How Does the Brain Infer Hidden Social Structures?

Carolyn Parkinson; Meng Du

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.002

How Does the Brain Infer Hidden Social Structures?

Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Jul;24(7):497-498. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.002. Epub 2020 May 22.

Authors

Carolyn Parkinson¹, Meng Du²

Affiliations

¹ University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Psychology, 1285 Psychology Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; UCLA Brain Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Electronic address: cparkinson@ucla.edu.
² University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Psychology, 1285 Psychology Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

PMID: 32451240
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.002

Abstract

Many everyday thoughts and actions are shaped not only by our direct relationships with others, but also by our knowledge of relations between third-parties. Lau et al. recently demonstrated how knowledge of one type of social relation - interpersonal similarity - shapes cognition and behavior, and shed light on the neural basis of such phenomena.

Keywords: latent structure learning; social categorization; social cognition; social inference; social neuroscience.

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MeSH terms

Brain
Cognition
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Social Behavior*
Social Learning*