3.1: Introduction
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Why do we live in cities? Why do we often choose to work together? Why do we enjoy sharing our spare time with others? These are questions of Social Cognition and its evolutionary development .
The term Social Cognition describes all abilities necessary to act adequately in a social system. Basically, it is the study of how we process social information, especially its storage, retrieval and application to social situations. Social Cognition is a common skill among various species.
In the following, the focus will be on Social Cognition as a human skill. Important concepts and the development during childhood will be explained. Having built up a conceptional basis for the term, we will then take a look at this skill from an evolutionary perspective and present the common theories on the origin of Social Cognition.
The publication of Michael Tomasello et al. in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2005) [1] will serve as a basis for this chapter.