Social Cognitive Neuroscience: A Review Of Core Processes

ANRV296-PS58-11ARI17 November 20061:27Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007.58:259-289. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgby UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA on 08/22/07. For personal use only.UNDERSTANDING OTHERSAlthough social cognition has come to encompass a broad range of mental processes, in thestrictest sense, social cognition is about understanding other people. In some ways, otherpeople are like objects that have various physical characteristics, but unlike objects, otherpeople have minds and experiences that arenot directly open to inspection. There are atleast two ways to try to understand the experience and the mind of another. One of theseways is addressed by work on “theory of mind”(Perner & Wimmer 1985). Theory of mindresearch examines the ability to propositionally reason from one’s theory of how mindsoperate and how social situations affect mental states in general, in order to represent themental state of a particular individual given aparticular situation. Thus, our knowledge ofsocial rules and norms mediates these insights(Gilbert & Malone 1995). However, there arealso times when our insight feels unmediated,when it feels like we are seeing the world directly through another person’s eyes and feeling the world through their visceral reactions.In this case, we feel like we have an insider’sperspective on what it is like to be that person. The following sections review the neuralbases of these two ways of knowing others.Representing the Minds of OthersRepresenting psychological states of others. The ability to represent the contents ofanother’s mind consists of two components:(a) the recognition that, unlike other objectsin the world, people have minds with thoughtsand feelings, and (b) the development of a theory regarding how other people’s minds operate and respond to events in their environment. Research on theory of mind (Perner &Wimmer 1985) has found that by age fournearly all children develop the ability to assess the mental states of others. This process may build upon the capacity to recognize biological motion and goal-directedaction that emerges by around six monthsof age (Woodward 1998). From childhoodthrough adulthood, increasingly complex anddomain-specific theories form (Reeder 1993),although this increasing sophistication doesnot always yield greater accuracy (Gilbert &Malone 1995).Neuroimaging studies of theory of mindhave typically shown activations in DMPFC(BA 8/9), posterior superior temporal sulcus(pSTS) in LTC, and the temporal poles inLTC (for review, see Frith & Frith 2003).Research suggests that pSTS is particularlysensitive to biological motion (Allison et al.2000) and that the temporal poles maybe associated with perception of familiarindividuals (Sugiura et al. 2001). Frith &Frith (2003) suggest that unlike LTC, whichis sensitive to external visual cues, DMPFCis specifically associated with mentalizing,which is overt thought about the internalmental states of others. Additionally, Saxeet al. (2004) have suggested that the temporoparietal junction in LPAC is distinct fromnearby pSTS and is also involved in theory ofmind processes. Finally, both neuroimagingand neuropsychological investigations havesuggested that right ventrolateral prefrontalcortex (VLPFC), a subregion within LPFC,helps to inhibit one’s own experience duringthe consideration of another’s state of mind(Samson et al. 2005, Vogeley et al. 2001).These findings are consistent with developmental research indicating that theory ofmind development is linked to advances ingeneral inhibitory control (Carlson & Moses2001). It is plausible that a failure of thisprocess in adults may play a central role innaı̈ve realism (Griffin & Ross 1991, Proninet al. 2004), whereby individuals assumethat others see the world the same way thatthey do and have difficulty acknowledgingalternative viewpoints (see Lieberman 2005).Given the early development of sensitivityto biological motion and the fact that adultsperceive biological motion without effort, onewould expect this to be a relatively automaticprocess. Alternatively, explicit propositionalthought about the content of another’s mindwww.annualreviews.org Social Cognitive Neuroscience263

