Social Cognition: An Introduction

[These are the notes I used to prepare for a talk at Defrag, November 17 2010, formerly titled Social Cognition, From Defrag. Now heavily modified and extended.]

It probably is no surprise to you that all known human cultures have language, music, and dance. And yes, puns. Even deaf people have puns. These are human universals, along with a bunch of others.

If you leave a child alone — perhaps living in the woods with wolves — they will not learn language. But if you leave two children alone on a desert island, they will create language. One that only they can speak. But they will not come up with algebra or penmanship.

It turns out that we are innately talkative, but innumerate and illiterate. It takes decades — and the weight of a literate and numerate culture — to pound reading and writing into kid’s heads, and thousands of years to invent mathematics and rhetoric.

There are many universals that come naturally to all of us. Among these are a variety of capabilities that we rely on, every day, almost without thinking, that are based on our connection to and understanding of one another in social groups. And it turns out that many of these are triggered by social stimuli.

I’ve been looking into recent research on social cognition — the way that our connections to others influence our thinking, values, and capabilities — and learned that being social is at the core of our being, more so than we formerly imagined. Down into our DNA and the biochemistry of our brains, below our rationality and conscious self-awareness, we are as tightly connected to others as we are to our own senses.



Sometimes people talk about social intelligence, like emotional intelligence, but the notion of social cognition is more general, and doesn’t bring along the onus of exceptionalism like social intelligence does.

Recent studies on group effectiveness by Anita Woolley and others have shown that adding smarter people into groups does not lead to better decision making. Social sensitivity, not IQ, is apparently the key driver of increased group effectiveness. This sensitivity is all about theory of mind: being able to understand the state of mind of others in the group, and to be more than aware of it, but concerned that others worries and hopes are expressed and balanced.

Turns out social sensitivity is strongly correlated with the proportion of women in any group, who innately are more socially sensitive, on average, than men.

One direct measure of effective groups is a more balanced conversational style, for example, with more people having a chance to speak, as opposed to what goes on in groups with too many socially ‘deaf’ people in a group.



Reynol Junco conducted a study at Lock Haven University that required a group of students to use Twitter as part of their class work: tweets on others’ presentations, or as a social note taking tool when researching. This led to higher social engagement and a GPA increase of one half grade on average. Imagine if they used it in all classes? Or if the whole school used it?

What might be the root cause? Could it be higher levels of engagement with others leads to better understanding of the materials? Or are there more factors?

Oscar Ybarra’s research suggests that friendliness might be involved in these sorts of performance improvements. He found that simply by engaging in brief (10 minute or so) conversations with others instructed to ‘get to know each other’ led to significant improvements in performance in challenging tasks, like interviews. When these tasks were proceeded by confrontational discussions there was no improvement in performance.

So, management and individuals should have every incentive to create and work in environments that spark friendly sorts of interactions, where people are inclined to try to learn more about each other — to try to create closer bonds — than in the opposite sorts of settings.

Maybe that is in part what Junco’s students did in the Lock Haven University study.



Robert Meade’s research has shown that people are happier at work when they feel they are making measured progress against well understood goals. If  people share their goals with others in an open fashion, and operate in a context where progress against tasks leads to shared feedback or other incentives, then they perceive time as passing more quickly AND are happier.

The connection between happiness and time flying is not well understood. Which causes the other? Or are they both the result of some change in brain chemistry?

In a sense, what’s the difference? But pragmatically, adoption of tools and techniques based on Meade’s observations should be a high priority of business, obviously.

My bet is that Meade’s time/happiness link is what is behind the adopt of streaming applications in general, and specifically in the business setting.



One last observation: Damon Centola has undertaken research that shows that behavioral changes are transmitted more quickly in denser networks. A company or a community where the members in general have more connections to others will be more likely to adopt new behaviors than in more  loosely connected networks.

So, if you are — for example — management in a company confronted with the need to change business practices to adapt to a changing marketplace, you would want to take steps to increase the connections among workers rather than simply offering incentives to make changes. And presumably you would want to have these denser networks in place as soon as possible, since we live in such changing times, where resilience is so essential.

Or you are the head of a school system’s nutrition program, trying to get kids to eat healthier foods, so you decide to put kids into groups and to share their progress with each other, strengthening their ties. Centola’s research suggests this would work better than just educating the kids individually.

Cognition is social, at the core, and much of what people do, or decide to do, is channeled and amplified through connection with others.

The research I summarized today all points in one direction: these findings all point to our ties to others, our connections, as the source of strength, happiness, values, and performance.

We need to build social tools with that in mind. These are not the side effects of tools, but their central purpose: to weave the fabric of culture.

I condense this to something like a mantra: I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections.

I will be undertaking a investigative project in 2011 digging into this sort of research, and its impacts on business and society. [Stay tuned.]