Perspective taking
Hold another’s visual or epistemic viewpoint.
Functionally, social cognition predicts what others will do next and updates those predictions when norms or cues change.
Network percentages below are editorial teaching emphasis, not BOLD percentages from one study.
Processes
Emotion recognition
Map facial and vocal cues to affect categories.
Intention attribution
Parse goals behind ambiguous actions.
Norm learning
Update expectations of fairness and etiquette.
Reputation tracking
Remember who cooperates and who defects.
Self–other distinction
Keep shared affect from becoming identity fusion.
Networks
Mentalising (mPFC–TPJ)82
STS social perception70
Amygdala salience55
Orbitofrontal value64
Default mode overlap40
Mentalising (mPFC–TPJ)
Belief and trait inference under ambiguity.
STS social perception
Dynamic cue decoding from faces and bodies.
Amygdala salience
Priority tagging for affectively charged social events.
Orbitofrontal value
Social reward, regret and reputation-sensitive choice.
Default mode overlap
Narrative self and other simulation at rest and in story.
Examples
Reading a friend’s silence
Infer hurt vs fatigue without explicit words.
Negotiating a queue
Norms, eye contact and reputation in seconds.
Detecting sarcasm online
Cue-poor text forces heavier mentalising load.
Joint attention with a toddler
Gaze following scaffolds later theory of mind.
Compare radar scores with Emotion and Executive Function pages.
Sources & research
- Social cognition in humansConcise map of human social-cognitive processes.DOI
- The social brain: neural basis of social knowledgeSystems overview of the social brain.DOI
- Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"?Landmark false-belief study in autism research.DOI
Keep exploring
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