The Brain in the Social World: Integrating Approaches from Social Neuroscience and Social Network Analysis

Abstract: All human thought and behavior unfold within social networks. The cognitive demands of cultivating and navigating social networks made up of many varied and enduring bonds are thought to have significantly shaped human brain evolution. Yet, because research on individual cognition has progressed largely separately from research on social networks, much remains to be understood about how the human brain tracks, encodes, shapes, and is shaped by the social networks in which it is embedded. This talk will cover work integrating approaches from social neuroscience and social network analysis to bridge this gap in understanding. One set of studies tests if, when, and how people retrieve knowledge of familiar others’ positions in their social networks when encountering them. Related research tests how this knowledge, once retrieved, shapes downstream processing and behavior. Additional work tests if human social networks exhibit assortativity in how their members perceive and respond to their environment. Consistent with this possibility, we find that proximity between people in their social networks is linked to similar neural responses to naturalistic stimuli and similar subjective interpretations of such stimuli. In new longitudinal work, we find that strangers who show more similar neural responses to naturalistic stimuli before meeting are more likely to become friends in the future and to grow closer, rather than drift apart, over time. Taken together, these findings suggest that integrating approaches from neuroscience, psychology, and social network analysis can provide new insight into how individuals perceive, shape, and are shaped by their social worlds.