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To be published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (in press)
© Cambridge University Press 2012
Below is an unedited, uncorrected BBS Target Article recently accepted for publication. This preprint has
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Toward a second-person neuroscience
Leonhard Schilbach
Bert Timmermans
Vasudevi Reddy
Alan Costall
Gary Bente
Tobias Schlicht
Kai Vogeley
Corresponding author: Leonhard Schilbach, leonhard.schilbach@nf.mpg.de
Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research, Cologne, Germany
Abstract: In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social
neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be
studied and could —paradoxically— be seen as representing the ‘dark matter’ of social
neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for
investigations, which allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner.
This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we
are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the
theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from
neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies and related fields to argue for the development of a
second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really go social; this may also be
relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.
Keywords: mentalizing network; mirror neuron system; social cognition from an interactor's
point of view; social cognition from an observer's point of view; 'problem' of other minds;
second-person neuroscience
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“No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such thing physically possible, than that one
should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.”
William James (1890), The Principles of Psychology.
1. Introduction
The burgeoning field of social neuroscience has begun to illuminate the complex biological bases
of human social cognitive abilities (Frith & Frith 2010; Ochsner & Lieberman 2001). Many
investigations have focused, in particular, on the neural correlates of our capacity to grasp the
mental states of others. Two neuroanatomically distinct large-scale networks have gained center
stage as the neural substrates of social cognition: the so-called “mirror neuron system” (MNS)
and the “mentalizing network” (MENT). The former has been taken as evidence for a
simulationist account of social cognition and is believed to give us a “first-person grasp” of the
motor goals and intentions of other individuals (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2010). The latter has
been seen as providing evidence for a “Theory Theory” account of social cognition believe to
give us an inferential, reflective (and what might be called a ‘third-person’) grasp of others’
mental states (Frith & Frith 2006, 2010). The apparent disparity between these sets of results
may, however, arise from differences in the experimental paradigms used (cf. Keysers & Gazzola
2007), which run the danger of presupposing the very theoretical frameworks they claim to test.
Consequently, both of these paradigms are investigating actual, but limited domains of social
cognition. Both are, in effect, committed to spectator theories of knowledge. They have focused
on the use of “isolation paradigms” (Becchio et al. 2010), in which participants are required to
merely observe others or think about their mental states rather than participate in social
interaction with them. Consequently, it has remained unclear whether and how activity in the
large-scale neural networks described above is modulated by the degree to which a person does
or does not feel actively involved in an ongoing interaction and whether the networks might
subserve complementary or mutually exclusive roles in this case (Schilbach 2010). After more
than a decade of research, the neural mechanisms underlying social interaction have remained
elusive and could —paradoxically— be seen as representing the ‘dark matter’
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of social
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In sensu strictu, the term dark matter is used in physics and astronomy to describe matter, which is inferred
to exist, but which has not been directly observed and may not even be observable. We use the term metaphorically
to denote an important lacuna in current areas of research in social neuroscience, which have been more difficult to
investigate and where, therefore, less is known, but which can at least in principle be explored empirically. To index
this particular usage of the term, ‘dark matter’ is consistently used in inverted commas throughout the paper.
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neuroscience.
In this target article we propose an approach to the investigation of social cognition focused on
‘second-person’ engagements. This approach, we argue, will help to throw light on this ‘dark
matter’ and may help social neuroscience to really go social.
1.1 Spectator Theories of Other Minds
Spectatorial accounts of social knowing are not restricted to social neuroscience, but have been
central to the Western intellectual tradition (Dewey 1950). Psychological accounts of how people
make sense of other people have usually shared a common format:
Each is a detached observer, rather than actively engaged with the other in
some joint project.
The information available to each of us about other people is limited and
disorganized, and hence there is a gulf between what we can actually
observe about them, and what they themselves feel, intend, or believe.
Each of us, therefore, has to engage in some or other intellectual ‘detour’
to bridge the gap between what can be immediately experienced about the
other person and that person’s psychological states (see Asch 1952).
As Neisser has pointed out, this detached and intellectualist theoretical approach to how people
make sense of one another has been built into the research which was supposed to support that
very position: namely, people observing video-recordings of other people, and making judgments
of what they saw:
The theories and experiments ... all refer to an essentially passive
onlooker, who sees someone do something (or sees two people do
something) and then makes a judgment about it. He … doesn’t mix it up
with the folks he’s watching, never tests his judgments in action or
interaction. He just watches and makes judgments. [...] When people are
genuinely engaged with one another, nobody stops to give grades (Neisser
1980, pp.603-4).
