Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction

Diana I. Pérez, Antoni Gomila

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000452860
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding.

Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination.

Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy.

1

Introducing the second person

DOI: 10.4324/9781003133155-1

At last I walked into the Ebbitt Hotel, and sat down. Presently a dog came over to me. He paused, glanced up at me and said with his eyes, “Are you friendly?” I answered with my eyes that I was. He waved his tail happily and came forward and rested his head on my knee and lifted his brown eyes to my face in a loving way. He was a charming creature, as beautiful as a girl, and he was all made of silk and velvet. I stroked his smooth brown head and we were a pair of lovers right away (Mark Twain, Autobiography, ch. 22).

1.1 Characterizing the second person perspective

In this chapter, we will introduce the main features of second person interactions. What the different examples mentioned in the Introduction have in common is that these interactions are mediated by a particular kind of psychological attribution, namely a second person attribution. We will not provide a definition, neither a set of necessary nor sufficient conditions for an interaction to count as a second person one, but just some “family traits” that such interactions usually have. Importantly, we will describe what this phenomenon consists of at a personal level – a description that assumes that some subpersonal processes make it possible (more on this in Chapters 2 and 4).

1. Second person interactions are face-to-face interactions between two agents, where what one does elicits a proper response from the other, a response which in its turn impacts on the first person, in a mutual, continuous, dynamic, and fluid interplay.
   Second person interactions, accordingly, involve two human beings in an online interaction, that is, in real time (unless it is clarified otherwise). All the examples mentioned in the Introduction are cases of face-to-face (and body-to-body) interaction. The emphasis on the face is because the face is the most important expressive resource of our body, but the whole body is involved in the interaction.
2. Second person interactions are mediated by a genuine form of psychological attribution: a second person attribution, an attribution from the second person standpoint. Moreover, second person interactions involve a reciprocal attribution of mental states as the interaction takes place. These attributions take the form of a recognition of each other’s expressions.
   The idea here is that second person interaction is not just a peculiar sequence of behaviors, a sequence of mutual bodily adjustments. If I’m pushed from my back, I will react trying to keep my equilibrium. If I’m thrown a ball, I may quickly move so as to catch it or skip it. These are interactions but are not mediated by any form of mental understanding, only a calculation of physical trajectories and forces. Second person attributions, on the contrary, involve recognizing an intention or a focus of attention or an expressed mental state. A comparison with non-human examples might help here: when birds take turns in repeating each other’s song, no mental attribution is required; by the contrary when a chimpanzee keeps track of the focus of interest of another, their interaction is mediated by some mental understanding. In summary, for face-to-face interaction to qualify as a second person interaction it has to go beyond a purely physical, or bodily, interaction. It has to be mediated by some kind of understanding of the socio-perceptual information available. For this reason, the second person perspective we are characterizing belongs to the domain of social cognition.
   We hold that second person interactions involve a special kind of cognitive process, which gives rise to the attribution of mental states to each other interacting agent. Such attributions in second person interactions are quite different from the attribution of propositional attitudes which were paradigmatic in the TT vs ST debate, as we will argue in detail in Chapter 3. In second person interactions, we perceive the attitudes, intentions, and emotions of each other, focusing on the way in which the other addresses us, and vice-versa.
   As an illustration, think of the interlocutors in a dialogue, for instance. Each one is not limited to the declarative information, to what the other person says, but has additional, non-conceptual, contextual information, which is continuously processed, given the context, with each movement, facial expression, inflection of the voice, and one’s own expression, that is also relevant to understand one another. These clues simultaneously impact both interlocutors that take it into account to recalibrate the interplay. Think of phenomena such as the raised eyebrows of our listener, which leads us to re-develop the idea we are trying to convey given that we suspect that he does not fully understand us, or when there are longer silences than expected in a conversation.
   The same process of mutual adjustment occurs in non-linguistic cases such as the comforting look, the disapproval look and the wordless joint action presented in the Introduction. In the first case, the interaction involves an exchange of emotional expressions after dropping a glass of water, of feeling sorry and comforted. In the second one, two agents coordinate their actions to move something heavy by means of an exchange of looks. No verbal dialogue is involved in these examples. But some form of communication takes place through which B understands the intentions (in this second case) or the affective state (feeling sorry, in the first case), of A, without any attribution of propositional attitudes.
   What is attributed is more basic, and the grounds for the attribution are given in the interaction itself. The idea here is that the interactors are in a privileged position to understand each other, because they detect the contingencies between each other “movements” in the interaction. They have more information, and of a different nature, than those available to a detached, non-participative, spectatorial, observer. More on this below.
