Social Cognition and Cooperative Behavior
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Social Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 97
Special Issue Editors
Interests: social cognition; social norms; collective action; punishment; morality
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cooperation—behavior that is mutually beneficial but personally costly—is a critical feature of human social behavior that underlies our species’ unmatched success in the natural world. While the ultimate, evolutionary explanation for cooperation initially presented a puzzle to scientists, we now have a strong understanding of how cooperation can emerge between unrelated individuals—namely, via mechanisms such as indirect reciprocity and cultural group selection. However, while we now better understand the ultimate mechanisms that give rise to cooperation, the psychological mechanisms that proximately motivate cooperative behavior are less well understood. A growing body of research suggests that one critical social cognitive ability that underlies successful cooperation is social norm cognition. Social norms—the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies—play a critical role in underlying cooperative behavior. This Special Issue aims to advance our understanding of the social cognitive abilities that underlie prosocial behavior and collective action. We are specifically interested in interdisciplinary research that investigates how social norms and norm enforcement influence cooperative behavior, particularly research that examines the underlying cognitive processes of social norms, social network processes and dynamics, and field or lab studies that measure real behavioral outcomes. To that end, we welcome theoretical or empirical contributions that broaden our knowledge of how social norms and other related cognitive processes influence cooperative behavior and collective action.
Dr. Paul Deutchman
Dr. Shaon Lahiri
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- social cognition
- social norms
- collective action
- cooperation
- cooperative behavior
- prosocial behavior
- social networks
- punishment
- reputation
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