ARI17 November 20061:27would seem to fall squarely within the domainof controlled processes. One study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)confirms these intuitions, as cognitive loadwas found to diminish DMPFC responses, butnot pSTS or temporal pole responses, duringa mentalizing task (den Ouden et al. 2005).Another study suggests that DMPFC is activeduring covert mentalizing processes (Germanet al. 2004); however, the covert condition inthis study appears to require more overt mentalizing than does the control condition.It is also interesting to note that the onlymedial activation (DMPFC) associated withtheory of mind processes is associated with theinternally-focused process of considering thecontents of another person’s mind. Sensitivity to biological motion and person familiarityin lateral regions (pSTS and temporal poles,respectively) are both externally-focused processes that do not require consideration of atarget’s internal states.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007.58:259-289. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgby UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA on 08/22/07. For personal use only.ANRV296-PS58-11Representing psychological traits of others. Beyond knowing how the typical person would respond psychologically to particular events, individuals are also interested inidentifying the enduring psychological traitsof others. Individuals use their theories ofhow people with different kinds of dispositions behave in order to infer targets’ dispositions from their behavior (Gilbert 1989). Arecent fMRI study of dispositional attribution(Harris et al. 2005) found that when individuals read behavioral descriptions diagnostic fordrawing dispositional inferences about a target (Kelley 1967), both DMPFC and pSTSwere more active.Another study (Mitchell et al. 2004) foundthat trait-relevant action descriptions (e.g.,“he refused to loan his extra blanket to theother campers”) shown with a target face ledto DMPFC activity only when subjects hadan explicit goal to form an impression of thetarget. This is the first study to hold constantthe relevance of stimulus information for understanding the mental states or traits of another and instead manipulate whether or not264Liebermanthe subject has the goal of understanding another mind.Given that controlled processes that support trait attribution should only occur whenthe intention to make sense of another person is present, the study by Mitchell et al.(2004) suggests that DMPFC contributes tocontrolled processing aspects of trait attribution. Alternatively, pSTS was active in response to the action descriptions regardlessof the subject’s encoding goal ( J.P. Mitchell,personal communication), a finding that suggests that this response reflects automatic social cognition. A similar dissociation has alsobeen observed between DMPFC and the temporal poles (Mason et al. 2004; M.F. Mason,personal communication). Both of these results are consistent with the previously described study by den Ouden et al. (2005) thatexamined the automatic and controlled components of theory of mind processes. Additionally, these findings are consistent with theinternal/external distinction observed in theory of mind research, as DMPFC was associated with encoding the psychological traitsof a target (internal), whereas pSTS and thetemporal poles were activated in response todescriptions of observable behavior (external).Experiencing the Mental States ofOthersEmpathy. This second way of knowingothers is far more embodied than logical(Merleau-Ponty 1962) and is more appropriately referred to as empathy than as theoryof mind. Empathy has been associated withincreased helping and social support (Batson1991); however, this consequence of empathyrequires the individual to maintain an awareness that the emotional response is an embodied simulation of another person’s experience,not to be confused with one’s own experience.Thus, the two criteria for empathic responsesare (a) an emotional and experiential responsethat approximates that of the target and (b) anawareness and identification of this emotionas referring to the target’s experience.

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007.58:259-289. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgby UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA on 08/22/07. For personal use only.ANRV296-PS58-11ARI17 November 20061:27A number of studies have now addressedthe first of these criteria. Wicker et al.(2003) found that two regions associatedwith affective processing, the anterior insulaand dACC, were activated both when individuals smelled disgusting odors themselvesand when they watched videoclips of others smelling these odors. Similarly, a numberof studies have observed activation in thesetwo regions when individuals either felt physical pain or observed another feeling physical pain (Botvinick et al. 2005, Jackson et al.2005, Morrison et al. 2004, Singer et al. 2004),and the strength of these responses correlatedwith self-reported trait empathy (Singer et al.2004). Alternatively, Farrow et al. (2001) observed greater activity in VMPFC, MPFC,DMPFC, and MPAC when individuals wereasked to make empathic judgments relativeto other forms of social reasoning. Similarly,Botvinick et al. (2005) found greater VMPFCactivity when observing another’s pain butnot when feeling pain oneself, which suggeststhat this region might contribute to the additional processes invoked by empathy over direct feeling. Finally, in two neuropsychological investigations of patients with differentcortical lesions (Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2003,2005), VMPFC damage was found to be thestrongest predictor of empathic deficits.Interestingly, unlike theory of mind processes that logically proceed from externallyfocused processing of situational informationand observed

theory of mind, empathy, emotion regulation, self-control, mirror neurons, social cognition, social neuroscience, automaticity, neuroeconomics Abstract Social cognitive neuroscience examines social phenomena and pro-cesses using cognitive neuroscience research tools such as neu-roimaging and neuropsychology. This review examines four broad