I've been playing about with the idea of a study course for people. Along the lines of... you should read the manual. There didn't used to be one, but I think it is being developed now. If you actually do read manuals, then you are probably geeky enough to need this.
Some of the new psych research, especially from functional MRI's is leaking into books, which are actually becoming a manual.
So here's the list so far:
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman. The tagline is why it matters more than IQ. Emotional intelligence covers ability to understand oneself, good decision making, conflict resolution skills, and more. This is at the level of a single individual.
It also affects success, even for extremely bright people, via their social skills. IIRC, the neurotransmitter data on extremely low emotional IQ children taught me a lot about communication with asperger's syndrome and geeky people.
Social Intelligence, also by Daniel Goleman. This is at the level of groups, and interactions between people. He breaks down the interactions into details so specific that I began recognizing the memes as they happened around me. Someone with high social intelligence can always get the crowd on their side, weaving through life with the artistry of a talented dancer. But by breaking down the interactions, this becomes a tutorial in recognizing, and later learning better social intelligence.
Paul Eckman has the other two books I'm reading through now. He is a scientist who started by trying to prove that the basic emotions and their facial display are the same across all human cultures. He spent about 30 years mapping every muscle on the human face, and comparing them to hunter gatherer photos and films from cultures without visual cross cultural contamination. (No movies, or picture albums, or books)
Oddly enough the only expression difference from tech cultures (us) and hunter gatherer was that surprise and fear were considered the same in primitive areas, and different in places where being mauled to death by a wild boar hadn't happened to anyone you knew.
Unmasking the Face covers the basic 7 or 8 expressions. He has you cover the bottom half or top half of a face, and learn what the expression is. I missed over half of the expressions on the first run through. But catching a critical expression on a relative's face right before a huge fight (our first ever), made the difference in understanding later what was going on.
You will have to start making far more eye contact, and look at people when they are talking. Just listening to them doesn't do it, since vocal masking of emotions is easy to do. You'll miss a lot of what's going on unless you add this behavior habit.
For my asperger's spectrum friends, you may have to get a DVR to help you at this point. Don't bother with bad actors, they are hopeless. You can get a little more from really good actors, since the drama of the plot will cue you on what they are trying to convey.
The jump back button is your friend. Go back 10, 20, 30 seconds, and watch the face carefully. Even if you aren't exactly sure what you saw, just watching carefully will be educational. Best is to find some content where real people who can't act are getting emotional. I found that city council meetings in my very small town were great. Everyone sat close, lots of upset and angst, and only the mayor can lie well. If anyone has ideas for something that I can tivo like that, please let me know.
Emotions Revealed covers emotion recognition on faces. He breaks down the big expressions into their smaller components, and provides photos of each variant. You'll spend time getting the subtleties, including what emotions look like when the person is masking. It is slow going, but I found I spotted an important but subtle one within hours of learning it.
Graduate level study is microexpressions, but I'm not there yet.
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