Social Cognition 1

Running head: SOCIAL COGNITION

Social Cognition

Dana R. Carney & Mahzarin R. Banaji

Harvard University

Not final version – please do not cite without permission

Social Cognition 2

Social Cognition

Human beings are social animals. They think feel and act, involving themselves, others,

and larger collectives throughout every moment of the day. The enormous yet seemingly natural

tasks of social perception, social memory, and social decision-making in which the species

engages, and the byproducts of such work constitutes the study of social cognition. To examine

how social cognition unfolds, scientists have studied mental processes to learn about

representations of the social world and the invisible mechanisms by which the world is acted

upon: through the attitudes, beliefs, intentions and behavior of social agents.

The study of social cognition, in a sense, is more than a century old, if we look to the

earliest studies in social psychology conducted to examine the effects of others on the individual

(Triplett, 1898). It emerged as an explicit field in the late 1970’s with the merger of social and

cognitive psychology (Fiske & Taylor, 1st edition; 2nd edition; Hastie, et al., 1980; Ostrom, 1984).

The the first edition of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology to carry the subheading in

1981 was issue 40, volume 1. In the last few years, the definition of social cognition has been

more broadly applied, not only in social psychology and social neuroscience but also in cognitive

psychology and cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology and primatology (Adolphs,

2001; Banaji, Baron, Dunham, & Olson, in press; Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005; Mitchell,

Macrae, & Banaji, 2004; Santos, Nissen, & Ferrugia, 2006).

Overview of Chapter

There is no finite set of topics that comprises social cognition because the field’s

boundaries continue to grow. It is worthwhile to summarize the topics that have constituted the

study of social cognition, primarily over these past 30 years, as taken together they constitute a

historically meaningful starting point. In this chapter we select what we regard to be the most

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robust and compelling evidence that forms the basis for the study of social cognition with an

emphasis on a recent diversification of the concept. In so doing, we will identify, with the

broadest strokes, the early work and focus upon the most recent developments in social

neuroscience, animal cognition, and infant and early childhood development. Such a review

should provide a springboard to questions of methodology and theory, although the primary

focus will remain on discoveries about how the mind operates in its natural social habitat.

The first sets of recent social cognition studies were conducted under the rubric of

person perception and person memory (e.g, Gilbert, 1998; Hastie et al., 1980). Explicit practical

links were made at this early stage to the law, in the form of understanding eyewitness

identification and jury decision-making (e.g., Hastie, Landsman, & Loftus, 1978). Influenced by

the work of Solomon Asch and early attribution theories, social cognition modernized the study

of social trait inference, impression formation, and attribution processes beginning in the early

1980’s (e.g., Gilbert Pelham, Krull, 1988; Ross, 1977; Smith & Miller, 1979; Trope, 1986).

Other related work simultaneously focused on identifying the essential architecture of social

cognition, including the basics of automatic and controlled processing (e.g., Banaji & Greenwald,

1995; Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982; Bargh & Thien, 1985; Devine, 1989), the study of attitudes,

preferences, and evaluation (e.g., Smith, 1984; Smith & Lerner, 1986; Fazio & Zanna, 1978;

Fazio, 1986). Further work of note includes studies of group perception and the end products of

stereotyping and intergroup relations (Brewer, 1979; Brewer, 1988; Erber & Fiske, 1984;

Hamilton, 1981; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974).

Some of these studies produced results that were revolutionary. Others offered

groundwork upon which subsequent scientific giants now stand. Together, these findings all

point to one fundamental, critical aspect of the human social mind: the deeply embedded and

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critically adaptive need to belong (for an extensive review, see Fiske, 2004). It is this need that

lays the groundwork for all study of what it means to be a social creature. There is no more

fitting way to begin this chapter than with the research that documents the profound human need

to belong and the processes that emerge from this orientation.

Social Intimacy and the Fundamental Need to Belong

There is broad consensus that social attachment and the need to belong to other humans is

critical to survival (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Fiske, 2004; Stevens & Fiske, 1995).

Through social interaction we garner emotional and resource support that fosters relationships

with potential mates, family and kin, and larger social networks. The need for social interaction

goes deep. Social networks within human and other animal species act as a buffer against stress

and protect health. Mother rats found to lick their babies had offspring that were more resistant

to and better buffered stressors relative to offspring from non-licking mothers. We now know

that that the act of licking releases oxytocin in a pup which likely acts as a buffer against stress

(Francis, Diorio, Liu, & Meaney, 1999; Liu, Diorio, Day, Francis, Meaney, 2000). In humans,

there are many documented cases of child abuse and neglect, such as the famous case of Genie,

which show that if raised without simple social interaction, a person will never develop normal

language or social skills (Candland, 1993; Curtiss 1977). Similarly, work on social rejection

shows how very basic it is. Human work by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams (2003)

showed that the same regions of the brain (ventral prefrontal cortex) subserving actual physical

pain are the same regions activated when humans are targeted by social rejection. Thus, a sense

of the self as being included or excluded, and reaping the emotional and physical benefits of

inclusion are critical to mental and physical health and well-being.

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A dominant perspective in social anthropology, communications, and social psychology

is Relational Models Theory offered by A. P. Fiske (1992) in which most aspects of human

sociality are described by a 4-part model which includes: communal sharing, authority ranking,

equality matching, and market pricing. This theory describes the four primary ways in which

humans can and do relate to one another. Each principle in the theory clearly implicates the

finitude of resources along with the need to belong, negotiate, and maintain some sort of

legitimacy and equilibrium as underlying human organization. As such, societies must be

structured hierarchically in order to distribute these resources in an evolutionarily adaptive

manner. The principles of A.P. Fiske’s model are each echoed by one or more of the three most

dominant theories to describe social structure found in social cognition and social psychology:

Social Identification, Social Dominance, and System Justification. To demonstrate consensus

among the principles outlined in these theories, this section will be organized with the principles

outlined by the broadest and most interdisciplinary among them, A. P. Fiske’s Relational Models

Theory.

The four basic principles of A. P. Fiske’s (1992) anthropological Relational Models

Theory are: communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing.

Communal Sharing describes egalitarian relations between members of a dyad or group. In such

a communal group, individuals are equivalent. Further, members of a communal sharing group

are unified in protecting the group from out-group members. Social structures like these are

considered to be unique, uncommon, and temporally fleeting in modern social psychological

theory. To illustrate the latter principle of communal sharing as temporally fleeting, consider

Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) Social Identity Theory which describes the cognitive and motivational

crux of the division between the self and other. Their work showed the mere task of categorizing

Social Cognition 6

oneself and others into different groups led people to prefer other individuals from their in-group.

In particular, preferring one’s in-group, according to Tajfel and Turner (1986) is: (1) the extent

to which one feels similar to other in-group members, and (2) the extent to which the situational

context promotes comparison between oneself and others. For a moment, when one’s in-group is

novel, we see some evidence of A. P. Fiske’s communal sharing in that the self is equivalent to

other members of the in-group and a negative evaluation of any out-group member is

immediately and automatically evoked. Data supporting Social Identity Theory sparked the

beginning of what the field of social cognition now regards as a difficult, but accepted truth: that

the formation of in- and out-groups is an automatic, fundamental, and perhaps even adaptive

social necessity. Consensus among researchers studying intergroup relations is that we cannot

deny this part of our evolutionary history, but we can decide when we should act on it and when

we should curb it.

