How does cognition shape social relationships?

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.

Published: September 2018

AI Article Synopsis

  • The text explores how living in social groups drives the evolution of cognitive abilities, focusing on the role of cognition in social interactions.
  • It examines whether individual differences in cognitive skills, like memory and attention, impact social relationships and behavioral patterns.
  • The review suggests using social network analysis to investigate the complex, bi-directional relationship between sociality and cognitive abilities, emphasizing the need to understand individual cognitive variation.

Article Abstract

The requirements of living in social groups, and forming and maintaining social relationships are hypothesized to be one of the major drivers behind the evolution of cognitive abilities. Most empirical studies investigating the relationships between sociality and cognition compare cognitive performance between species living in systems that differ in social complexity. In this review, we ask whether and how individuals benefit from cognitive skills in their social interactions. Cognitive abilities, such as perception, attention, learning, memory, and inhibitory control, aid in forming and maintaining social relationships. We investigate whether there is evidence that individual variation in these abilities influences individual variation in social relationships. We then consider the evolutionary consequences of the interaction between sociality and cognitive ability to address whether bi-directional relationships exist between the two, such that cognition can both shape and be shaped by social interactions and the social environment. In doing so, we suggest that social network analysis is emerging as a powerful tool that can be used to test for directional causal relationships between sociality and cognition. Overall, our review highlights the importance of investigating individual variation in cognition to understand how it shapes the patterns of social relationships.This article is part of the theme issue 'Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities'.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107564PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0293DOI Listing

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