The neural basis of social metacognition

• Applicant: Dr. Georgia Eleni Kapetaniou
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527444196

Humans have the capacity to employ higher-level cognitive processes in order to monitor and evaluate their thoughts and mental states in a variety of situations, a capacity that is referred to as metacognition (Flavell, 1979; Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994). Metacognitive insight into our own mental processes was shown to complement and shape individual decisions and behavior (De Martino, Fleming, Garrett, & Dolan, 2013; Fleming, Huijgen, & Dolan, 2012; Soutschek, Moisa, Ruff, & Tobler, 2021; Soutschek & Tobler, 2020). However, there is surprisingly little evidence on how these findings translate into the social domain and how metacognitive insight into social cognition actually affects social behavior. For example, despite a consensus that mentalizing is crucial for successful social interactions (Brosig, 2002; Fischbacher, Gächter, & Fehr, 2001; Gächter, 2006; Keser & Van Winden, 2000), the subjective uncertainty that encompasses this process has received little attention in the literature. Moreover, while several research programs have focused on the neurobiological basis of the human mentalizing capacity itself, research on the neural mechanisms that support second order metacognitive insight into the accuracy of mentalizing processes is scarce. Understanding social metacognition at the behavioral and neural levels can provide novel insights not only into social cognition as such, but also into the domain-generality or specificity of metacognition, and into the neural origins of clinically relevant deficits (Köther et al., 2012). Thus, the aim of the proposed project is twofold. First, to determine the neural mechanisms underlying the metacognitive awareness of the accuracy of social mentalizing processes (goal 1) and second, to inform recent accounts on the domain-generality of the neural basis of metacognition by assessing whether individual and social domain metacognition rely on common or distinct neural substrates (goal 2). The project will go beyond previous investigations of the domain-generality of metacognition (Faivre, Filevich, Solovey, Kühn, & Blanke, 2018; Morales, Lau, & Fleming, 2018), by providing a direct and systematic comparison of metacognitive processes in the social and non-social domains that the field is lacking. In the process, the project will test whether metacognitive ability in one domain (individual metacognition) is linked to metacognitive ability in the other domain (social metacognition) and answer the question of whether at least some metacognitive processes rely on a common, domain-unspecific neural resource.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Host: Professor Dr. Philippe N. Tobler