However strongly unified a particular in-group, Social Dominance Theory describes

human society as consisting of oppressive group-based hierarchical structures. According to the

theory, individual people possess varying levels of preference for social dominance (Sidanius &

Pratto, 1993; 1999). The key principle of the theory is that societies are stratified by age, sex and

group. Group divisions are based on ethnicity, religion, nationality, etc. Consistent with A. P.

Fiske’s (1992) notion of communal sharing and Turner and Tajfel’s (1986) Social Identity

Theory, Social Dominance Theory implies that communal sharing is higher within stratified

groups than between them. However, at the core of Social Dominance Theory and departing

from communal sharing, A. P. Fiske also describes how groups can be structured hierarchically.

A. P. Fiske’s (1992) principle of authority ranking is very similar to Sidanius and Pratto’s

(1993; 1999) theory of social dominance. Both theories describe how people have asymmetrical

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roles in a hierarchy. In Social Dominance Theory, human social hierarchies are configured in a

Nietzcheian manner with “good” groups at the top and “evil” reference groups at the bottom—

each of which needs the other to exist. More powerful social roles are increasingly likely to be

occupied by a “good” group member (e.g., white male). Evidence shows that males are more

dominant than females and they possess more political power; predictably, most high-status

positions are held by males (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Prejudiced beliefs such as racism, sexism,

nationalism and classism are all manifestations of this same principle of social hierarchy. The

origin of social hierarchies is given an evolutionary explanation: prehistoric human societies

organized in hierarchies were more efficient at combat than non-hierarchical groups, giving a

competitive advantage to groups disposed towards social hierarchies (Sidanius & Pratto). Like

mitigating the automatic impact of the need to form in- and out-groups, one can exert conscious

will over one’s natural tendency to be socially dominance oriented. However, more likely and

perhaps with greater ease, one can generate rationales for why such social structures exist.

The notion of legitimacy in social hierarchy is at the core of A. P. Fiske’s authority ranking and

is a departure from Social Dominance Theory which does not necessarily imply that the structure

is legitimate (although parts of it can be). Authority ranking relationships are based on

perceptions of legitimate asymmetries in social structure and not on coercive power and, thus,

are not naturally exploitative. This aspect of authority ranking, justifying and/or legitimizing a

hierarchically organized social structure, is best described by System Justification Theory (Jost &

Banaji, 1994). Data supporting system justification theory show that humans are naturally

inclined to uphold a hierarchical structure by rationalizing its existence (e.g., Jost, Banaji, &

Nosek, 2004). System Justification Theory describes the human tendency to perceive and defend

the status quo as good, fair, legitimate, and desirable (Jost & Banaji). People will go to great

Social Cognition 8

lengths to rationalize events in life because they want to believe that the world is just (Lerner,

1980). Further, marginalized social groups are ironically most likely to justify the status quo of

the social system. In so doing, the theory makes sense out of previously counter-intuitive

findings showing that disadvantaged group-members often support the societal status quo even if

it is costly to them and/or their close in-group members.

Two additional principles of A. P. Fiske’s (1992) relational models theory do more to

describe the workings of a society than its structure. Equality matching describes how people,

dyads, collectives, or groups keep track (consciously or unconsciously) of costs and benefits so

that equilibrium between people or groups can be maintained. This principle describes how

communal sharing and otherwise cohesive in-groups maintain balance. Of note, this principle is

echoed by research in sociology and communications on the theory of social exchange (Blau,

1964). Market pricing is the final of four principles outlined by A. P. Fiske and describes

relationships that are defined by socially meaningful valuables (e.g., money, goods, a person’s

labor, etc.). A modern and socially acceptable example of this kind of relationship is one

between a tenant and a landlord. Slavery, prostitution, marriage for dowry and other such social

contracts are also examples of market pricing relationships. One compelling interpretation of this

principle is that at its core lies the notion of the “economic worth of an individual.” Market

pricing, then, lies at the core of differential valuation of people and accordant stratification in

society as described by both social dominance theory and authority ranking.

Together, these four theories offer the backdrop of human social structure. Most

fundamental, the need to belong to other social beings is the glue that unites them to describe

most every social relation. To summarize, the principal axes running through these four theories

are: (1) humans need to belong and can only successfully exist in social groups, (2) many social

Social Cognition 9

groups are hierarchically organized, (3) there is more cohesion and communal sharing within- as

opposed to across—stratifications, (4) groups lower in status receive fewer resources and are

liked less, and (5) everyone in the group rationalizes that a social structure’s hierarchy is

legitimate and just.

Our theoretical treatment of social group structure leaves wide open the question of how

we come to organize ourselves and one another. To begin examination of how, the study of

social cognition tells us to look at the minds of people. At the core of every single social

transaction is a thinking person thinking about other thinking persons; in two words, social

cognition. Because social cognition is the premise upon which all social relational exchange rests,

it is fair and critical to ask whether these processes recruit area of mind, body, and brain existing

uniquely for this purpose. Because the need to belong and the need for belonging groups to

organize is fundamental to survival, the notion that we evolved mechanisms to uniquely fit this

purpose would seem true. Thus, in the next section we ask the critical question, is social

cognition special?

Is social cognition special?

A social agent’s need for information about gender, kinship, and social standing of other

social agents is critical for adaptive reproduction and general survival. The ability to recognize,

assimilate, navigate and behave relative to socially important information requires relevant

neural systems. Thus, specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms have likely evolved to

uniquely process social information. Many recent and time-tested findings from both animal and

human study support the thesis that social cognition, thinking and feeling about social agents, is

indeed special.

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Social cognition is the study of mind and brain phenomena and processes that underlie

social perception, social judgment, and social influence in human and non-human animals. The

beginning of research on social cognition was a phenomenon-focused enterprise which

developed into both a phenomenonological and cognitive process-oriented approach. Early work

focused on making sense of others’ personality and behavior. Effects identified by this work

include systematically employed person-perception tendencies, some of which are shown to be

veracious and others erroneous. Attribution research was also among the first topics studied at

the dawn of social cognition. Work by Solomon Asch (1946) showed that impressions are

formed about others spontaneously. Other early work showed how attributions are made (Kelley,

1967) which was then followed by work which identified forces that influence attributional

processes. Social neuroscience has followed in the footsteps of social cognition in that some of

the first topics that have been studied are basic attributional process. This has been fruitful and a

good deal of information has been gleaned from this work even though it only began a short time

ago. For example, work in neuroscience by Mitchell, Banaji, and Macrae (2005), Saxe and

Kanwisher (2005) and others has shown that not only is trait attribution automatic,

uncontrollable, and effortless (e.g., Willis & Todorov, 2006), but certain brain structures such as

the medialPFC specifically subserve these attributions. At the nexus between social cognition

and social neuroscience grows the question: is social cognition special? With new MRI

technologies, we can now examine whether single or multiple processes converge when social

creatures make sense of other social creatures. There is compelling and fundamental evidence

that social cognition processes constitute a unique set of phenomena and may be located in

morphologically distinct areas that do not subserve other types of general cognition.

