What is Social Cognition?
Social cognition is a topic within psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations, and on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions. It represents the ability to perceive, identify, and interpret information from the social world. More technically, social cognition refers to how people deal with information about conspecifics (members of the same species) or even across species (such as pets), and includes four stages: encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing.
Social cognition comprises four core domains: (i) emotion processing, (ii) social perception, (iii) theory of mind/mental state attribution (ToM), and (iv) attributional style/bias. Theory of mind—the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intentions, emotions) to others and to recognize that those mental states may differ from one’s own—is central to social cognition. Empathy and compassion are also central; while empathy enables the sharing of others’ emotions, compassion involves a feeling of warmth and concern for others.
Origins & Lineage
Early forays into social cognition research can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The leading figures of early social cognition, active from the 1940s to the early 1950s, included Solomon Asch, Jerome Bruner, Egon Brunswik, Leon Festinger, Fritz Heider, Kurt Lewin, and Martin Scheerer. Many of them, such as Asch, Brunswik, Festinger, Heider, and Lewin, either belonged to or maintained close ties with the Gestalt school.
Social psychology researchers of the 1970s and 1980s were inspired by the cognitive revolution and launched the field of social cognition to understand how cognitive approaches could advance understanding of social processes. Social cognition came to prominence with the rise of cognitive psychology in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is now the dominant model and approach in mainstream social psychology. Social cognition emerged as an attempt to answer social-psychological questions by adopting experimental techniques and theoretical concepts from cognitive psychology.
How It’s Practiced
Social cognition is not a practice but a set of cognitive capacities. These abilities develop naturally throughout childhood and can be refined through intentional cultivation. Dispositional mindfulness has been related to several social cognition outcomes, and research hypothesizes that dispositional mindfulness may enhance performance across several social cognition domains, with such enhancement potentially promoted by meditation practice.
Research suggests that mindfulness can induce changes in the social domain, such as enhancing emotional connection to others, prosocial behavior, and empathy, yet very little is known about the effects of mindfulness on social cognition. Contemplative traditions have long emphasized compassion, empathy, and understanding others’ perspectives as core ethical dimensions. Modern neuroscience now maps these capacities onto specific neural networks and cognitive processes.
Practical cultivation occurs indirectly: through loving-kindness meditation, compassion practices, contemplative inquiry into the nature of self and other, and mindful attention to social interactions. Previous research has demonstrated improvements in both social and non-social decision-making among meditators, likely due to enhanced emotion regulation, empathy, and cognitive control.
Social Cognition Today
Contemporary seekers encounter social cognition research primarily through:
Mindfulness-Based Programs: Studies compare long-term practitioners, subjects who completed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs, and controls on interoceptive sensitivity, emotion recognition, empathy, and theory of mind.
Compassion Training: Kindness-based contemplative practices are increasingly employed by clinicians and cognitive researchers to enhance prosocial emotions, social cognitive skills, and well-being.
Neuroscience Studies: Brain imaging reveals which neural networks activate during empathy, theory of mind, and emotional recognition. Research hypothesizes that contemplative practice involves reorganization of social and emotional processing in the brain, leading to an approach based in social and affective neuroscience.
Retreats and Workshops: Many meditation centers now frame traditional practices through the lens of social-emotional development, explicitly connecting ancient wisdom with contemporary science.
Social cognition transcends the boundaries of psychology, finding relevance in fields like sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, and economics, underscoring its universal importance in understanding human behavior.
Common Misconceptions
It is not a spiritual practice: Social cognition is a scientific construct describing how the brain processes social information. It is studied, not practiced. What spiritual seekers practice are techniques (meditation, compassion training) that enhance social-cognitive capacities.
It is not synonymous with empathy: Empathy is one domain within social cognition. Empathy operates on two levels: cognitive empathy (understanding what another person thinks or intends) and affective empathy (sharing or resonating with what another person feels). Both are rooted in social cognitive processes.
Enhanced social cognition is not enlightenment: While contemplative traditions value compassion and insight into interconnection, improved performance on social cognition tests does not equal spiritual realization. The two may correlate but represent different orders of understanding.
It is not purely cognitive: Theory of mind and empathy both rely on networks associated with making inferences about mental states of others, but empathic responding requires the additional recruitment of networks involved in emotional processing.
How to Begin
For Scientific Understanding: Read “Social Cognition” (2013) by Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, the foundational textbook in the field. Explore research from the Mind & Life Institute, which bridges contemplative traditions and cognitive neuroscience.
For Practical Development: Enroll in an evidence-based Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) program. These eight-week courses cultivate present-moment awareness, which research suggests enhances social-cognitive capacities.
For Deeper Practice: Explore loving-kindness (metta) meditation and compassion (karuna) practices from Buddhist traditions, or Centering Prayer from Christian contemplative lineages. Centering Prayer is a widely practiced form of Christian contemplation. These practices explicitly cultivate goodwill toward self and others.
For Neuroscience Context: Follow the work of Richard Davidson (Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Tania Singer (formerly of the Max Planck Institute), and the Mind & Life Institute’s research collaborations between contemplatives and scientists.