Conversation
When people use language together in informal social interactions, whether spoken or signed, researchers often describe it as conversation. While having a conversation can be a social activity in its own right, the term also applies to interactive language that accompanies everyday practical activit
Cooperation
Cooperation, defined as an action in which an individual incurs a cost to benefit others, is seen in many human activities such as food sharing, childcare, infrastructure building, resource defense, and warfare. Cooperation presents an evolutionary conundrum because helping someone at a personal cos
Moral Development
Moral views about what is right, wrong, good, and bad change across the lifespan and across history. Infants who hit, bite, or kick their caregivers typically grow into children who condemn most forms of violence. Societies that once accepted slavery and torture now prohibit both, and their values k
Morality
Morality concerns what is—or is considered to be—right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, proper or improper, and virtuous or vicious. It typically refers to these evaluative aspects of human actions, dispositions, and relationships. However, although many theoretical frameworks for morality exi
Self
You are a self: the kind of thing that is a who, with all the dignity and responsibility afforded by that status, the kind of thing that has a distinctive perspective on events—on your past as you remember it, your future as you anticipate it, and your present as you experience it. Your grasp of the
Social Cognitive Neuroscience
People spend a lot of their brain energy thinking about people. Social cognitive neuroscience is the field of research that investigates how this works. Research in this field asks questions about the brain regions people use when thinking about people, the computations that occur in these brain reg
Social Identity
Social identity is defined as the part of an individual’s self-concept that they derive from their membership in social groups. Unlike personal identity, which emphasizes those aspects of self that are unique to the individual, social identity focuses on the collective aspect of self—as derived from
Social Learning
Social learning broadly refers to learning that occurs through the learner’s social experiences, such as observing or interacting with others. In contrast, asocial or individual learning refers to learning that takes place in the absence of social input, such as through the exploration of one’s phys
The Interaction Engine
The interaction engine is a label for the specialized capacities involved in human social interaction. The interaction engine comprises a suite of specific abilities that enable communication, for example, the capacity for rapid conversational turn-taking using multimodal signals, with systematic co
Theory of Mind
Theory of mind refers to our everyday ability to understand how mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions shape our own and others’ actions. Each day we construe people as engaging in actions they believe will get them what they want. Seeing a woman search expectantly through her purse, I