Neural and Molecular Substrates of Social Cognition in Non-Human Animals

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Evidence suggests that even at the most basic level, studying the simplest social creatures,

there is something unique about connecting to and interfacing with other social agents. Findings

from the animal literature suggest that certain social exchanges such as reproduction behavior

and parenting behavior can be traced to unique molecular and cellular mechanisms (Insel &

Young 2000, Pfaff, Frohlich, & Morgan, 2002). The specificity of social mechanisms rises to a

higher level of abstraction even in these simple animal species. For example, Lorenz (1935)

suggested that animals’ perceptual worlds include critical information about others’ behaviors

and the groups’ behaviors and that this perceptual and interpretative ability is likely critical to

survival. Indeed, recognition of key social exchanges must have been important in shaping

species’ phenotypes. In fact, the evolution of some species has been marked by uniquely

developed sensory systems that facilitate social interaction. One such system is the detection of

pheromones (Dulac & Torello, 2003). This system detects and recognizes species-specific

olfactory signals which transmit details about sex, reproductive status, mate location, social

status, and territory. Although scientific consensus believes in the basics of general mammalian

pheromone systems, the existence of such a system in humans is still debated (Meredith 2001).

Consistent with this work, infants of many species learn about parents and siblings from

imprinting processes. Learning this social information is critical for survival and reproduction.

Early preference acquisition has been studied in some detail. Research suggests that the more

complex the stimulus (e.g., sound, motion, structure), the stronger the imprinting process

(Bolhuis & Honey, 1998). Horn (1985) suggests there are particular sites in the brain responsible

for imprinting in baby chicks (the intermediate and medial hyperstriatum ventrale--IMHV).

Chicks with lesions in these areas could no longer imprint.

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As we begin to extract from animal models to human, we can look to non-human

primates for clues as to whether social cognition is a specialized set of processes. Indeed,

research shows that cells and fields in the monkey temporal cortex respond to faces (Tsao,

Freiwald, Knutsen, Mandeville, & Tootell, 2003). This link not only reflects what may exist in

the human brain, but suggests that having a “social brain” may not exclude other social species.

Neural Substrates of Social Cognition in Humans

The most basic evidence for the uniqueness (i.e., that certain brain regions evolved –

perhaps uniquely—to serve social cognitive processes) of social cognition in humans is evidence

from human neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. These disorders

are best described as deficits in normal social cognition which alter behavior (Lord, Cook,

Leventhal, & Amaral, 2000). Volumes of research on autism now show that individuals with

autism are generally unable to intuit the needs, wants, motivations, thoughts, intentions and

feelings of other social agents (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). On another and

extremely base level, research shows that humans kept in social isolation or separated from

others are at a serious risk for medical disorders and poor health (House, Landis, & Umberson,

1988). These data suggest that social interaction is critical for normal immune and bodily

function. Although this finding does not speak to the notion that social cognition is unique, it

certainly underscores the critical role that social cognition plays in sustaining a normal healthy

body.

In more recent work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), findings from

the human literature strongly suggest that social cognition uses specialized mind and brain

locations and processes. For example, the fusiform gyrus (also known as the FFA or fusiform

face area) in the occipital-temporal junction is critical for face recognition as well as other

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complex visual percepts (Gauthier, Skudlarski, Gore, & Anderson, 2000, Kanwisher et al, 1997.

Patients with lesions in this area show face recognition deficits (e.g., prosopagnosia). This work

helped to lay the basis for localizing brain functionality toward social phenomena. The

application of fMRI to social phenomena has spawned volumes of articles on how, when, and

where the “social brain” exists. fMRI studies have now shown a number of brain regions to

specifically subserve social activity. Below is a table listing the brain regions and respective

social functions harvested from fMRI research about which there is some degree of consensus

and replication across paradigms (e.g., event-related vs. block design), lab groups, and imaging

centers. Parts of the table below were adapted from Adolphs (2001) and augmented by findings

from a number of studies published since 2001.

Social cognitive process Regions in normal brain

Affect regulation (corrective/inhibitory processes) dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex

ventral lateral prefrontal cortex

Biological motion (point of light displays) left parietal cortex right amygdala right superior temporal sulcus superior temporal sulcus ventral bank of right occipital lobe Cooperation with a partner dorsal medial prefrontal cortex

Correlation with autism symptoms cingulate gyrus insula medial prefrontal cortex medial prefrontal cortex superior temporal sulcus Detecting emotional expression superior temporal sulcus

Eye contact right amygdala Faces in social phobics amygdala Facial expressions focusing on the eyes amygdala Gaze and mouth movements in faces superior temporal sulcus Gaze discrimination left amygdala Impression formation dorsal medial prefrontal cortex

Intentions (nonverbal) right medial prefrontal cortex Mental state attribution dorsal medial prefrontal cortex

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orbitofrontal cortex

Processing social vocalizations in nonhuman primates amygdala

Recognizing emotions guilt, arrogance, and fear amygdala

Romantic attachment anterior cingulated

medial insula

striatum

Social judgment amygdala

Social exclusion ventral prefrontal cortex

Theory of mind (both verbal and nonverbal) cingulate gyrus medial prefrontal cortex Theory of mind (normals versus autistics) left medial prefrontal cortex Theory of mind (verbal) left medial prefrontal cortex Theory of mind (visual motion of simple shapes) amygdala left medial prefrontal cortex superior temporal sulcus Viewing faces of different race amygdala amygdala Viewing others’ actions motor cortex superior parietal lobule Viewing others’ hand actions left frontal cortex

right superior parietal lobule

General face processing FFA

General regulatory processes and decision making OFC In terms of sheer frequency, there appear to be at least three areas that systematically

show unique evidence of sociality. The most compelling evidence for an area of the human brain

which is recruited in social processes, though it does not specifically subserve, is the amygdala.

The amygdala appears to be engaged in the processing and sense-making of affective social

stimuli. For example, the amygdala has been repeatedly shown to be active when processing

threatening images and facial expressions of emotion including negative and positive emotions.

However, the amygdala is also implicated in non-social threat processing and system readiness.

A great deal of evidence also exists for areas of the medial prefrontal cortex—especially the

dorsal region. These areas of the PFC appear to subserve attributions—trait, intention, and

mental state attributions. Additionally, the ventral lateral and dorsal lateral areas appear to aid in

Social Cognition 15

down-regulating the amygdala’s negative responses. In fact, the ventral and dorsal regions of the

PFC can be thought of as affect regulation areas. These regions appear to strictly subserve social

cognitive processes. The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is also recruited for social tasks;

however, the pattern of activity is less clear. The STS is recruited when processing gaze, is less

active in autism, and is recruited in viewing motor activity in point of light displays. The precise

pattern of activity and the social cognitive processes the STS subserves seems to be an area ripe

for further research. Findings for the cingulate mimic the (lack of) clear pattern found with the

STS and is also, therefore, an area of the brain full of open social cognitive questions.

