Cognitive Representations of Social Relationships and their Developmental Origins

In the human mind, what is a social relationship, and what are the developmental origins of this representation? In this paper, I consider findings from infant psychology and propose that our representations of social relationships are intuitive theories built on core knowledge. I propose three central components of this intuitive theory. The purpose of the first component is to recognize whether a relationship exists, the purpose of the second is to characterize the relationship by categorizing it into a model (i.e., type, schema, concept) and to compute its strength (i.e., intensity, pull, or thickness), and the purpose of the third is to understand how to change relationships through explicit or implicit communication. I propose that infants possess core knowledge on which this intuitive theory is built. This paper focuses on evidence for core knowledge that supports the second component on which the intuitive theory hinges—characterizing relationships. Following Relational Models Theory (A. P. Fiske, 1991, 2004), I propose that humans recognize relationships that belong to three models: communal sharing (where people see themselves as one), authority ranking (where people see themselves as ranked), and equality matching (where people see themselves as separate and track reciprocity). A single relationship can be organized according to any of these models depending on the context, but relationships tend to use one governing model. I further propose that humans recognize a relationship’s strength which can be thought of as a continuous representation of obligations (the extent to which certain actions are expected and morally evaluated), and commitment (the likelihood that people will continue the relationship). In communal sharing relationships, this may be felt as attachment, in authority ranking relationships it may be felt as allegiance or loyalty, and in equality matching relationships it may be felt as trust. One hypothesis regarding strength is that the stronger a connection, the less interchangeable the people. These representations, and the assumption that others share them, allow us to form, maintain, and change social relationships throughout our lives by informing how we interpret and evaluate the actions of others and plan our own.