[This review is intended solely for my personal learning]

Paper Info

DOI: 10.1177/17456916231200177
Title: The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds
Authors: Thalia Wheatley, Mark A. Thornton, Arjen Stolk, and Luke J. Chang

Prior Knowledge

Historically, psychology has focused on the individual, often isolating cognitive processes within a single brain. However, social interaction is fundamental to human cognition, development, and collective behavior. While past research in social psychology and neuroscience has explored elements of interaction, methodological constraints have limited empirical studies that directly analyze interaction dynamics.

Goal

The paper argues for a paradigm shift in psychology from an individual-centric perspective to an interactionist framework. The authors emphasize the need to study minds as nodes within social networks, highlighting how social interactions shape cognitive processes, behavior, and collective phenomena. They advocate for new methodological approaches that capture the complexity of real-world social interactions.

Method

The authors review historical and contemporary research on social interactions, discussing:

  • Developmental Foundations: How early social interactions shape cognitive and emotional development.
  • Interaction Shapes Individual Cognition: Infants and adults engage in reciprocal social feedback loops that regulate emotional and cognitive development.
  • Interaction Dynamics: The role of mutual adaptation, synchronization, and coordination in communication.
  • Collective Behavior: The emergent properties of group interactions, including cultural transmission and social influence.
  • Neural and Behavioral Coupling: Conversations involve real-time adaptation, where turn-taking, gaze alignment, and prosody adjustments reinforce connection and understanding.
  • Social Networks and Information Flow: Ideas and behaviors propagate through interaction networks, shaping collective decision-making and cultural evolution.
  • Methodological Challenges and Advances: The limitations of past approaches (e.g., self-report and artificial experimental setups) and the promise of new tools like machine learning, real-time social tracking, and computational modeling. Advances in social neuroscience, computational modeling, and network science allow for more sophisticated analysis of interactive behaviors.

Conclusion

The paper asserts that human cognition cannot be fully understood in isolation—it is an emergent property of social interactions. By studying interactional dynamics directly, psychology can better capture the mechanisms underlying cognition, behavior, and social organization. The authors call for interdisciplinary collaboration and the integration of novel technologies to build a more comprehensive science of interacting minds.

Reference