N°88
-
2028-1
Comparative social cognition: cooperation, sociality, cognition. What are we really comparing?
Mondémé Chloé
Deadline for article submission: March 2027
Publication date: Dec 2027
Possible workshop with participants of the SI: November 2026 in Lyon.
The manuscript (or any questions) should be sent to soumission@intellectica.org
Please notify the scientific editor (chloe.mondeme@cnrs.fr) in advance (ideally before sept 2026) of your intention to contribute to this special issue.
Instructions for authors can be found here: https://intellectica.org/fr/auteurs
NB: The articles published by Intellectica, in French or in English (for non-native speaker), are not highly technical so that they can be read by a wide range of readers having already a certain acquaintance with the domain. The articles have an epistemological character, and attempt to give an account of the main tendencies around the theme in question. Potential authors can consult the online archives of Intellectica to see the sort of article that the journal has published over the years (https://intellectica.org/en/issues).
General Argument
Research on the social cognition of non-human animals is often based on comparative arguments, and one species in particular tends to act as a benchmark: the human species, against which – whether implicitly or not – we compare, evaluate, measure, and attempt to understand the behavior of other species. This special issue is concerned with social cognition, understood primarily as a form of cognition that unfolds in and through interaction with others. When investigating the cognitive abilities of non-human species from a comparative perspective, what are we actually assessing? If it is their capacity to display forms of cognition valued for their similarity to that of humans, isn’t there a risk to insidiously restore a scala naturae? Therefore, is there not, for the comparative approach, a danger to deviate from the evolutionary view according to which organisms have developed forms of cognition adapted to their specific “cognitive niches”? Contemporary comparative social cognition is ambiguous on this point, and this special issue aims to provide an opportunity for an in-depth historical and critical assessment.
The historiography of comparative psychology is permeated by a widespread view, yet challenged by Dewsbury (2000), according to which research concerned with the social cognition of animals did not flourish until the 1960s – the preceding decades being marked by the hegemony of behaviorism and its mechanistic conception of behavior (thus neglecting its specifically social dimension). This view also holds that research on animal (social) cognition emerged under the impetus of a widespread “cognitive revolution”, documented elsewhere in the history of ideas (Shettleworth, 1993). Dewsbury reminds us that, on the contrary, as early as the late 19th century, numerous studies on the “intelligence” or “mind” of animals already existed, and continued to proliferate during the behaviorist period, particularly at Yerkes’s laboratory in Florida (see Dewsbury, 2000; Haraway 1989; Montgomery, 2015; Thomas, 2024). As a matter of fact, these studies had already highlighted the significance of the “social” (i.e., its collective, cooperative and interactive) dimension of cognition. These hypotheses will be somehow “rediscovered” by contemporary comparative social cognition research, which, it seems, does not draw on this early body of work (but rather on Humphrey (1976) and his “social functions of intellect”). Although comparative psychology was declared moribund from the second half of the 20th century (Beach, 1950; Lockhard, 1971), and was consequently largely marginalized (see Abramson, 2018 for a comprehensive overview eloquently detailing the gradual exclusion of all topics central to comparative psychology from textbooks and journals), the study of animal social intelligence has not disappeared – quite the contrary.
Comparative psychology, which was originally defined as “the study of mind and behavior”, has thus gradually given way to “comparative cognition”, placing greater emphasis on mental phenomena than on the study of animal behavior. This trend followed the decline of behaviorism as a scientific paradigm and reflects what some authors have described as a “cognitive creep” in the literature on animal behavior (Abramson, 2018; Robins & al., 1999). This was also surely facilitated by the involvement of the philosophy of mind in the debate on animal cognition (see the 1978 Special Issue of BBS). This dual shift – toward cognition (as opposed to behavioral laws) on the one hand, and toward social cognition (as opposed causal reasoning) on the other – constitutes the general framework within which the contributions to this special issue might find their place.
The aim of this special issue is twofold. Firstly, it seeks to offer an historical account of the “cognitive shift” that saw comparative psychology evolve into “comparative social cognition”. Furthermore, it aims to examine the effects and limits of the comparative method as applied to the study of social cognition: once the social parameter is under investigation, what about the necessary processes of standardization and reduction at the heart of the experimental approach in psychology (Logan, 2001; Gerber, 2019)? The experimental approach indeed relies on standardized organisms or procedures (e.g., the Wistar rat, the maze, the Wisconsin General Test Apparatus, etc.). In social cognition experiments, individual and species-specific variations (biological and behavioral) emerge as significant epistemological obstacles, often overlooked by researchers, but highlighted by an emerging, though still marginal, critical literature (Andrews & Monso, 2025; Card & Leavens, 2014; Boesch, 2007; Braüer et al., 2020; Leavens et al., 2014; Racine et al., 2008; Webb, 2025, inter alia). The problem stands as follows: if the young human subjects and the ape subjects in a given experiment are not socialized in the same way, nor subjected to the same experimental setup (in the warm environment of a baby-lab for the former, and behind the bars of a cage for the latter), what exactly are we assessing when we compare the social cognition of the ape and the child?
This issue will feature contributions from researchers in the history of science, the history of ideas, philosophy, linguistics, comparative psychology, and /or primatology.
The following themes are only indicative:
We welcome articles in the history of science and ideas focusing on the pioneering works in animal psychology, especially those exploring “animal intelligence” by focusing on its “social” dimension. This could involve, for example, examining the work of Margaret Washburn, George Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, or taking a close look at the concept of “insight” in Koehler, as it is reinterpreted experimentally by Yerkes or Maier. The aim would be to discuss and illustrate, from a historical and empirical perspective, Dewsbury’s (2000) argument that it is inaccurate to claim that, prior to 1960, there was no research on “cognition”, and “social cognition” in particular (although these terms now appear anachronistic) in comparative psychology.
