What is social neuroscience?

Social Neuroscience Definition and Examples

Social neuroscience studies how biological processes relate to social behavior and thought. Its questions include how we understand other people, respond to social influence, regulate emotion, and form relationships.

What researchers study

The field examines neural, hormonal, and genetic processes alongside behavior. Examples include theory of mind—understanding that other people can have different beliefs—and the context-dependent social effects of oxytocin.

Mirror neurons respond during an action and during observation of an action. Their role in action processing is studied, but broad claims that they explain empathy or the understanding of intentions remain contested.

Theory of mind

How does someone distinguish another person’s belief from what is actually true? Researchers can compare responses to stories requiring that distinction with responses to stories that require other kinds of reasoning.

Emotion regulation and social influence

How does reinterpreting an upsetting interaction relate to a change in emotion? How does learning another person’s opinion relate to a change in one’s own judgment? These questions connect a specified task or social event with behavioral, experiential, and biological measures.

Relationships and social context

Researchers also ask how connection, trust, and relationship history relate to biological processes. A hormone’s association with a social response does not make it a universal cause of trust; the person and situation remain part of the question.

How it is studied

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Usually measures blood-oxygenation-related signals as indirect indicators of neural activity.
Electroencephalography (EEG) (EEG): Records electrical activity through electrodes on the scalp, allowing researchers to examine timing.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): Uses magnetic stimulation to investigate how changing brain activity affects task performance.
Physiological and behavioral measures: Include heart rate, skin conductance, task performance, and reports of experience.

A task example: reasoning about beliefs

In Saxe and Kanwisher’s 2003 fMRI study, one experiment compared stories about a character’s false belief with stories about an outdated physical representation, such as a photograph. Participants answered two-choice questions about the stories while the scanner recorded blood-oxygenation-related signals. The researchers also recorded behavioral responses, including response times.

Regions near the temporoparietal junction showed a larger BOLD response for false-belief than false-photograph stories. The comparison helped distinguish reasoning about a mind from reasoning about an inaccurate representation more generally. It did not show that the region acts alone, read a participant’s beliefs directly, or establish a method for improving social skills.

Applications and their limits

Research questions can concern mental health, learning, teamwork, or interaction with technology. For each proposed use, ask what social behavior was measured, what the biological measure adds, and whether the findings transfer to the intended setting.

Combining these methods can connect social questions with biological evidence. But finding a neural correlate is different from demonstrating an effective treatment, lesson, or management technique.