Methodological approaches in social neuroscience have been rapidly evolving in recent years. Fueling these changes is the adoption of a variety of multivariate approaches that allow researchers to ask a wider and richer set of questions than was previously possible with standard univariate methods. In this chapter, we introduce several of the most popular multivariate methods and discuss how they can be used to advance our understanding of how social cognition and personality processes are represented in the brain. These methods have the potential to allow neuroscience measures to inform and advance theories in social and personality psychology more directly and are likely to become the dominant approaches in social neuroscience in the near future.

1 Introduction

2 What Is Social VR?

 2.1 Immersion

 2.2 Social Presence

 2.3 Avatars and Virtual Agents

 2.4 Communication and Social Networking

3 The Use of Social VR in Neuroscience Research

 3.1 From Low-Dimensional to High-Dimensional Tools

 3.2 Benefits of Virtual Reality for Social Neuroscience

 3.3 Social Virtual Reality and Sociomorality

4 Social VR in Mental Health: Rationale and Key Applications

 4.1 Social VR for Structuring Multisensory Bodily Contents

 4.2 Social VR for Augmenting Multisensory Bodily Contents

 4.3 Social VR for Replacing Multisensory Bodily Contents

5 Conclusions

6 Future Directions

Human beings are dependent on each other in acquiring resources, securing safety, and raising offspring. Therefore, cooperation with conspecifics is essential for our survival and reproduction. Our evolutionary history has shaped strong social motivation and highly sophisticated socio-cognitive capacity that supports successful communal living. In this chapter, we review psychological and neuroscientific studies on the basic human motivation for social affiliation and social intelligence in humans. After introducing the belongingness hypothesis and the social intelligence hypothesis, we look into the functions of the social brain to understand how the human brain understands the complex social world and adjusts our behavior within it. Lastly, we briefly review the studies on aging in the social brain and discuss the link between the social brain and well-being.

Chapter 1 looks at how historically the concept of economic agent developed within mainstream economics, and how the concept of artificial agent emerged while cognitive science became the successor of behaviorism. Then, considering that artificial economics tries to build realistic models of artificial agents, it introduces the main models of mental architectures that derive from cognitive science, and some recent advances in neuroscience (specially within neuroeconomics, social neuroscience, and neurosociology) that relate directly to the economic and social behavior of individuals. Finally, it reviews some models and approaches that try to capture the cognitive, neurological, emotional, and social aspects of agents in an integrated way.

In low- and middle-income countries, the number of people with mental illness receiving minimally adequate care ranges from 1 out of 25 to 1 out of a 100. Given this major treatment gap, the World Health Organization and other institutions advocate provision of mental health care by primary care workers. However, there has been limited delivery of services after primary care workers are trained in mental health. One reason is that training programs have focused on increasing knowledge while not addressing attitudes. Social neuroscience theories can improve mental health training by addressing affect and motivation of health workers. Social neuroscience highlights the need to reduce between-group identity distinctions and threat while fostering empathy. Promoting health worker self-efficacy and therapeutic allegiance also benefits service delivery. Ultimately, social neuroscience theories can strengthen strategies to increase mental health services for persons living in low resource settings around the world.

This chapter reviews the literature on social intelligence (SI) as it has evolved over the century since Thorndike (1920) popularized the concept. Most research on SI has been guided by an ability view, and an analogy to IQ, as exemplified by the George Washington University Social Intelligence Test, and the “behavioral” contents in Guilford’s Structure of Intellect. The assessment of SI is important for the assessment of intellectual disability (mental retardation) and the autistic spectrum, but raises the question of whether SI is a qualitatively different form of intelligence, or simply general intelligence applied in social situations. The chapter proposes an alternative knowledge view of SI as the fund of declarative and procedural knowledge which the individual brings to bear on social interactions, especially in the pursuit of important life tasks.