Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2022 Mar;26(3):204-221. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.12.006. Epub 2022 Feb 3.
It is widely believed that the demands of living in large, complexly bonded social groups played a key role in the evolution of human cognition. This review focuses on a critical but understudied skillset in the social-living toolkit: the ability to acquire, maintain, and use knowledge of the interpersonal relationships among the people around oneself. We provide a multidisciplinary synthesis of a diverse set of relevant findings, including recent work on the neural encoding and cognitive and behavioral consequences of knowledge of real-world social networks, research on how third-party relationship knowledge is tracked and used by children and other highly social primates, and research examining how people's knowledge of their social networks can be leveraged to inform the design of interventions aiming to promote behavior change or to efficiently spread information. We also highlight important unanswered questions and avenues in need of further exploration.
人们普遍认为，生活在大型、复杂的社会群体中的需求在人类认知的进化中发挥了关键作用。本综述专注于社交生活工具包中一个关键但研究不足的技能：获取、维护和使用周围人群之间人际关系知识的能力。我们提供了一系列相关发现的多学科综合，包括最近关于现实世界社交网络知识的神经编码以及认知和行为后果的研究、关于儿童和其他高度社交灵长类动物如何跟踪和使用第三方关系知识的研究，以及研究如何利用人们对其社交网络的了解来为旨在促进行为改变或有效传播信息的干预措施提供信息。我们还强调了一些重要的未解决问题和需要进一步探索的领域。
