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Chapter 3 - The Social Brain and How It Links Social Intelligence and Well-Being

from Part I - Approaches to Society within the Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

By
Sunhae Sul  and
Isu Cho
Edited by
Jeanyung Chey
Jeanyung Chey
Affiliation:
Seoul National University
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Summary

Human beings are dependent on each other in acquiring resources, securing safety, and raising offspring. Therefore, cooperation with conspecifics is essential for our survival and reproduction. Our evolutionary history has shaped strong social motivation and highly sophisticated socio-cognitive capacity that supports successful communal living. In this chapter, we review psychological and neuroscientific studies on the basic human motivation for social affiliation and social intelligence in humans. After introducing the belongingness hypothesis and the social intelligence hypothesis, we look into the functions of the social brain to understand how the human brain understands the complex social world and adjusts our behavior within it. Lastly, we briefly review the studies on aging in the social brain and discuss the link between the social brain and well-being.

Keywords

belongingness hypothesissocial intelligencesocial brain networksocial neurosciencesocial affiliationsocial cognition
Type
Chapter
Information
Society within the Brain
How Social Networks Interact with Our Brain, Behavior and Health as We Age
 , pp. 69 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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