Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsDefinitionHow It DevelopsDisordersCultural DifferencesResearch and Challenges

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Definition

How It Develops

Disorders

Cultural Differences

Research and Challenges

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Social cognition refers to the different psychological processes that influence how people process, interpret, and respond to social signals. These processes allow people to understand social behavior and respond in ways that are appropriate and beneficial.

Social cognition is a sub-topic ofsocial psychologythat focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about others and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in our social interactions. How we think about others plays a major role in how we think, feel, and interact with the world around us.

This article explores the processes involved in social cognition and how this ability forms. It also explores how psychologists study the processes involved in social cognition.

What Is Social Cognition?

Social cognition encompasses a range of processes. Some common factors that many experts have identified as being important include:

Another important topic in social cognition is the concept of social schemas. Social schemas refer to people’s mental representations of social patterns and norms. These representations can include information about societal roles and the expectations of different individuals within a group.

Social cognition is not simply a topic withinsocial psychology—it is an approach to studying any subject with social psychology. Using a social-cognitive perspective, researchers can study a wide range of topics, including:

Examples of Social Cognition

Questions you might ask include:

This is just one example of how social cognition influences a single social interaction, but you can probably think of many more examples from your daily life. We spend a considerable portion of every day interacting with others, which is why thisbranch of psychologyformed to help understand how we feel, think, and behave in social situations.

Development of Social Cognition

Social cognition develops in childhood and adolescence. As children grow, they become more aware not only of their own feelings, thoughts, and motives but also of the emotions and mental states of others.

Children become more adept at understanding how others feel, learning how to respond in social situations, engaging inprosocial behaviors, and taking the perspective of others.

While many different theories look at how social cognition develops, one of the most popular focuses on the work of the psychologist Jean Piaget. According to Piaget, a child’scognitive development goes through several stages.

More recently, research has provided evidence that children develop the ability to think about other people’s perspectives at an earlier age than Piaget believed. Even young preschoolers exhibit some ability to think about how other people might view a situation.

One of the most important developments in the early emergence of social cognition is the growth of a theory of mind. Atheory of mindrefers to a person’s ability to understand and think about the mental states of other people.

It is the emergence of a theory of mind that is critical to being able to consider the thoughts, motives, desires, needs, feelings, and experiences that other people may have. Being able to think about how these mental states can influence how people act is critical to forming social impressions and explaining how and why people do the things that they do.

Disorders That Impact Social Cognition

Cultural Differences in Social Cognition

Social psychologists have also found that there are often important cultural differences in social cognition. When looking at a social situation, any two people may have wildly different interpretations. Each person brings a unique background of experiences, knowledge, social influences, feelings, and cultural variations.

Collective cultural influences can also affect how people interpret social situations.The same social behavior in one cultural setting might have a very different meaning and interpretation if it were to occur or be observed in another culture.

As people interpret behavior, extract meaning from the interaction, and then act based upon their beliefs about the situation, they are then further reinforcing and reproducing the cultural norms that influence their social cognitions.

Research into social cognition is ongoing. But there are also challenges to some established theories.

Future Areas of Study

So what are some of the different questions related to social cognition that researchers are interested in understanding? Our perceptions of others play such an important role in how we forge relationships, how we interact with others, how we treat others, and how others treat us.

Some of the topics that psychologists are interested in when it comes to social cognition include:

Challenges

One criticism of some of the research on social cognition suggests that it is too focused on individual behavior. Because the topic is so social, some suggest that many information-processing models traditionally used to understand the cognitive processes behind social cognition are too limited.

Focusing on the collective and interactive aspects of human thought may provide a better understanding of how people think about and understand social behavior.

Other critics have noted that the field often focuses too heavily on the reasons for a behavior and not on the underlying causes.

A Word From Verywell

Social cognition is the cognitive processes that influence social behavior. Learning more about this perspective offers insights into how other people shape our behaviors and choices. It also plays a role in understanding how individual cognitions affect how we perceive and respond to others.