Drawing the Line Between Self and Other

One fascinating aspect about the process of engagement in social cognition lies within the

blurred distinction between self and other. Evidence in non-human primates has emerged which

suggests that we may see ourselves in others by simply watching them engage in similar

behaviors. The very same involved neurons fire in our own brain as we watch another engage in

a particular behavior. As such, the name of this system is self-reflective: the mirror neuron.

Recent work by Jason Mitchell and his colleagues offers a strong starting point for this emerging

research. Mitchell has shown that a very specific region of the medial PFC is engaged when

making judgments of similar others (Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2004; Mitchell, Macrae, and

Banaji, 2005). In fact, this precise area is also the area that research has shown to subserve

judgments about the self (see, e.g., Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006).

As described in the identification of social cognition as a special process, it is

demonstrable that in the absence of social contact animals and humans tend to become ill and

can even die. Without critical social skills in place, such as the ability to determine others’

gender, status, and intention, animals and humans are not safe. This is a basic need. To say that

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basic social cognition is fundamental to adaptive social and physical functioning is no

understatement. Indeed, the fundamental master of social cognition is the self.

The self

The Master of Social Cognition is the Self

The most recent Annual Review of Psychology chapter published on the self (Banaji &

Prentice, 1994) noted that the study of the self is at center stage in psychological science. Banaji

and Prentice showed overwhelming evidence that the self directs both social cognition and social

behavior. In essence, they argued that the master of social cognition is the self. So whom does

the master serve? Evidence in this chapter suggest that the self is sustained by successful

satiation of the need for others. This is well illustrated by research on molecular factors involved

in self-sustenance reported elsewhere in this chapter. For example, evidence suggests that several

neurotransmitters are disproportionately involved in affiliative behavior. In a variety of non-

human mammalian species, oxytocin and vasopressin mediate affiliative and sexual behaviors

(Young, Wang, & Insel, 1998). Voles show different mate affiliation (monogamous versus

polygamous) as a result of different oxytocin systems in their brains; Oxytocin-knockout mice

(i.e., mice rendered non-receptive to the effects of oxytocin) show abnormalities in their social

behavior, including a social memory impairment. Some of these chemicals appear to exert an

influence on humans as well. In humans, speculation exists that abnormalities in oxytocin

neurotransmission may contribute to the social pathology of autism (Insel, O’Brien, & Leckman,

1999). Serotonin is another neurotransmitter linked to social behavior, especially with regard to

social status and dominance in primates and in humans. As support for this, it is clear that SSRIs

influence social behavior in humans (Knutson, et al., 1998).

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The self is so critical to adaptive functioning; it is in part defined by and must be

maintained through attachment to other social creatures. Banaji and Prentice (1994) suggest the

two primary motives of the self are: self knowledge and self enhancement. Through social

interaction we gather knowledge and support in addition to garnering emotional and resource

support. The need for social interaction in sustaining the self goes even deeper. Humans and

other animals benefit from social interaction, which acts as a buffer against stress. As discussed

earlier in this chapter, animal work has shown that mother rats that lick their young vs. mother

rats who did not had offspring that were more resistant to and better buffered stressors. Data

suggest that the baby rats who receive licking behavior, a social attention, produced more

oxytocin which then acted as a buffer against stress. Additionally, as discussed earlier, are

documented cases of child neglect which show unequivocally that if raised without simple social

interaction and touch, a child will not develop normal language and social skills. Work on social

rejection shows it to be a root cause of a myriad of health problems. Human work by Eisenberger

et al. (2003) showed that the same regions of the brain (ventral PFC) subserving actual physical

pain are the same regions activated when humans are targeted by social rejection. Thus, a sense

of the self as “good” and “included” is critical to mental and physical health and well-being.

Because perceiving the self to be positive is adaptively critical, it seems that on average, people

should be genetically predisposed to hold a sense of themselves as good.

Indeed, current research suggests that high self-esteem, measured with implicit methods,

is universal (Yamaguchi, et al., (2007). Although research on cross-cultural differences in

cognition has shown that culture and language shape cognition, the adaptive utility of positive

self-regard appears to transcend cultural influence. It should be noted, however, that the pan-

culturality of positive self regard is only detected with implicit, but not explicit measures. On

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explicit measures, members of Asian cultures (e.g., the Japanese), for example, do not report

high levels of self-esteem. Research indicates that such cultures value self-effacing behavior and

interconnectedness. Thus, singling out the “self as good” is to go against a cultural value.

However, on implicit measures, these same individuals show high levels of implicit self-esteem.

This dissociation exemplifies the way in which the same person’s biological needs and cultural

influences can lead to two opposing truths.

The dissociation between explicit and implicit reports of self-esteem is not restricted to

notions of the self. In fact, consensus among students of social cognition is now that thinking

about others comes in two forms: explicit, or controlled processing, and implicit or automatic

processing. The very idea that we efficiently, effortlessly, and automatically process social

phenomena makes total evolutionary sense and is entirely consistent with the preceding section

on the uniqueness of social cognitive processes. At the same time that the field of social

cognition was born 30 years ago, the research area of implicit social cognition was also born but

was not so named until Greenwald and Banaji’s (1995) treatise on the topic.

Implicit Social Cognition

Basic Architecture of Mind in Social Information Processing

When things are fundamental, they happen automatically and effortlessly. Such is the

case with the automatic thinking and feeling about others. Although discussed at length in this

volume, we wanted here to re-introduce the ideas of cognitive connectionist models of

information processing as they relate specifically to social information processing.

Conceptually, you can think of every idea, belief, concept, or category you can think of

as a single unit represented by a dot. Lines drawn to connect dots represent semantic,

experiential, and conceptual similarity such that more closely related dots are linked by thicker

Social Cognition 19

lines: the stronger the association between dots, the thicker the line. Collections of strongly

linked cognitive concepts and beliefs people have about the world are called schemas. A schema

organizes related information in a framework that allows the person to use that information

efficiently for thinking and feeling about and navigating through the social (and non-social)

world. In essence, a schema is a particular lens through which you see some aspect of the world.

Many types of cognitive representations fall under the general category of schemas—many of

these will be discussed in some detail. The list includes general views about the world,

stereotypes, contextual information about visual scenes and memories, social roles and

behavioral scripts. The earliest work on schemas was conducted by Bartlett (1932) who showed

individuals' schemas influenced judgment and memory in a schema-consistent manner. Sandra

Bem was one of the first social psychologists to pull the notion of schemas from cognitive

psychology into social processes. In her work, Bem discussed schemas at some length—one such

finding that really adapted schema research to social phenomena was her gender schema theory

(1981). In this theory, individuals hold varying depth of schemas about how important gender is

as a cognitive heuristic. Seeing the world through a lens of gender will drive thoughts, feelings

and behaviors in a gender-centric manner. For example, when a gender schematic person meets a

new person, gender is the most salient feature of that novel person and drives much of the

attribution and behavior associated with that meeting. Other work in developmental psychology

also helped to shape the folding of schema constructs into social psychology. For example, work

by Carol Dweck showed that children adopt a series of schemas (or implicit theories) to

understand the world (Dweck, Hong, & Chiu, 1993). All of this work suggests that human

thinking and feeling is guided by less conscious forces in addition to conscious ones.