3. Second person attributions are implicit, in the sense that the agent is not consciously aware that she is doing an attribution, even if she perceives the mental state the other person is undergoing. But the attribution shows up in the way both behave in the situation. In other words, the interaction would not be as it is without this kind of mutual understanding of their reciprocal behaviors in mental (intentional, expressive) terms.
   In other words, second person interactions can be correctly described without assuming that the interacting subjects are making conscious attributions of mental states to each other (consider the two examples mentioned above as well as the one of the infant with her caregiver). Someone sees what the other does and reacts accordingly. I see that someone cries, and that cry reveals, makes me see, shows me, his sadness. Second person attributions are cases of meaningful perception. In cases like these I do not judge, nor do I infer from a particular set of movements an unobservable inner state, nor do I believe that he is sad. I can see the sadness in his face without explicitly judging that I do – the attribution is implicit. Another way to characterize this kind of implicit attribution is to say that I act like I do because I dispositionally think he is sad, but this is not an occurrent state of mine.¹ I may simply get emotionally infected and feel sad, or I may see someone’s sadness and comfort him spontaneously, without even thinking about what I am doing. This fact is apparent in the case of an infant and her reactivity to the emotions and actions of her caregiver. In the case of two adults interacting, the temptation to make complex attributions of mediating propositional contents and metacognitions by and to both subjects is great, and probably correct in some cases (even in most). But it is not imperative to make this type of attributions of metacognitive states in all cases, and certainly, it is not necessary for the examples we mentioned.
4. Second person attributions are also practical, because the attributions involve practical knowledge rather than declarative knowledge. They involve some specific know-how rather than know-that. The attributions are made in the context of the interplay in order to keep the interaction going on. As all practical knowledge, these second person attributions are context-sensitive and particular – the particular other and the particular situation are relevant in order to understand each other’s minds. Therefore, previous interactions may facilitate second person attributions.
   In this sense, the second person perspective allows us to understand a specific type of inter-action, that is, a way of acting/doing with others. The second person perspective of psychological attribution does not focus on what we think (what propositional thoughts we have about others), but rather it is a theory about what we humans do when we interact with other human beings, and how we experience those interactions. When interacting with other humans, what we do reveals our practical understanding of human minds. Therefore, the second person perspective on mental attribution is concerned with what people do when interacting, what patterns of interaction can be identified and how people respond to them appropriately. We claim that the relational situation between two humans interacting in the way described here is the place to look as the starting point in order to understand social cognition, rather than trying to focus on what goes on inside human heads. At the same time, though, the second person perspective is a theory about social cognition, about the sort of cognitive processes that make possible human interaction. In our view, the connection between what we do and what we have in our minds is the key to develop a theory of our social abilities; otherwise we will only get a physical description of behavioral patterns, or an intellectual view of the cognitive contents of a disembodied mind.
5. Second person attributions are transparent, not opaque.
   Paradigmatic second person attributions are extensional, not intensional. They are not committed to the way the attributee conceives of the situation, as is the case with attribution of propositional attitudes. The classical example of opacity is that one may believe that “the raising star is Venus”, but may not believe that “the evening star is Venus”, even if they are the same planet. When we attribute beliefs, and other propositional attitudes, we are attributing a content as it is conceived (it concerns a sense, intension, or mode of presentation).
   It is not so in the case of second person attributions. The attributions made in these interactions are simpler, more basic, both in terms of the states and the contents attributed. Second person attributions may involve the attribution of mental states without content, such as pain; basic emotions, directed towards an object in the shared environment, for example, fear of an object nearby; and also basic intentions revealed in basic actions such as grasping something in the shared environment, or moving towards something both people see.
   In these attributions, no specific mode of presentation of the intentional object is at play. When A helps B pushing together the heavy object, it does not matter if A and B conceptualize in the same way the heavy object (as a table, as a piece of furniture, as my grandmother’s favorite table, etc.); what it does matter is that both address the same object. In the same way, when an infant and her caregiver are interacting, for example when they both pay attention to the same object in the environment, it is not necessary for the interaction that they both conceive of that object in the same terms, or that they need to know under what description the other is conceiving the object, whether as a teddy bear, a piece of fabric, or as my grandfather’s present. The interaction flows as long as each partner to the interaction attributes to the other interest in the right object. There is no need for the attribution to specify how the participants may describe or think of the object involved. For this reason, some demonstrative sharing, a minimal form of creating a common ground, is enough. In this sense the attribution is transparent, it lacks the opacity which is characteristic of more complex intentional attributions, such as in the propositional attitude case. We will develop this point in detail in Chapters 3 and 7.