7 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Arioli M, Crespi C, Canessa N.Social cognition through the lens of cognitive and clinical neuroscience.Biomed Res Int. 2018;2018:4283427. doi:10.1155/2018/4283427Kaneko A, Asaoka Y, Lee YA, Goto Y.Cognitive and affective processes associated with social biases.Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2021;24(8):645-655. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyab022Moll H, Meltzoff AN.How does it look? Level 2 perspective-taking at 36 months of age. Child Dev. 2011;82(2):661-73. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01571.xSchaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, Adolphs R.Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind.Trends Cogn Sci (Regul Ed).2015;19(2):65-72. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.007Dickerson BC.Dysfunction of social cognition and behavior.Continuum (Minneap Minn). 2015;21(3 Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry):660-677. doi:10.1212/01.CON.0000466659.05156.1dLegare CH.The development of cumulative cultural learning.Annu Rev Dev Psychol. 2019;1(1):119-147. doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084848Kim D, Hommel B.Social cognition 2.0: Toward mechanistic theorizing[published correction appears in Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 05;11:41].Front Psychol. 2019;10:2643. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643

7 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Arioli M, Crespi C, Canessa N.Social cognition through the lens of cognitive and clinical neuroscience.Biomed Res Int. 2018;2018:4283427. doi:10.1155/2018/4283427Kaneko A, Asaoka Y, Lee YA, Goto Y.Cognitive and affective processes associated with social biases.Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2021;24(8):645-655. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyab022Moll H, Meltzoff AN.How does it look? Level 2 perspective-taking at 36 months of age. Child Dev. 2011;82(2):661-73. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01571.xSchaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, Adolphs R.Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind.Trends Cogn Sci (Regul Ed).2015;19(2):65-72. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.007Dickerson BC.Dysfunction of social cognition and behavior.Continuum (Minneap Minn). 2015;21(3 Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry):660-677. doi:10.1212/01.CON.0000466659.05156.1dLegare CH.The development of cumulative cultural learning.Annu Rev Dev Psychol. 2019;1(1):119-147. doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084848Kim D, Hommel B.Social cognition 2.0: Toward mechanistic theorizing[published correction appears in Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 05;11:41].Front Psychol. 2019;10:2643. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Arioli M, Crespi C, Canessa N.Social cognition through the lens of cognitive and clinical neuroscience.Biomed Res Int. 2018;2018:4283427. doi:10.1155/2018/4283427Kaneko A, Asaoka Y, Lee YA, Goto Y.Cognitive and affective processes associated with social biases.Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2021;24(8):645-655. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyab022Moll H, Meltzoff AN.How does it look? Level 2 perspective-taking at 36 months of age. Child Dev. 2011;82(2):661-73. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01571.xSchaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, Adolphs R.Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind.Trends Cogn Sci (Regul Ed).2015;19(2):65-72. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.007Dickerson BC.Dysfunction of social cognition and behavior.Continuum (Minneap Minn). 2015;21(3 Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry):660-677. doi:10.1212/01.CON.0000466659.05156.1dLegare CH.The development of cumulative cultural learning.Annu Rev Dev Psychol. 2019;1(1):119-147. doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084848Kim D, Hommel B.Social cognition 2.0: Toward mechanistic theorizing[published correction appears in Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 05;11:41].Front Psychol. 2019;10:2643. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643

Arioli M, Crespi C, Canessa N.Social cognition through the lens of cognitive and clinical neuroscience.Biomed Res Int. 2018;2018:4283427. doi:10.1155/2018/4283427

Kaneko A, Asaoka Y, Lee YA, Goto Y.Cognitive and affective processes associated with social biases.Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2021;24(8):645-655. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyab022

Moll H, Meltzoff AN.How does it look? Level 2 perspective-taking at 36 months of age. Child Dev. 2011;82(2):661-73. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01571.x

Schaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, Adolphs R.Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind.Trends Cogn Sci (Regul Ed).2015;19(2):65-72. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.007

Dickerson BC.Dysfunction of social cognition and behavior.Continuum (Minneap Minn). 2015;21(3 Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry):660-677. doi:10.1212/01.CON.0000466659.05156.1d

Legare CH.The development of cumulative cultural learning.Annu Rev Dev Psychol. 2019;1(1):119-147. doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084848

Kim D, Hommel B.Social cognition 2.0: Toward mechanistic theorizing[published correction appears in Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 05;11:41].Front Psychol. 2019;10:2643. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643

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