Social cognition: how our mind works in social situations

Let's see what social cognition is and what psychological processes it studies in humans and other animals.

Human behavior depends very much on each situation. One of the issues studied by psychology is that of social cognition..

We will try to go deeper into this field in order to understand what is its relevance and what interesting insights it is bringing to psychology about a very important part of our behaviors and cognitions, as well as all the processes behind it.

What is social cognition?

Social cognition is the part of psychology that studies how humans deal with social situations from a scientific point of view.. That is, it tries to explain the mental processes that make us behave as we do with our peers and even with other living beings, especially those with whom we have some kind of bond, such as pets.

Social cognition would therefore be a branch within social psychology. Within this area, the methods of cognitive psychology would be used as well as the knowledge provided by the theory of information processing to analyze the thought processes that are hidden behind each psychological phenomenon of social dye.

Within this category, there are several processes that are of interest and that therefore make up the field of study of social cognition. They would be those that have to do with how we perceive social stimuli, the judgments we make about them, how we remember them, what effects social relations have on the way we process data, and how we process them..

It would also look at the behavioral level repercussions among subjects that have all these prior thought processes. All these factors are taken into account for the different levels existing in social psychology, i.e., that which concerns the person with himself (intrapersonal), the person with others (interpersonal), the group with himself (intragroup) and the group with others (intergroup).

The functioning of social cognition

Social cognition is a fundamental instrument of our psychology, as it encompasses a series of procedures thanks to which people are able to make sense of all the information that reaches us in the social field and, more importantly, it allows us to know the right way to behave in front of other people.

That is why it is essential to have a system that automatically collects all the indicators that we find in the information obtained from the environment.. These stimuli are the ones that trigger automatic reactions, which will go in one line or another depending on the person's own personality, but also on the emotions he/she is feeling, the prejudices and stereotypes that arise and his/her own attitude towards the matter.

But in addition to these automatic reactions, behind social cognition there is also a deliberate reasoning of information about situations with peers. In this analysis, the subject's mind takes into account both the emotional context and the thoughts and even the intentionality of the other with the specific interaction that is taking place.

The process of social cognition also feeds back on itselfThe process of social cognition also feeds back, because with each new social experience that the person has, he/she amplifies his/her knowledge and therefore learns and optimizes his/her responses in the future.

The face as an element of social interaction

If we stop for a second to think about a typical social interaction, we will quickly realize that, normally, one of the key elements is the perception of the face of others. Throughout the entire interaction, if eye contact between both people is possible, there will be a constant feedback process between one and the other due to the information that both emit and collect.

Through facial gesticulation, both conscious and unconscious, we are transmitting our emotions and our intentionality to the other person during the interaction.. Sometimes this process is done with very obvious gestures but also with much more subtle changes, and can even occur precisely through a lack of such gestures.

All these behaviors are valuable information that the other subject picks up immediately, processes and in turn generates a series of behaviors (gestures) that will be returned to the initial person. This process occurs in a continuous and bidirectional manner until the interaction ends. It is evident, therefore, that the recognition of facial expressions is key to social cognition.

Of course, although the bulk of the information comes from the face, these signals are in addition to those of language, both in terms of the content itself and the tone of voice used, the words chosen, the inflections and every detail in general of all those that make up the message. Likewise, body posture and non-verbal language will also provide valuable information.

It is clear that, although this is an automatic process, not everyone has the same ability to correctly and accurately analyze all the information that the other individual is providing with just a gesture. with just a gesture. Therefore, people who show greater sensitivity in this task will have a clear social advantage over those who have more difficulty in this task.

Those who, thanks to their development in social cognition, have a greater ability to analyze the emotions and intentions of others, will be able to gain a better understanding of others, anticipate their feelings and reactions and even guide the behavior of others in their favor. This is one of the qualities of great leaders.

Social cognition in dogs

Social cognition has been studied extensively in humans, but it is still a rather unexplored terrain in other species..... However, there are some studies, such as the one that Dr. Emily Bray and her collaborators conducted in 2020 with Labrador and golden retrievers, breeds generally used to help people with various impairments in their abilities.

In that study, a series of experiments were conducted with puppies of about nine weeks of age in order to learn more about the thought and emotional processes that take place in these animals in certain social situations, compared to results previously obtained with adult dogs in other studies.

One of the questions Bray asked about social cognition in dogs was whether their understanding of certain human cues was innate or learned. The results seem to yield the following conclusions.

First, it appears that certain social skills appear in these animals at a very early age.. These abilities, moreover, appear to be innate, since the dogs had not yet had interactions with humans of the type sought in the experiments, nor is it likely that they learned them during the experiments, since they appeared from the beginning of the studies. Another of the most striking findings is that these grades also appear to be heritable.

The subjects that were more skilled at certain tasks were the offspring of adult dogs that were indeed more skilled at the behaviors the researchers were looking for. This finding supports the idea that the potential for social cognition can be artificially selected to make breeds more adept at this particular task, as indeed it is.as in fact occurs.

The types of exercises to which the puppies in the study were subjected in order to reach these conclusions were basically four tests in which their social cognition was evaluated. In the first of these, the researcher presented the animal with two containers of food, at an identical distance, but pointed to one of them with her hand. The dogs tended to choose that bowl with a higher probability.

The second test was similar to the first, but instead of pointing, the researcher placed an object in front of one of the stimuli. The dog chose significantly more often the one that had been marked.

The third exercise simply tested the puppy's reaction to the presence of the human, another way of testing its social cognition.

Finally, each dog was presented with an exercise in which there was food in a closed container, which it could not open in any way. Es decir, se trataba de un ejercicio sin solución, en el que se observaba la reacción del animal. En este caso se comprobó que los cachorros buscaban el contacto visual con la investigadora, en busca de instrucciones sobre cómo proceder.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Bray, E.E., Gruen, M.E., Gnanadesikan, G.E., Horschler, D.J., Levy, K.M., Kennedy, B.S., Hare, B.A.,MacLean, E.L. (2020). Cognitive characteristics of 8-to 10-week-old assistance dog puppies. Animal Behaviour. Elsevier.
• Fiske, S.T., Taylor, S.E. (1991). McGraw-Hill series in social psychology. Social cognition. Mcgraw-Hill Book Company.
• Flavell, J.H., Miller, P.H. (1998). Social cognition. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 2. Cognition, perception, and language. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• Frith, C.D. (2008). Social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The Royal Society Publishing.