Social-Affective

Social-affective considers how social factors influence and are influenced by emotions, and how emotional experiences influence social interactions and relationships. Social-affective functions are the underlying cognitive/emotional processes to help us understand, navigate, and respond to social interactions and emotions. Select examples:

• Empathy helps understand/share others’ feelings (often with shared neural network activation).
• Social perception is understanding/interpreting others’ social cues, intentions, emotions.
• Emotional regulation is capacity to manage our own/others’ emotions, crucial for maintaining healthy relationships.
• Social cognition encompasses processes like theory of mind (understanding others have different perspectives and beliefs) and mentalizing (attributing mental states to others).
• Social feelings are subjective social experiences and emotions, like affiliation, attachment, stress.
• Social regulation is how we regulate our emotions/behaviors in social contexts, often influenced by others’ emotions/behaviors.
• Social-affective wellbeing encompasses our satisfaction in our relationships and our ability to regulate our emotions in a healthy way.