Awareness and the Unconscious

Social Cognition 20

The most innovative effects to emerge from the early study of social cognition were the

effects of the unconscious mind. Tools borrowed from cognitive psychology allowed social

psychologists insight into the mind that was previously unattainable. Likewise, social cognition

integrated theory and method from social and cognitive psychology and social neuroscience

integrated methods from social and neuro psychology. Both of these new, integrative fields

allowed renewed and empirically derived insights into the unconscious mind. But this neo-

Freudian empirical inquiry, to a great extent, began with a seminal paper by Nisbett & Wilson

(1977). This paper was among the first compelling and conspicuous demonstrations that mental

processes are not always accessible to conscious introspection. Many effects and processes occur

outside of conscious introspection and we will discuss some of highlights of this social cognition

research.

How Does This Basic, Automatic, System Adaptively Learn?

To engage in these automatic processes, the system must learn to do so within the

constraints of an organism’s environment and social culture. There are at least three fundamental

principles in social cognition research that can be thought of as some of the more important

features of the socialized mind’s basic architecture: mere exposure, automatic evaluation, and

illusory correlation. Below, we review each of these “learning features” in some detail. This

review is not meant to be exhaustive, but a means of highlighting some of the most critical,

interesting, and perhaps irrational ways in which the mind learns and operates.

Mere exposure

This is a finding that frequency of exposure increases liking (Zajonc, 1968). Bornstein's

(1989) meta-analytic review, showed mere exposure effects are strongest when conditions reduce

subjects' memory for the effect-producing exposures. Increased perceptual fluency caused by

Social Cognition 21

multiple exposures is (mis)attributed to liking. One of the first demonstrations of how

information not consciously accessible can influence conscious phenomena was the mere

exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968). The mere exposure effect describes how repeated exposure to a

novel stimulus increases liking for that stimulus. For example, the more often a novel person is

seen, the more attractive that person appears to become. The mechanism by which the mere

exposure effect occurs is still uncertain; however, most research points to the possibility that

exposure leads to ease of cognitive processing which then leads to preference. And in preference,

comes a host of other positive associates.

Automatic Evaluation

Findings suggest that without intention, awareness, effort, or control, we evaluate the

goodness or badness of an object immediately after perceiving it. Evidence can be harvested

from research on evaluative priming (e.g., Fazio, 1986), implicit associations (e.g., Greenwald &

Banaji, 1995) and by research on amygdala activation (e.g., Cunningham, et al., 2003).

Illusory correlation

Illusory correlation is an effect whereby relations are perceived even when no relation

actually exists. One of the first bodies of research to bring this effect to the study of social targets

was done by David Hamilton and Robert Gifford (1976). Hamilton and Gifford showed that the

bias can be caused by two co-occurring events that appear to be unique or low in frequency.

Because of relative low frequency, the brain finds them to be salient. As such, they stand out and

their co-occurrence is more readily coded by the brain.

These critical features describe how the mind’s basic architecture morphs to

accommodate the demands of a person’s environment and culture. This idea will be brought

more fully to fruition in the section on elasticity and plasticity. But before we turn to these issues,

Social Cognition 22

let us briefly describe some of the byproducts of the mind’s basic architecture and its shaping by

culture and environment.

Byproducts of the Mind’s Architecture

Stereotypes. Cognitive representations can be beliefs, ideas, memories, or expectations.

In practice, stereotypes are systematically held cognitive representations about a person based

solely upon his or her membership in a particular group (e.g., age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual

orientation, nationality, religious belief, physical appearance, profession, social class, physical

size, handicaps, etc.). Beyond broad categorical stereotypes, even more fine-grained stereotypes

exist within major social groups (e.g., within blacks, there are African Americans, Haitians,

light-skinned, thugs, etc.). Research suggests that stereotypes, like minimal group phenomena,

are difficult to avoid. Research and theory suggest that stereotypes are difficult to curtail because

holding quickly accessible and simple representations of the objects in the world is an efficient

use of cognitive resources. However, the information held in the mind can sometimes be flawed

as in the case of illusory correlation (see page x, this chapter). Another example is how we notice,

store, and remember best the most salient features of our social worlds. For example, information

that is most strange, different, pleasing or detestable about someone, or that which confirms what

we already (seem to) know is best retained and remembered and is more likely to be used in

social judgment and decision. Feeding stereotype is preference toward certain social groups over

others. These kinds of social group attitudes have a long history in social cognition and social

neuroscience.

Attitude and Social Group Bias. Thurstone’s landmark article in 1928 argued that

“attitudes can be measured.” This paper sparked the beginning of attitude measurement notably

lauded by Allport (1954) as social psychology’s “most central and indispensable topic.”

Social Cognition 23

Attitudes were then, and are now, defined as a personal evaluation of any real or imagined object.

For nearly 75 years, psychology relied upon people’s ability to indicate attitudes on some sort of

self-report scale. Meanwhile, cognitive psychology was beginning to understand a new (at the

time) aspect of the memory system, implicit memory (e.g., Neely, 1977). Research on implicit

memory suggested that people can form memories and associations about input that they have no

conscious recollection of, and/or that was not consciously perceptible upon presentation. In the

1980s and 1990s, methodological advances made it possible to measure these implicit memories

by measuring concept accessibility with projective, lexical decision, or other unobtrusive

measurements (e.g., Jacoby, 1994; Roediger, 1990; Schacter, 1987). Devine (1989) was one of

the first to apply the methods of implicit memory research to social psychological problems such

as stereotyping and prejudice. It was found that outside of conscious awareness, people were

holding associations between negative attributes and certain social groups—associations that are

now referred to as unconscious, or implicit, attitudes.

Implicit attitudes are defined as the semantic association between evaluative attributes

(e.g., “good,” “beautiful,” “bad,” or “ugly”) and attitude objects that can exist outside of

conscious awareness and/or conscious control (Banaji, 2001; Greenwald et al., 2002). Implicit

attitudes are thought to be somewhat fixed, like a personality trait (Bargh, 1997; Devine, 1989;

Dovidio & Fazio, 1992), but temporarily malleable due to changes in one’s social and/or

cognitive landscape (Blair, 2002; see section on elasticity and plasticity on page x of this

chapter). However malleable implicit attitudes might be, such attitudes do predict individual

differences in attitude-relevant behavior (Poehlman, Uhlmann, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2007).

Beginning with Devine (1989), social psychology began to explore the role that

unconscious attitudes played alongside explicit attitudes (i.e., Thurstone’s original conception of

Social Cognition 24

attitudes as measured by self-reported evaluations of attitude-objects). Following Devine’s

demonstration of the dissociation between explicit and implicit attitudes, Fazio, Jackson, Dunton,

and Williams (1995) demonstrated that individual differences in implicit attitudes could be used

to predict meaningful interpersonal variables. This same year, Greenwald and Banaji (1995)

published a paper outlining the conceptual framework for what would later become the Implicit

Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003).

