INTRODUCTION

Understanding the social in social cognition has presented a number of challenges that have been with us from the very beginnings of “modern” psychology (cf. Semin, 1986). The first challenge is to come to terms with what the “social” means. As Gallese noted recently: “The hard problem in ‘social cognition’ is to understand how the epistemic gulf separating single individuals can be overcome” (Gallese, 2006, p. 16). The foundations of Völkerpsychologie in the 1850s (Lazarus, 1861; Lazarus & Steinhal, 1860; Wedewer, 1860; Waitz, 1859) constituted an attempt to overcome the then prevailing individual-centered psychology in German psychology by introducing a social level of analysis. The emerging modern social psychology in the early 20th century grappled with this problem, fluctuating between notions of “group mind” and “instinct,” with Durkheim, LeBon, Ross, Tarde, and Wundt arguing in different voices for collective representations, group mind, collective mind, collective consciousness, or Völkerpsychologie. Of these various influences, the prevailing view that emerged was driven by Allport's vision of a social psychology that was individual-centered and regarded as a subdiscipline of psychology (Allport, 1924; cf. Post, 1980; Graumann, 1984, inter alia). This has very much remained the dominant view of mainstream social cognition and is underlined with reference to the biological finitude of the individual.