Social cognitive neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary field of res
earch that seeks to understand phenomena in terms of interactions between 3
levels of analysis: the social level, which is concerned with the motivati
onal and social factors that influence behavior and experience; the cogniti
ve level, which is concerned with the information-processing mechanisms tha
t give rise to social-level phenomena; and the neural level, which is conce
rned with the brain mechanisms that instantiate cognitive-level processes.
The social cognitive neuroscience approach entails conducting studies and c
onstructing theories that make reference to all 3 levels and contrasts with
traditional social psychological and cognitive neuroscientific research th
at primarily makes reference to 2 levels. The authors present an introducti
on to and analysis of the field by reviewing current research and providing
guidelines and suggested directions for future work.