Social cognition and the second person in human interaction

Abstract

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that interactions often take place in cooperative contexts, and that mental states are attributed to each other in the dynamical unfolding of a face-to face interaction.Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second-person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of concepts of mental states, of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second-person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face to face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy.