The Tree of Social Cognition: Hierarchically Organized Capacities of Mentalizing

Humans have a large number of capacities that allow them to make sense of other agents’ minds. I discuss these mentalizing capacities under the broader label social cognition and propose that social cognition is hierarchically organized, ranging from lower-order capacities (e.g., detecting agents and their goals) to higher-order capacities (e.g., self-awareness and mental state ascriptions). Capacities at the lower order develop earlier in life, evolved earlier in human history, and are processed faster. I introduce more than a dozen social-cognitive capacities, present evidence for their developmental, evolutionary, and processing order, and discuss several hierarchical relations among them. Moreover, I explore the hypothesis that full-blown mental state ascriptions (near the top of the developmental and evolutionary order) have likely seen an increase in use and significance after humans settled down about 12,000 years ago. I close with a few of the many questions left to be answered about human social cognition.