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12 - Social Cognition and Moral Evaluation in Early Human Childhood

from Subpart II.1 - Infancy: The Roots of Human Thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2022

By
Andreas Falck ,
Brent Strickland  and
Pierre Jacob
Edited by
Olivier Houdé  and
Grégoire Borst
Olivier Houdé
Affiliation:
Université de Paris V
Grégoire Borst
Affiliation:
Université de Paris V
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Summary

Human social cognition is the human capacity to process social stimuli, to intentionally convey socially relevant information to others, and to make use of socially transmitted information. Several human social cognitive capacities are special and set humans apart from non-human animals. Thanks to these capacities, humans are unique in their ability to create, maintain, and alter large social groups within which they coordinate, cooperate, and also compete. Moreover, there are few (if any) other biological species in which groups or crowds of individuals spend as much collective effort in attacking other groups or in defending their own group from the attacks of others (Boyer, 2018; Tooby & Cosmides, 2010). Humans also appear to be unique in their capacity for stable cultural transmission over many generations and for the pervasiveness of their moral cognitive concerns.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Development , pp. 269 - 298
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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