6. In second person interactions, other people’s mental states are publicly available. Mental states can be “recognized” in what the other does, even if its recognition depends on the interaction itself.
   This idea follows from the embodied view of the mind. At least an important class of mental states are not to be viewed as unobservable inner states, whose tokening can only be inferred from bodily movements, or posited as theoretical concepts. Mental states intrinsically involve a public dimension. The bodily expressions displayed in the interaction, the public aspects of our intentions, emotions, and attention patterns that the others in the interaction directly see allow us to access each other’s minds. We can take as paradigmatic the case of the emotional expressions of the so-called Darwinian or basic emotions (fear, joy, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust). In these cases, the expression of the emotion is an open, intentional action (it is not merely a bodily movement caused by some internal physiological mechanism).
   This bodily dimension shows the mental state, makes it perceivable, observable. Mental states such as basic emotions are not hidden, internal, unobservable states, but mental processes which are partly constituted by specific open behaviors: smiles in the case of joy, tears in the case of sadness, etc. These bodily expressions are not calculated, but spontaneous (as opposed to the expression that an actor or a clown can voluntarily put on stage). We also perceive the intentions of others, for example, when we see their bodies lean with an outstretched hand towards an object, or when an infant lifts their hands towards the adult to be picked up. Likewise, many bodily sensations, paradigmatically pain, have a specific bodily expression: for example, crying, a certain characteristic type of screaming, and certain facial gestures are expressive of pain. At the same time, proper recognition may require detection of these patterns as contingent upon our own, this privileging the perspective of the interacting partner. We will return to the notion of expression, key to the second person perspective, in Chapters 5 and 6.
7. The meaningful perception of the mental states attributed is direct, in the sense that, at the personal level, the experience is perceptive, not the outcome of a decision or a reasoning. Our experience of another is the experience of someone undergoing some mental processes, someone having pain, or joy, or fear. As we said above, we are describing a class of phenomena that takes place at the personal level. We claim that the experience of another person’s mind, in second person interactions, is not inferential, we do not make any conscious, reflexive inference in order to do this kind of attributions. We just see that A tries to kick the ball over there, or wants that glass of water.
   As is the case with meaningful perception in general, this sort of recognition requires mastering previously the relevant concepts. A central part of our proposal concerns how the mental concepts involved in second person attributions are acquired in development, and how interaction itself offers the opportunities for this conceptual development. For the moment, it may be useful to clarify the notion of directness we have in mind to illustrate it with the experience of understanding language: we directly grasp the meaning of the spoken words when we dialogue with other people; we directly, non-inferentially, hear the meanings; we do not hear uninterpreted sounds and make conscious inferences in order to get their meaning. We hear meaningful speech – but only if we know the language. Remember the case of the hopeful friend: both friends experience that they are engaging in a meaningful and emotionally loaded experience of sharing hopes and expectations about A’s new job.
   In both cases – in the case of second person mental attribution as well as in the case of language – this direct perception of mental states and meanings is possible because there are at play some subpersonal mechanisms, but these subpersonal mechanisms need not be understood in terms of inferential rules and representations as the orthodox cognitive theories do. Current theories of language processing have long explored alternative explanations, such as pattern recognition and machine learning (for instance, Indurkhya & Damerau, 2010) and the same kind of explanation might work for second person attributions. On the other hand, our notion of direct perception of mental states is also different from Gibson’s ecological perception (Gibson, 2015). Gibson called into question the classical “poverty of the stimulus” argument according to which the perceptual experience has to involve an inference because the proximal stimulus is informationally much poorer than the distal stimulus. On the contrary, the ecological perception approach contends that the optical flux is rich enough to specify the relevant physical invariants, the affordances, so that there is no need to internally process the stimuli, no need to posit perceptual processes at a subpersonal level – a contention we do not share.
   In our sense, then, we ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Introducing the second person
• 2 Contrasting views of the second person
• 3 Second person attributions
• 4 Second person phenomena
• 5 Emotional engagement and emotion attribution
• 6 Expression and the second person perspective
• 7 The interplay of perspectives
• 8 Dissolving the problem of other minds
• 9 The second person in art
• 10 Second person and morality
• Epilogue
• References
• Index