---
title: "Social neuroscience"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_neuroscience"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:58:39.740309+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, and studies indicate that various social influences, including life events, poverty, unemployment and loneliness can influence health related biomarkers. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to personality neuroscience, affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions. The biological underpinnings of social cognition are investigated in social cognitive neuroscience.
The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to a publication entitled "Social Neuroscience Bulletin" which was published quarterly between 1988 and 1994. The term was subsequently popularized in an article by John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992. Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience.

== Overview ==
Traditional neuroscience has for many years considered the nervous system as an isolated entity and largely ignored influences of the social environments in which humans and many animal species live. In fact, we now recognize the considerable impact of social structures on the operations of the brain and body. These social factors operate on the individual through a continuous interplay of neural, neuroendocrine, metabolic and immune factors on brain and body, in which the brain is the central regulatory organ and also a malleable target of these factors. Social neuroscience investigates the biological mechanisms that underlie social processes and behavior, widely considered one of the major problem areas for the neurosciences in the 21st century, and applies concepts and methods of biology to develop theories of social processes and behavior in the social and behavioral sciences. Social neuroscience capitalizes on biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social behavior, and it uses social and behavioral constructs and data to advance theories of neural organization and function.
Throughout most of the 20th century, social and biological explanations were widely viewed as incompatible. But advances in recent years have led to the development of a new approach synthesized from the social and biological sciences. The new field of social neuroscience emphasizes the complementary relationship between the different levels of organization, spanning the social and biological domains (e.g., molecular, cellular, system, person, relational, collective, societal) and the use of multi-level analyses to foster understanding of the mechanisms underlying the human mind and behavior.
Contemporary insights into the origins of social interactions raise interest in hyperscanning or intercranial research. Studying the correlation of neuronal activities of two or more brains in shared cognitive tasks can contribute to understanding the relationship between social experiences and neurophysiological processes.