Social cognition: Foundations, current formulations and future perspectives

Abstract

Social Cognition emerged in the mid 70’s as a generic conceptual approach to understand and explain how people make sense of themselves and of others and how such perceptions explain, predict and shape their social behavior. This new approach was based on a well­?established theoretical research tradition in Social Psychology and integrates ideas and methods from Cognitive Psychology to elucidate the cognitive determinants of social phenomena. Adopting a social information­?processing paradigm, socio cognitive approaches explored the cognitive structures and processes that underlie social perception and social behavior. More recently, this discipline has integrated new contributions which emphasize the emotional, motivational, bodily and situational constrains to cognition and behavior and has benefited from theoretical and technological developments in social cognitive neuroscience. The literature reviewed here also highlights an interesting paradox that results from the integrative efforts of socially situated cognition and the simplifying nature of the neurosciences.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v25i1.282