The history of social psychology illustrates a theme of the book. The field has incorporated three levels of analysis:

Researchers who study social cognition and the brain face two main challenges. One is figuring out how to study the brain. Technological advances help to meet this challenge. Researchers commonly use brain-imaging techniques, especially fMRI (see Chapters 2 and 3), to identify areas of the brain that are most active during social thinking.

The other challenge involves social cognition itself. Different types of social cognition may activate different regions of the brain. To relate psychological experience to biological mechanisms, then, researchers cannot just study the brain. They first must distinguish among different types of social thinking. The following distinction has proven valuable (Van Overwalle, 2009):

Brain research indicates that different parts of the brain are active during these two different types of thinking (Van Overwalle, 2009). So let’s consider them one at a time.

If you see someone being injured, you wince—even though you’re not the one in pain. If you’re watching a horse race and cheering on a horse and jockey, you lean forward in your chair and may yell encouragement to the horse—even though you’re not the one riding it. It is as if your brain is creating, in you, a simulated version of the experiences of the person you are observing.

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Research indicates that this is exactly what your brain is doing. When you observe someone else, your brain simulates the other person’s ongoing experiences (Gallese, Eagle, & Migone, 2007). It does this by automatically activating some of the same neural systems that are active in the other person’s brain. The brain regions that simulate other people’s activity are called a mirror system (Gallese et al., 2007; Rizzolatti et al., 2001; Van Overwalle, 2009) because they reflect the observed actions of others.

As also discussed in Chapter 7, the mirror system—or “mirror neurons”—was discovered in research with monkeys (Rizzolatti et al., 2001). When one monkey observed a second monkey grasping a piece of food, brain systems that control the motor movement of grasping were active in both monkeys. The observer’s brain simulated (“mirrored”) the observed action.

The mirror system helps organisms to not only imitate others, but also understand them. By simulating actions, the brain creates feelings in the observer that mimic those of the observed organism. This enables the observer to understand the ongoing experiences of the organism (monkey or person) being observed.

A meta-analysis of more than 200 fMRI studies (Van Overwalle, 2009) indicates that this mirroring function is executed, at least in part, in a region of the brain known as the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). As the name suggests, the TPJ is at the junction of two lobes of the brain: the temporal and parietal lobes (Figure 12.9). Action in this region enables people to infer other people’s goals and intentions for action—to judge, in essence, their reasons for action (as discussed earlier in the section on attribution).

Evidence of the TPJ’s role comes from studies in which participants think about other people’s behavior while the participants’ brains are scanned. The TPJ is not particularly active when participants consider the background characteristics of others, such as where they grew up or what job they have. But it is highly active when participants contemplate other people’s behavior. This is particularly true for unusual behavior (e.g., learning that a person has joined a cult) that prompts extra thinking about the other person’s thoughts and feelings (Saxe & Wexler, 2005).

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When people think about enduring characteristics of others—long-lasting traits and abilities—a different region of brain is active. It is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC; Van Overwalle, 2009). The mPFC is located—again, as the name suggests—in a central region of the frontal lobes of the brain.

The mPFC is highly interconnected with other brain regions. This may explain its role in judgments about people’s enduring traits. To make a trait judgment, you have to integrate different types of information. For instance, if you see someone acting in a friendly manner, you can’t conclude that “she’s a friendly person” until you first consider her behavior in a variety of situations, and relate it also to the level of friendliness displayed by other people. A highly interconnected brain system such as the mPFC is able to take part in this integrative judgment (Van Overwalle, 2009).

Evidence of the mPFC’s role in social cognition comes from research in which participants saw pictures of people that were accompanied by statements (e.g., “He watched TV all day instead of looking for a job”; Mitchell et al., 2006). On different trials, participants were asked (1) to form an impression of the person’s psychological characteristics or (2) to engage in a memory task in which they remembered the order in which statements appeared. The mPFC was particularly active during impression formation (Figure 12.10).

Note that the mPFC and the TPJ are very different regions of the brain. The differences in brain research correspond, then, to the psychological differences between these two aspects of social thinking: thinking about someone’s ongoing experiences or their enduring characteristics.

Research findings such as this display the rapid advances made in the field of social neuroscience. Not long ago, social psychologists never expected to be talking about the TPJ or the mPFC; theirs was a science of persons. Then—thanks to work in social cognition—it also became a science of the mind. Today, it is an integrated science of person, mind, and brain.

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