Intuitive sociology or intuitive social psychology?

Fiske’s Relational Models Theory is an excellent heuristic for understanding some of the computational dynamics likely underlying early social information processing.

I’ll very briefly mention a few issues before diving into a deeper point.

First, there are likely other important forms of core knowledge that we should talk about. Boyer and Peterson (Reference Boyer and Petersen2018) and others, for example, might suggest that the intuitions underlying free-rider detection and exchange evaluations (e.g., fair/unfair, acceptable/unacceptable) are also present early in development. Additionally, in another work (McCaffree, Reference McCaffree2022), I make the case that we should be seeking to measure intuitions about social norms given other theorists’ emphasis on collective intentionality as a species-specific human trait (Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2023). Intuitions about social norms might be evidenced by infants attributing agents’ behavioral routines to the presence or absence of particular symbols (e.g., different shapes); that is, infants might be capable of understanding that others’ behavior can change in accordance with symbolic cues. This basic capacity would then become elaborated in early-middle childhood (e.g., Hardecker, Schmidt, & Tomasello, Reference Hardecker, Schmidt and Tomasello2017).

With the space I have, however, I’d like to make a more fundamental point: I think what is being described in Thomas’ target article is intuitive social psychology, not intuitive sociology, and I think this distinction is theoretically helpful for organizing research and generating hypotheses about the nature of social intuitions.

Let me be clear: I am not insisting on some silly disciplinary boundary between sociology and social psychology. I wish more sociologists today understood and contributed to the fascinating work coming out of developmental psychology and vice versa. My distinction, rather, has to do with levels of analysis.

What is sociology? Conventionally, sociology has been understood as the scientific study of “society.” This formulation goes back to the institutionalization of the discipline in France in the late 19^th century. This would suggest that intuitive sociology would relate to core knowledge about “society.” Ok, so what is “society”?

In a recent forum article for Behavioral and Brain Sciences, wildlife biologist Mark Moffett (Reference Moffett2024) summarized a wide swath of observational data related to animal social behavior. His conceptualization of society is thus inductive, drawn from how animals appear to be organized in nature. Of course, not all animals live in “societies.” Orangutans, cheetahs, bison, and zebras are all social, but they do not appear to live in societies.

Moffett (Reference Moffett2025) describes societies as “clearly membered, enduring, territory-holding groups,” by which he means a group with a shared identity that endures over time and that exerts territorial control over a physical space. Wolves, lions, horses, hyenas, troop-living monkeys, chimpanzees, ants, and bees, for example, all live in societies. While social groups are common in nature, societies are not. Rubenstein (Reference Rubenstein2018), for example, estimates that fewer than 10% of birds, 2% of insects, and 5% of mammals live in societies. Behavioral ecologist Bernard Crespi (Reference Crespi2014) has referred to human beings, in particular, as “insectan apes,” because of our history of living in both small-scale societies (characteristic of, for example, chimpanzees) as well as in large-scale societies (characteristic of, for example, some ant and bee species).

Crucially, there is evidence for core knowledge structures related to each of these aspects of “societal” group living: group identity (Chalik & Rhodes, Reference Chalik and Rhodes2018), territorialism (Nancekivell, Friedman, & Gelman, Reference Nancekivell, Friedman and Gelman2019), and intergenerationality/age-status intuitions (Moses et al., Reference Moses, Baldwin, Rosicky and Tidball2001; Harris et al., Reference Harris, Koenig, Corriveau and Jaswal2018). If we are talking about intuitive sociology, these are the core intuitions at play, while intuitions about specific relationship characteristics are an important component of intuitive social psychology. The former is about the core knowledge that is developing to enable the animal to be societal (sociology), while the latter is about how the animal interprets and navigates its immediate social context (social psychology).

Thomas (pg. 30), however, tells us, “There is little direct evidence that infants represent groups,” and that “there are reasons to think that infants’ ecological niche has led infants to represent relationships and social networks, as opposed to groups.”

I doubt this. It is unlikely that infants represent relationships and social networks but not groups. From a computational and statistical learning perspective, perceiving agents as members of groups reduces the need to process the complexity associated with differences between agents and is thus more energetically efficient. By contrast, the constant tracking and memorization of specific relationships and networks is certainly something babies have intuitions about, I’m sure, but where it is efficient to do so, we should expect infants to use simple in-group/out-group clustering heuristics (which will later be elaborated in various ways up to and including a “societal identity”). This is likely true for the same reason the brain collapses variation and complexity in favor of other efficiency-maximizing categories where it makes sense to do so: before/after, soft/loud, fast/slow, high/low, close/far, bright/dark, large/small, curved/straight, rough/smooth, inside/outside, same/different, etc.

Besides, the evidence for core knowledge related to group categorization is overwhelming. Thomas herself reviews much of the research supporting the existence of early intuitions about group categories and acknowledges that, “During the first year of life, humans recognize cues of people acting as one, including when individuals imitate one another, act in rhythmic synchrony, respond to distress, eat together, or share bodily fluids” (p. 10). Thomas just isn’t correctly interpreting this work as evidence of intuitive cognitions about group categories. The capacity for group categorization is not the same as the capacity to track and recall specific relationship characteristics.

If sociology is the study of society, intuitive sociology is about the intuitions and core knowledge structures that infants and young children have related to society. Additionally, an emerging consensus of observations from ethologists and wildlife biologists suggests that animal societies are groups with a shared identity, which defend territory, and exist intergenerationally. The combined insight is that intuitive sociology is about core knowledge related to group identity, territory, and intergenerationality/age-status distinctions. Intuitive social psychology is, then, about core knowledge related to specific network contacts, their characteristics, and strength.