A fairly recent review (Fazio & Olson, 2003) detailed the distinction between explicit, or

controlled, and implicit, or automatic attitudes. Explicit, or controlled, attitudes are the attitudes

first measured by Thurstone. Explicit attitudes are, by definition, not only accessible to a person

in consciousness, but a person is willing to explicitly endorse such attitudes. To measure explicit

attitudes, responses are made on a Likert-type scale, feeling thermometer, or other self-reported

personal endorsement. Implicit, or automatic attitudes, are rooted in drawing out (with some

methodology—typically via one of a class of reaction time tasks which will be discussed

extensively later) the common meaning between two concepts in one’s semantic memory. This

association, if measured under appropriate conditions, is very difficult (if not impossible) to

control, and most agree that it is at least possible for the actor to be unaware that s/he holds such

associative information.

Race-bias is defined here as majority group members’ negative attitudes toward minority

group members based on group membership. Findings that nearly half of Black Americans (47%)

feel that they were treated unfairly in at least one of five common situations (e.g., shopping at the

store) in the past month because they were Black (www.gallop.com) indicates clearly that race-

bias is alive, well, and present in the most common of life’s everyday activities. In addition,

targets of race-bias are more likely to be arrested, and convicted and incarcerated once arrested

Social Cognition 25

(Blumstein & Beck, 1999), are less likely to receive aggressive treatments from health-care

professionals (Schulman, Berlin, Harless, Kerner, Sistrunk, Gersh, Dube, Taleghani, Burke,

Williams, Eisenberg, & Escarce, 1999), and Black Americans with more “Afrocentric” facial

features receive harsher punishments than White Americans (Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004).

Green, et al., (2007) found that physicians’ bias against blacks predicted treating blacks less than

whites for acute myocardial infarction. Indeed, even in the most important values of American

life—freedom and health, race-bias appears to be alive and well.

The implicit, or automatic system is deeply efficient. Some of the principles upon which

it rests make evolutionary adaptive sense. Some may at one time have made sense but are now

rendered inappropriate by modern society which has different collective needs for adaptive and

harmonious survival. And sometimes, because of its efficiency and automaticity, the system can

be broadly irrational.

Errors and Biases in Social Cognition

Despite the best intentions, the most rational of goals, a person cannot easily override the

unfolding of unconscious, or implicit, processes. Because the motivators of implicit thought,

feeling, and behavior lie below the reaches of introspective access, sometimes such cognitions

are rendered irrational in conception and/or execution. In this next section, we list a few of the

most intriguing cognitive errors and biases that operate within the rules of the efficient mind, but

are nonetheless irrational. Because of the mind’s architecture and rules, errors arise that are

rational in the sense that they are following the rules of a well-defined system subserved by

piping laid over millions of evolutionary years. However rational the intent, the errors are at

minimum, extremely interesting and at worst, deeply socially disavowed. Because each finding

Social Cognition 26

deserves clear and thorough treatment, we have organized the next section by listing each error

of rationality and its major finding.

Fundamental attribution error. A centerpiece of this broad area of attribution work (and

arguably a founding pillar of social cognition) is that people often attribute a social agent’s

behavior to his or her dispositions instead of the situations or contexts in which the agent is

behaving. This work grew out of early experiments conducted by Jones and Harris (1967) and

the general effect has come to be known as the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE; Ross, 1977)

or the correspondence bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995). Later theorizing and research on how the

human mind spends cognitive energy to perceive and process social agents found that humans

can be considered cognitive misers — avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of cognitive effort.

Research applying the cognitive miser principle to the FAE found that it does appear to take

more cognitive energy to consider both the person’s behavior and the situational context in

which it exists than to consider the person and his or her behavior alone. To this aim, researchers

found that taxing available cognitive resources increased the likelihood of the

FAE/correspondence bias (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988).

Confirmation bias. With these expectations we have some cases in which information can

either be confirmed or disconfirmed. Confirmation bias is a tendency to seek out information to

confirm a pre-existing schema, belief, implicit theory, or expectation. Whether a confirmation

bias produces a cognitive error is driven by the veracity of the pre-existing expectation. Among

the earliest investigators of this phenomenon, Wason (1960) showed that people will actively

seek out information to confirm their hypothesis and weight it more heavily—discounting

information that is inconsistent with their hypothesis. Emerging findings from neuroscience

(Westen, Kilts, Blagov, Harenski, & Hamann, 2006) has shown particular brain regions to

Social Cognition 27

subserve confirmation bias. Specifically, area associated with reasoning (orbitofrontal cortex),

conflict monitoring and resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral

transgression (posterior cingulate cortex). These findings are extremely interesting—especial the

role of the anterior cingulated cortex as it is most frequently implicated conflict resolution. What

this implies is that on some, perhaps unconscious level, people know there is a conflict to be

resolved. Of course, any time information is compared a potential conflict must be resolved.

However, it is extremely interesting to imagine that some part of the human system is aware that

the person is stretching to match a pre-existing hypothesis to the available data.

Halo effect. Thorndike (1920) coined the term “halo effect” after observing that positive

trait ratings were more correlated with each other than what should be expected if experience

was the only determining factor. Subsequently, the halo effect came to describe the phenomenon

by which judgment of a novel attribute is influenced by already known but irrelevant information.

For example, attractive people are judged as kinder, more interesting, more sociable, and happier

(Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). More recently, Down & Lyons (1991) showed defendant

attractiveness to predict smaller fines and lower bail levels in real-world cases. This is the

phenomenon by which a stimulus seen as positive in one regard will benefit by all kinds of

positive attributions made to it. The idea here is that positive concepts, ideas, and schemas are all

closely linked in the perceiver. If a perceiver encounters a stimulus deemed “good” in one regard,

other positive traits and qualities will automatically be attributed to the stimulus.

False consensus effect. This effect, first demonstrated by Lee Ross and colleagues (Ross

Greene, & House, 1977), shows the tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which

others agree with their thoughts and feelings. This kind of bias is considered to be an “egocentric

bias” a general class of biases which are at the core of many social cognitive processes. Recall

Social Cognition 28

the previous discussion of Jason Mitchell’s work. Mitchell and his colleagues (2004; 2005; 2006)

find that people will attribute their own traits to others—which is an example of egocentric bias.

The region of the brain in Mitchell’s work engaged when making these attributions is the medial

PFC. This may imply that the more activity in this region, the more likely people will engage in

egocentric processing for a given social task.

Endowment effect. The endowment effect is the findings that people value things more if

it is their property (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1990). Such objects are valued more than

similar objects that are not owned. Experiments showed that valuation of objects such as mugs,

pens, and chocolate bars increased sharply as soon as one is given the object.

Misattribution. Some of the most interesting bias effects have emerged from research on

misattribution. In this work, attitude and/or feeling activated by an object, situation, or internal

state can be (mis)attributed to another. For example, Schwarz and Clore (1983) showed

judgments of life-quality for subjects interviewed over the telephone were better when subject

was in a sunny versus rainy region of the country. Schwarz, Strack, and Mai (1991) showed that

subjects’ responses to marital satisfaction influenced life-quality judgments when marriage

question came first and vice-versa. Calling attention to the source (weather) eliminates the effect

(rationality).

