The DOI matches its Crossref record; 17 of the 17 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Evolution of Truly Social Cognition: The Core Configurations Model
Abstract
This article introduces a vocabulary suitable for evolutionary analyses in the human cognitive, social, and behavioral sciences. The vocabulary carves a middle way between advocates and critics of evolutionary perspectives by substituting the concept of repeated assembly for nature-nurture dualism. A model of core configurations-based on human morphology and ecology in human evolutionary history-is presented, and I argue that these configurations offace-to-face groups are the selective context for uniquely human mental systems. Hence, human cognition is “truly social,” specialized for group living. The relevance of the core configuration model is illustrated with respect to two areas of interest to social psychologists: the self and social identity, and distributed cognition and shared reality. A final section illustrates the integrative power of the core configuration model with a brief comparison of the social and cognitive tasks faced by scientists and foragers.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037//0033-2909.117.3.497 · Cited by 23,245
Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.98.2.224 · Cited by 21,995
Hutchins, E. (1995) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/1881.001.0001 · Cited by 10,801
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
(1982) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511809477 · Cited by 8,240
Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life
Lave, J. (1988) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511609268 · Cited by 5,148
The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time
Brewer, M. B. (1991) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167291175001 · Cited by 5,107
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism
Millikan, R. G. (1984) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/4124.001.0001 · Cited by 4,758
Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context
Rogoff, B. (1990) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780195059731.001.0001 · Cited by 4,709
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.102.2.246 · Cited by 3,889
Who is this "We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations.
Brewer, M. B., & Gardner, W. (1996) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83 · Cited by 3,401
Cited by
The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?
Brewer, M. B. (1999) · Journal of Social Issues · doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00126 · Cited by 3,494
Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L. C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.107.3.411 · Cited by 3,308
Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation.
Bussey, K., & Bandura, A. (1999) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.106.4.676 · Cited by 2,476
“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., Alvard, M., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., et al. (2005) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x05000142 · Cited by 1,898
Brewer, M. B., & Chen, Y.-R. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.1.133 · Cited by 1,200
Metadata
- Authors
- Caporael, L. R.
- Venue
- Personality and Social Psychology Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1997-11
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 276-298
- ISSN
- 1088-8683 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7957
- OpenAlex
- W2003152910
- Cited by
- 312
- References
- 17
- FWCI
- 12.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Evolution of Truly Social Cognition: The Core Configurations Model. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1207/s15327957pspr0104_1
- The paper
- Caporael, L. R. (1997). The Evolution of Truly Social Cognition: The Core Configurations Model. Personality and Social Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0104_1
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.