Social cognition: a multi level analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates the construct of social cognition from an interdisciplinary perspective blending social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. This perspective argues for the inclusion of processes used to decode and encode the self, other people and interpersonal knowledge in the definition of social cognition. The neural modularity of social cognition is considered. The paper concludes by considering a number of challenges for social cognition research including questions of accuracy and the influence of motivation and bias in social cognitive processing.