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Modern cognitive psychology has retained “methodological behaviorism” from precisely the
psychology it claims to have undermined (see Costall 2006; Garner 1999; Jenkins 1986; Leahey
1992; Neisser 1997). According to the textbooks, psychologists in their research necessarily start
from the observation of inherently meaningless, “colorless behavior” (Hull 1943, p.25) and can
only begin to make psychological sense of what they observe on the basis of theorizing. Few
modern psychologists, of course, are Cartesian dualists: they rightly insist that they do not make
an ontological disjunction between behavior and mind.
Nevertheless, psychologists keep framing their methodology, in principle if not in their actual
practice, in the old Hullian, reductionist terms, and hence keep talking themselves into a
methodological dualism of behavior and mind. In so doing, they resurrect for themselves the
traditional dualistic ‘problem’ of other minds. And, when Theory Theorists project this
methodology onto other people and how they make sense of one another, they often enough also
carry the same insoluble problem with them. In relation to the other domains to which it has been
applied, the “Theory Theory” approach has taken for granted that the child has already acquired a
substantial practical understanding of the social domain before attempting to systematize his or
her existing knowledge (such as friction or collisions in the domain of physics, and reproduction
and growth in the domain of biology). This is not the case for “Theory Theory” of Mind (TToM)
in its original form, for, according to TToM, it is only once children have developed a “Theory of
Mind” that they have access to any of the necessary psychological data upon which the theory
could be based.
Of course, “Theory of Mind” does not refer to a theory in the scientific sense, but denotes an
empirical field of study with (apparently) no particular theoretical commitments (cf. Penn &
Povinelli 2008, p.394). Yet to the extent that the most important alternative approach,
“Simulation Theory”, frames the problem of how people make sense of other people in terms of
how psychologists make a detour from the observation of ‘mere’ behavior to psychological states
they both face the same logical impasse. Indeed, there could be no naturally occurring precursors
to “Theory of Mind”, not even evolved ones, if the problem of how we really make sense of one
another is framed in terms of this kind of methodological dualism (see Costall et al. 2006; Leudar
& Costall 2008).
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1.2 An alternative account of social knowing
Before the rise of recent social cognition research there was already an important body of theory
and research proposing that, typically, when relating to one another, people are not engaged in a
tortuous process of inferences and theorizing about one another, but immediately experience the
other as a subject (see Asch 1952; Heider & Simmel 1944; Runeson & Frykholm 1983; Schutz
1972; Thinès et al. 1991). This approach drew upon Gestalt theory and phenomenology. Here is
Solomon Asch's lucid statement of this position:
The quality of their actions imbues persons with living reality. When we
say that a person is in pain, we see his body as feeling. We do not need to
‘impute’ consciousness to others if we directly perceive the qualities of
consciousness in the qualities of action. Once we see an act that is skillful,
clumsy, alert, or reckless, it is superfluous to go ‘behind’ it to its
conscious substrate, for consciousness has revealed itself in the act (Asch
1952, p.158).
This social perception approach is close to the theoretical perspective we are presenting in this
target article. It is not detached; it is not dispassionate. However, it is, nevertheless, committed to
an observer epistemology, a spectator theory of how we relate to other people. Knowing others is
limited to perceiving them. In this target article, we will be arguing for an approach to social
knowing based on interaction and emotional engagements between people, rather than mere
observation. This ‘second-person’ approach has already begun to prove productive within
developmental and social psychology and points toward the importance of experiencing and
interacting with others as our primary ways of knowing them (see Section 2 for details). Also,
preliminary evidence from neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies demonstrates profound
differences in neural processing related to the reciprocity of social interaction, which is consistent
with our proposal that the second-person approach can make an important contribution to the
neuroscientific study of social encounters and could, in fact, lead to the development of a second-
person neuroscience (Section 3). In this respect, we provide an outlook for future research by
describing key ideas and objectives of a second-person neuroscience and related objectives in
other areas of research (Section 4). Finally, we argue that the second-person account may also be
relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders: While psychiatric disorders such as