Each of these effects demonstrates ways in which the basic principles of the automatic, or

implicit, mind can lead to irrational outcome. This may seem inconsistent with a major thrust of

this chapter—that the social mind, which needs to belong, has evolved to efficiently process self

and other for purposes of successful adaptation and survival. However, as soon as higher-order

mental processes, subserved by cortical structures and referred to as explicit or controlled, are

considered, it should become clear how rational errors can be caught and corrected given

Social Cognition 29

sufficient effort and/or attention. Further, the basic architecture of the mind is not without

tremendous flexibility—able to ride and control the tides of everyday social life. In the next

section we will discuss the elasticity and plasticity of the human social mind.

Elasticity and Plasticity

The social judgments and decisions we make about others are pushed and pulled by

forces of which we may sometimes not be aware and over which we may have little or no control.

In each section below, we describe important results bearing on issues of complexity and

boundary conditions to social cognition. Woven throughout each description, is discussion about

how sometimes, interestingly, these phenomena can be dissociated from consciousness and/or

intended goals. Since approximately 2002, researchers have considered the seemingly rigid and

automatic nature of the mind to be more or less malleable—both in terms of temporary (elasticity)

and long term (plasticity) change.

Elasticity

The bulk of the research conducted on the malleability of implicit social cognition has

shown evidence for short-term change, or elasticity. In the past few years more than 40 studies

have amassed which demonstrate that implicit attitudes and beliefs are flexible in the face of

motivational, strategic, and situational forces. Blair (2002) was among the first to clearly argue

the notion that automatic mind processes such as stereotypes and attitudes are malleable or

elastic. The papers reviewed by Blair and additional publications since then show that automatic

processes can be generally influenced by a person’s conscious or unconscious motives and goals,

and different aspects of the environment or situational context. For example, research suggests

that personal motivations, such as the motivation to not appear prejudiced, can change implicit

attitude and/or their behavioral manifestations (e.g., Dasgupta & Rivera, 2006; Lowery, Hardin,

Social Cognition 30

& Sinclair, 2001). Additionally, implicit attitudes can change after practice or training (e.g., Blair,

Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Ito, Chiao, Devine, Lorig, & Cacioppo, 2006; Kawakami, Dovidio, Moll,

Hermsen, & Russin, 2000). And other studies show that implicit attitudes and beliefs can be

changed by shifting the social context (e.g., Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; Macrae,

Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001).

Blair (2002) specifically concluded that five features of the self or social environment can

effect change in implicit attitude or belief. These features are: (1) the self’s social motives, (2)

conscious and specific strategies to overcome automatic processes, (3) attentional focus, (4)

features of the situational context, and (5) characteristics of a social target. Shifts in these

influences can change an implicit or automatic thought and its behavioral sequelae. Elastic

changes are temporary; however, plastic changes can be permanent. But evidence suggests that

plastic changes, although likely accompanied by permanent anatomical and/or neural network

changes, are likely to be governed by the same rules as elastic changes.

Plasticity

Longer-term changes in implicit attitudes and beliefs are possible. Although only a

handful of studies have examined and shown such changes, there is a great deal of evidence from

neuroscience which suggests that longer-term changes are possible. One example of such a study

was conducted by Dasgupta and Asgari (2004) in which they found that when women at an

exclusively female college were exposed to female professors, they were less likely to express

automatic stereotypic beliefs about women. Although only a small handful of studies have shown

longer-term changes in implicit processes, educational research focuses on meaningful learning

and the promotion of knowledge transfer between people and within a person across situations.

Greeno (2006) discussed a situated approach to learning emphasizing the role of situational

Social Cognition 31

context on changes in complex cognitive system. He reviews research which, like Blair (2002)

suggests that factors such as motivation, goals, and situational context can effect changes in

complex cognitive systems.

However, long-term changes such as those observed in learning are brought about by

structural changes in the brain. Thus, in order to understand how permanent social cognitive

change might be effected, it is important to understand basic neuronal plasticity. Neuronal

plasticity is the capability of synapses to modify their function in a usually adaptive response to

environmental stimuli (Cotman & Nieto-Sampedro, 1984), including innocuous (such as normal

everyday experiences) and noxious stimuli (such as damage to the brain). An example of an

adaptive synaptic change would be that the brain would change to learn that the category “dog”

is associated with the fluffy, large, panting entity that makes sounds such as “ruff.” You are now

able to recognize that the label “dog” is associated with the category. You are then able to

communicate about the category, learn new things about it, and behave toward it. An example of

a maladaptive change in synaptic activity would be one that associates a loud crash with the dog

so that where you were once unafraid of the kind household pet, you are now afraid of it because

the brain has associated it with the fear response elicited by the crash that the presence of the dog

was paired with. You are now afraid of the dog, and you may generalize this fear to dogs in

general, which may prevent you from being able to interact with dogs or visit places where dogs

are kept. In both the adaptive and maladaptive example of neuronal plasticity, the brain has

changed in its response to some stimulus. Such stimuli can come from within or from outside the

person. .

Scientist used to think that only young brains were capable of synaptic change and that

brains were fixed after the first few years of life. We now believe, however, that neuronal

Social Cognition 32

plasticity is maximal during development and present in certain parts of the brain throughout life

(Cotman & Nieto-Sampedro, 1984). Plasticity can happen in both the peripheral and central

nervous system in both subcortical and cortical brain structures.

Current research on neuronal plasticity has identified four broad classes of neuroplasticity

that can be researched in mammals, namely in humans (see e.g., Grafman, 2000; Thompson,

2000): compensatory masquerade, cross-modal reassignment, homologous area adaptation, and

map expansion. Compensatory masquerade is a process typically associated with humans that

describes the novel use of an established cognitive process to perform a task that is usually

dependent on a different cognitive process that is now impaired. To illustrate, imagine an

individual suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, where that individual has lost short-term memory

capacity and cannot, therefore, depend on her or his memory to recall the grocery list. Imagine

that the individual makes out the list and attaches it to the calendar on the day that the shopping

is to take place (which has been every first Tuesday of the month for many years, and is

therefore in the on-term memory). The individual has then, used a different but established

process to compensate for the short-term memory process on which the task used to be

dependent but on which it can no longer depend.

Cross-modal reassignment is a process associated with the introduction of new sensory

information into a brain region that has been deprived of the sensory information normally

associated with it. For example, imagine a blind person whose visual system receives little or no

input. In cross-modal reassignment, the brain region typically assigned to receive visual input

would receive other types of input, perhaps in an effort to keep the cells alive, or alternatively

because the inhibitory processes usually engaged in sighted individuals is not engaged in order to

stave off competing brain systems.

Social Cognition 33

Homologous area adaptation is typically used to describe the process by which damage to

a particular brain region and its cognitive operation(s) is compensated for by shifting those

dependent cognitive operation(s) to another brain area or the homologous area on the opposite

hemisphere. It is thought that neighboring and homologous cortical regions have both primary

and secondary assignments, and when a particular brain region has been damaged and its

dependent cognitive process has been assigned to be a secondary assignment to another region,

the primary process can inhibit the secondary process, which usually yields an imperfect

compensation for the damage. To illustrate, imagine a young individual who suffers a severe

right parietal lobe brain injury. The left parietal lobe may assume some of the processes

originally dependent on the right parietal lobe, but new information that would have been

assigned to the left parietal lobe will not be learned very well because the region on which it has

been genetically programmed to depend has been assigned to a different set of cognitive

processes. That individual may have perfectly normal spatial processing, but when s/he begins to

learn arithmetic, they may not be able to because the region on which arithmetic reasoning

depends has been primarily assigned to other processes (example adapted from Grafman, 2000).

