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Connecting the Social Dots

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Unifying Causality and Psychology

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Abstract

The chapter emphasizes the distinctiveness in humans of our extreme social skills and/or organization. It investigates the evolutionary and developmental origins of these skills. For example, are they innate, prepared, and core, or do they depend on gradual learning, for example, in imitation? The chapter includes work on social neuroscience, and emphasizes the frontalization process, as well as the mirror neuron system and the somatic marker hypothesis. Also, it refers to biobehavioral synchrony and physiological attunement that happens in the neonatal–parental embodied dance or intersubjectivity. Other more biological topics include the perception-action mechanism and supramodal perception. Generally, the models presented are quite biopsychosocial, including the “SOCIAL” model and ones of stress contagion and shared embodiment.

Other models in the chapter include the empirical/nativist enactivism one, and one involving an affective sharing device. In addition, the chapter includes the goal alignment and social normative models, as well as the prosocial construal and partner choice ones.

About evolution, the concepts reviewed include superorganism, cultural evolution, group selection, and cultural group selection, as well as gene-culture co-evolution. Some of the terms indicating the complexity of human social behavior include group mindedness, collective morality, collective intentionality, and hypercollaboration.

The proximal mechanisms involved in early social learning include not only imitation and parental practice but also factors such as emulation and overimitation. The most intriguing research is with infants, and this includes work on biobehavioral synchrony, even in heart rate coordination, and work with puppets who are helpers or hinderers/ mean or nice, and infants responding to them (e.g., preferring not only helpers but also hinderers of hinderers). The chapter spans the full developmental range, and for adults, it refers to narrative/ self-autobiography/ identity, as well as the public good/ political ideology. Also, it includes research not only on humans but also on nonhuman primates. In this chapter on connecting the social dots, clearly, I had to consider many dots to connect.

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    Gerald Young

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Young, G. (2016). Connecting the Social Dots. In: Unifying Causality and Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24094-7_15

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