon as they back up even slightly, stop; you've gotten too close to them. If you find someone constantly edging away from you, adjust that distance upwards.
Note the exact distance varies greatly with culture. This is true even when comparing only Western nations to each other.
Always wait for someone else to laugh at your joke before you join in.
This is generally good advice, but can backfire if you show no signs that you are conscious of making a joke. Making people laugh while remaining deadpan yourself is a high-level humour skill. Listeners who are not sure whether or not to laugh will look for cues from other listeners and from you, and if you're not laughing they may just go along with that.
Often it's better to make it obvious that you've amused yourself with your own joke, with a smile or small chuckle, but not react to whether others laugh or not. That displays confidence, and gives others the social room to laugh if they want.
If you have not showered or bathed with soap in the last 24 hours and used deodorant, people will notice.
Soap is overrated. Deodorant is not.
I have great difficulty maintaining eye contact, which unfortunately conveys false impressions of either shiftiness or submissiveness. I found it extremely useful when someone pointed out to me that a)even for people like me, it is not particularly difficult to keep one's eyes on another person's forehead, and b)at the typical conversational distance (at least in anglophone countries), it is not possible to reliably distinguish when someone is looking at your forehead from when they are looking you in the eyes.
Corollary: Because looking at the forehead is...
Do not approach within arm's reach (fingertips ourstretched) without them facing you. This is the approximate 'personal space' boundary.
I think that this is culturally dependent and not universal.
As soon as they back up even slightly, stop; you've gotten too close to them. If you find someone constantly edging away from you, adjust that distance upwards.
This seems to me to be a good heuristic.
Try to emphathize with people -- most of the time people do things which make sense given their goals and beliefs, and knowing those can make sure that you stay on the same page, and avoid miscommunication.
In general: learn body language! Most of what you are communicating is being communicated by your body. Take some responsibility for what you are telling others with your body, and how you are making them feel.
Example: When a guy walks up to a girl and says, "Hey, I think you're cute," she's either going to think he's creepy or she's going to blush and smile. The difference will be made by the guy's body language. Either he has communicated that he is awkward and uneasy around women and not fun to be around, or he has communicated that he is conf...
Everybody has heard this. Not everybody has heard a clear explanation of how you learn body language. It's not a trivial thing, and most exhortations to learn body language come across as "Because you fail to operate your meat-puppet according to a long list of rules which I will not explain, many of which you don't know that you don't know, you are socially and morally deficient." I know that's not your intent.
What I really liked about this article is that it breaks down some of the basics into pieces small enough for someone to learn and follow. That's valuable.
Not everybody has heard a clear explanation of how you learn body language. It's not a trivial thing, and most exhortations to learn body language come across as "Because you fail to operate your meat-puppet according to a long list of rules which I will not explain, many of which you don't know that you don't know, you are socially and morally deficient."
The strange thing is that when a nerd is disrespected via reference to an engineering or physics principle that they are not in the loop about they are probably going to head to google and learn their missing knowledge. But not all of those same nerds will head to google to learn the social knowledge. It'll take a lot of study and practice to master it but there are more than enough resources available to get started.
I once had a job that required a lot of walking in hot weather, and everyone, coworkers and customers smelled bad. For some reason, an anonymous coworker complained to the boss about my smell in particular (I was already showering daily, wearing fresh clothes, and shaving body hair to reduce smell). So I bought some pocket-sized Axe deodorant spray and used it frequently. After that, everyone noticed the way I smelled. It was a little like the commercials, but much less extreme.
And that's the story of how I started wearing deodorant. You should too if you don't, and don't worry about people making fun of the smell or certain brands. Market research reflects people's preferences better than social memes.
From the linked article:
5. When given a compliment, "Oh, you're so well-read!", we look blankly in the eyes of the complimenter, and respond "Yes, I know."
That one's just fun sometimes. Maybe not quite blank. Let a hint through that the blankness is part of the jest. Do make sure there is some sort of signal that you don't take yourself seriously. Which roughly translates to conveying that you don't claim higher social rank by virtue of being well read.
If you have not showered or bathed with soap in the last 24 hours and used deodorant, people will notice.
I am sadly unsurprised to see in this article's comments that this is the one that gets people arguing.
Edit - many apologies to anyone that feels that this discussion was a waste of time.
I just ran across an article (http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/04/rough-guide-to-social-skills-for.html) on Hacker News that gives the barest minimum of a guide for social interaction. Unfortunately this isn't the high-quality advice you need to really handle social situations, though it will help with a few of the worst problems.
A few other rules that will help:
On the physical side:
This is a long list, and it isn't even close to complete.
I'm linking to http://lesswrong.com/lw/372/defecting_by_accident_a_flaw_common_to_analytical/ at the suggestion of David Gerard. It has a lot of deeper discussion into why this is worth knowing.