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Flexible Social Cognition: A Context-Dependent Failure to Mentalize

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The Neural Basis of Mentalizing

Abstract

Mentalizing, a necessary component of social cognition, enables social interaction; it triggers inferences about another person’s mind, enabling prediction and explanation of behavior. Furthermore, mentalizing triggers empathic processes that promote pro-social behavior, and it makes morality relevant. The term “flexible social cognition” refers to mentalizing ability as a cognitive process for which we can regulate the levels of engagement depending on context. This could result in dehumanized perception, i.e., instances where the cognitive and brain processes underlying mentalizing fail to spontaneously engage when encountering a social target that typically activates these processes (such as other human beings). It could also result in anthropomorphism, where an entity that does not possess a mind is attributed one, thus “brought to life” by mentalizing. Here, we describe the contexts that facilitate this modulation of mentalizing ability (i.e., flexible social cognition), including objectification of people’s bodies, aggression, virtual violence, labor markets, medical care, and extreme outgroups. We will discuss current behavioral and neuroscience research on the social cognition brain network underlying mentalizing, as well as other brain regions that may modulate social cognition brain activity, such as the amygdala, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). As such, we will consider the interplay of cognitive control, subjective valuation, empathy, and emotional learning on mentalizing, and unite the tribes of neuroscience research exploring dehumanization, deindividuation/depersonalization, moral disengagement, and objectification.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK

    Melissa Jhurry & Lasana T. Harris

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  1. Melissa Jhurry
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  2. Lasana T. Harris
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Correspondence to Lasana T. Harris .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Michael Gilead

  2. Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kevin N. Ochsner

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Jhurry, M., Harris, L.T. (2021). Flexible Social Cognition: A Context-Dependent Failure to Mentalize. In: Gilead, M., Ochsner, K.N. (eds) The Neural Basis of Mentalizing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51890-5_10

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