Map expansion is the process of neuroplasticity that refers to the flexibility of the

(typically normally functioning) brain to acquire new information, and is the type of

neuroplasticity that is central to the focus of the current chapter. Map expansion is a term used to

describe current research suggesting that the size of cortical maps assigned to specific cognitive

processes increase in size with practice of that social cognitive process or with frequent exposure

to a stimulus. There is also evidence to suggest that some cortical maps rapidly enlarge in

individuals who are trained to be or are naturally adept at a skill that is used on a routine basis

Social Cognition 34

(Rosenzweig & Bennett, 1996). The process of map expansion is the class of neuroplasticity

under which the synaptic changes associated with learning are classified.

In an attempt to describe what might be happening in the brain during learning, Hebb

(1949) proposed that learning may involve changes in neural functioning effected by two cells

that are active at the same time. A useful description was offered by (LeDoux, 1996). Imagine

three cells organized in the shape of a triangle with each cell representing an angle of the triangle

where the base of the triangle is at the bottom and the tip is pointing upward. The lower left

corner of the triangle is cell “A” and cell “B” is the right lower corner of the triangle, both “A”

and “B” are connected through each’s synapse to cell “C” which is the third cell at the top tip of

the triangle. Hebb hypothesized that if cell “B” had the ability to make cell “C” fire but “A” did

not, and if both cells “A” and “B” fired at the same time making cell “C” fire, that the “B-C”

connection would be further strengthened as would the “A-C” connection, and that cell “A”

would be enough to fire cell “C” alone (where it was not able to ellicit a response from “C”

before) because it had fired in unison with cell “B”, which was capable of eliciting a response

from cell “C.” Hebb’s hypothesis is best brought to life by an example of a conditioned fear

response.

Hebb’s hypothesis remains as the first accurate advance in understanding how the brain

changes in response to environmental stimuli, and it wasn’t until 30 years later when researchers

such as Bliss and Lomo (1973) found evidence to suggest that Hebb’s postulate was, in fact,

correct. Bliss and Lomo found that the communication between neurons across synapses (in

rabbits) is strengthened by repeated electrical stimulation, a phenomenon that was thereafter

named long term potentiation describing the strengthening of a synapse (Johnston, 1997), and

Social Cognition 35

associative long term potentiation is used to describe the association of a new connection to an

already existing synapse like the one illustrated in the discussion of Hebb’s postulate.

Hebb’s postulate is embraced by social cognition as the best way to understand plastic

changes in the human social mind. But what is unique to the study of plasticity in human social

cognition is the exact forces which effect changes that are either temporally constrained

(elasticity) or unconstrained (plasticity).

Person-Initiated Elasticity and Plasticity

Elasticity and plasticity can be facilitated by organic forces, as well. Prefrontal cortex is a

relatively massive area of the brain which assimilates and integrates signal from many

subcortical areas which subserve basic process like emotional feelings such as the amygdala.

Although different parts of the brain are primarily engaged in executing different types of

tasks—cognitive, emotional, etc., prefrontal cortex is the structure recruited to regulate the effort

of these other areas. For example, the amygdala associated with threat response may become

active when a person sees a snake; however, it is prefrontal cortex’ job to down-regulate the

amygdala telling it that the snake is only a picture on the computer screen. However, when PFC

is spending time and effort down-regulating the amygdala, it has less “muscle” to spend

regulating other subcortical and cortical regions. Some of the most compelling work done in this

area has been by Kevin Ochsner and colleagues (e.g., Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002;

Ochsner, Ray, Cooper, Robertson, Chopra, Gabrieli, & Gross, 2004). In this work, an area of the

PFC, the orbitofrontal cortex, is in charge of many general executive functions such as making

decisions. If the PFC is generally taxed by down-regulating the amygdala, its ability to engage in

complex cognitive tasks will be diminished. For evidence of this effect in response to social

groups automatically eliciting negative affect, see work by Cunningham, Johnson, Raye,

Social Cognition 36

Gatenby, Gore, and Banaji (2004). The process of deliberately trying to stop thinking about

certain thoughts is referred to as thought suppression (Wegner, 1988). The very act of

suppressing a though, ironically makes that thought more accessible. Wegner’s (1994) Ironic

Process Theory accounts for this effect. Recent neuroimaging work suggest the dorsolateral PFC

may subserve thought suppression, whereas the bilateral anterior cingulated cortex may be

implicated during occurrences of unwanted thoughts.

Additionally, work by Baumeister and colleagues (e.g., Baumeister, Bratslavsky,

Muraven, & Tice, 1998) showed that depletion of cognitive or “ego” resources as they described

them, tax the rest of the system. In this work, thinking, feeling, and motivational resources are

one in the same “muscle,” and taxing any one part of the system will tax the whole system. Other

work also finds evidence for this. For example, if one is trying to suppress emotional facial

expressions, they will perform more poorly on cognitive tasks such as memory recall (Richards

& Gross, 1999). Social neuroscience has only just begun to examine resource depletion and such

findings may illuminate how all of these historically separate systems appear experimentally to

be one in the same.

Concluding Comments

The boundaries to our knowledge about “thinking people thinking about other thinking

people” are expanding rapidly and there remain many questions. What is the full breadth of its

nature? What are all of its functions? Which areas of the mind and brain are used in which

processes? What does elasticity and plasticity functionally look like in the brain? What are all of

the impacts on decision making? What are its implications for health in general? These are but a

few that we seek to answer. In finding these answers, will we discover ourselves, how we relate

to the world and to others, and what makes us unique, both as a species and as individuals.

Social Cognition 37

There are a few truisms we can employ. Humans are intensely social animals, people

need people. Humans are organized around this concept in many ways, both psychologically and

physiologically. The structure of our society is clearly oriented toward groups. How we think

about our group orientation echoes our own self-perception. Self-definition is a basic human

need. To fulfill this need and to make sense of and organize the world around us, we have

developed an ability to intuit and decipher others. Such social perceptions create the endless

range of belief, feeling, and regulation. The fundamental aspects of social cognition are, at once,

vast, critical, and special.

Social cognitive processes are both conscious and unconscious. We have both explicit

and implicit thoughts and feelings. The last two decades of research into social cognition has

underscored that the unconscious mind is a powerful, sometimes uncontrollable force in our

social cognitive process. Unchecked, this automaticity prompts us to make errors in judgment,

misattributions, and can render us socially ineffective and maladaptive. Yet, we do evidence

methods of control and balance to these inherent behaviors. The processes of the mind and the

areas of the brain that serve to offset this automaticity are complex, interrelated, intriguing, and

again, the work of social cognition remains unbounded and clearly must encompass a range of

disciplines and methodological tools. As the field progresses and the range of work done

expands, it will doubtless prove fruitful not only in and of itself, but for a host of other scientific

areas of inquiry.

Social Cognition 38

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