Type

Article

Keywords

social awareness, tamarins, mirror neurons, evolution

Abstract

—Humans seem unique in their consideration of others’ goals, motivations, intentions, and needs. But the human form of social awareness did not spring from nowhere; certain mechanisms shared across primates formed the foundation from which these processes derived. A review of recent nonhuman primate research points to particular ancestral mechanisms, including an interest in images moving in synchrony with self, a mirror neuron system that responds in the same way to actions made by the self and by others, and inherited social tolerance that provided the bases for social thinking. Still there is a gap in tracking social awareness from these basic beginnings to the ability to think about self and other with respect to intentions and goals. Comparative and clinical work will fill in this gap and will map brain processes onto social thinking.

Language

English

Department(s)

Psychology

Journal or Book Title

Current Directions in Psychological Science

Publication Year

2009

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Rights Management

Carleton College does not own the copyright to this work and the work is available through the Carleton College Library following the original publisher policies regarding self-archiving. For more information on the copyright status of this work, refer to the current copyright holder.

RoMEO Color

Yellow

Preprint Archiving

Yes

Postprint Archiving

Yes (12 month embargo)

Publisher PDF Archiving

No

Contributing Organization

Carleton College

Format

application/pdf

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Included in

Psychology Commons

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