Social Cognition

For thousands of years there has been philosophical debate about what it is that makes humans different from other species of animals on Earth. Whether one believes that humans are just another step in the evolutionary process or descended from aliens, there is no denying that humans are different from other animals. Although many aspects of psychology, such as perception, learning, and memory, can be generalized across species, the field of social cognition deals exclusively with thoughts and behaviors that are (arguably) uniquely human. This is because social cognition is concerned with the mental processes that subserve people's understanding of both self and other individuals. By default, it takes a social agent to know one. For this reason, a great deal of social cognition research ...