One ability is more feeling based and allows us to "share" the emotions of others. The other ability, which is more thinking based, allows us to imagine the others circumstances and reason about what that person might think. This was highlighted by a new study that synthesized brain activation measured with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) from hundreds of studies and thousands of participants. Both abilities were linked to a distinct network of areas, enabling distributed processing across remote parts of the brain.
A key novel finding of the study is that many social problems require an integration of these two abilities. It seems that looking at other people in both ways, feeling and thinking based, and finding the right balance in judgment, is a key factor for people that are good socializers. These new insights can help to optimise new methods for testing and training people in understanding others.
Big hurdle
Over the last 20 years, thousands of studies have tried to capture social abilities, and came up with many ingenious ways to measure their basis in the human brain. To date, the outstanding challenge for scientists is to keep track and integrate all these diverse findings. A big hurdle for researchers is that humans solve a remarkably diverse range of social problems that are often embedded in detailed contexts.
Social abilities lie on a spectrum extending from seeing a person's face and immediately sensing how that person feels, to understanding the funny story about that new colleague who took his boss for another co-worker. The more we know about this, the better we can teach it to the young, and help people in finding better ways in their relationships.
Publication
Schurz, M., Radua, J., Tholen, M. G., Maliske, L., Margulies, D. S., Mars, R. B., . . . Kanske, P. (2020). Toward a hierarchical model of social cognition: A neuroimaging meta-analysis and integrative review of empathy and theory of mind. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000303
Photo: Sasin Tipchai via Pixabay.