A possible line of research could to build on Thomas’s argument (2024: 179), demonstrating that in the experiments conducted by early animal psychologists, cooperation (between the animals and the experimenters) and trust were believed to have an “epistemic value” – the (relative) will and confidence of the animals ensuring the success of the protocol. Considerations for house-keeping issues (Montgomery, 2015: 32) for instance, although probably more methodological than ethical, are an illustration of the special care that psychologists believed they were showing toward the experimented animals.
A contribution could trace the emergence of explicitly cognitive themes in comparative research beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, in the perspective of a history of science or a history of ideas. A related topic could be to examine the impact that the research on “theory of mind” in both fields of animal behavior research and philosophy of mind, as well as the links between comparative social psychology and cognitive ethology. Alternatively, contributions could focus on the proposition made by sociobiology to “cannibalize” other disciplinary fields including comparative psychology (Wyers & al, 1980) and the reactions it gave rise to (Stuhrmann, 2022).
An article examining the links between comparative psychology (or, more broadly, research on animal behavior) and social theory would be welcome. There are indeed relationships, whether thematically (studies on “cooperation” typically rely on a tacit social theory) or historically, given the tenuous links that have connected researchers in animal psychology on the one hand, and philosophers and sociologists on the other. From this perspective, an article on the connections between American pragmatism and animal behavior studies, for instance, would be relevant.
The special issue could include an article from researchers practicing a somehow heterodox comparative psychology or reviewing this body of work (e.g. Leavens, Bard, Andrews & Monzo, Webb, inter alia).
It could also be relevant to include an article by researchers working on nonhuman primate social cognition, that might address the methodological issues of doing comparative research, particularly by someone examining issues of ecological validity and/or conducting “field experiments”; or simply primatologists interested in examining epistemological and methodological questions pertaining to the specificities of comparative research on social cognition.
References
Abramson, C. I. (2018). Let us bring comparative psychology back. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 31.
Andrews, K., & Monsó, S. (2026). Does comparative cognition have a WEIRD problem?. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 140(1), 4.
Bard, K., & Leavens, D. (2014). The importance of development for comparative primatology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43(1).
Beach, F. (1950). The snark was a boojum. American Psychologist, 5(4), 115.
Boesch, C. (2007). What makes us human (Homo sapiens)? The challenge of cognitive cross-species comparison. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 121(3), 227.
Bräuer, J., Hanus, D., Pika, S., Gray, R., & Uomini, N. (2020). Old and new approaches to animal cognition: There is not “one cognition”. Journal of Intelligence, 8(3), 28.
Dewsbury, D. (2000). Comparative cognition in the 1930s. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(2), 267-283.
Gerber, L. (2022). Le laboratoire des esprits animaux. Modéliser le trouble mental à l’ère de la psychopharmacologie. BHMS Editions.
Haraway, D. (1989). Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. Routledge.
Humphrey, N. (1976). The social function of intellect. In Growing Points in Ethology (ed. P. Bateson & R. Hinde), Cambridge University Press, pp. 303-317
Leavens, D., Bard, K., & Hopkins, W. (2019). The mismeasure of ape social cognition. Animal cognition, 22(4), 487-504.
Lockard, R. B. (1971). Reflections on the fall of comparative psychology: Is there a message for us all?. American Psychologist, 26(2), 168.
Logan C., (2002). « Before there were standards: the role of test animals in the production of empirical generality in physiology », Journal of the History of Biology (35), 329-363.
Montgomery, G. (2015). Primates in the real world: escaping primate folklore and creating primate science. University of Virginia Press.
Racine TP, Leavens DA, Susswein N, Wereha TJ. 2008. Conceptual and methodological issues in the investigation of primate intersubjectivity. In Enacting Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to the Study of Interactions (ed. F Morganti, A Carassa, G Riva), Amsterdam: IOS, 65-79.
Robins, R., Gosling, S., & Craik, K. H. (1999). An empirical analysis of trends in psychology. American Psychologist, 54(2), 117-128
Shettleworth, S.J., 1993. Where is the comparison in comparative cognition? Alternative research programs. Psychological Science 4, 179-184.
Stuhrmann, C. (2022). “It Felt More like a Revolution.” How Behavioral Ecology Succeeded Ethology, 1970–1990. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 45(1-2), 135-163.
Thomas, M. (2024). Chimpanzees as “Resisters” or “Collaborators”: Animal Agency in Biomedical and Psychology Experiments at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Yale Laboratories for Primate Biology in the US (1903–1930). In The Riddle of Organismal Agency, Routledge, 171-185.
Webb, C. (2025). The arrogant ape: the myth of human exceptionalism and why it matters. New York, NY: Avery.
Wyers, E.., Adler, H., Carpen, K., Chiszar, D., Demarest, J., Flanagan Jr, O. J., ... & Tobach, E. (1980). The sociobiological challenge to psychology: On the proposal to" cannibalize" comparative psychology. American Psychologist, 35(11), 955.
Publication date: Dec 2027
Possible workshop with participants of the SI: November 2026 in Lyon.
The manuscript (or any questions) should be sent to soumission@intellectica.org
Please notify the scientific editor (chloe.mondeme@cnrs.fr) in advance (ideally before sept 2026) of your intention to contribute to this special issue.
Instructions for authors can be found here: https://intellectica.org/fr/auteurs
NB: The articles published by Intellectica, in French or in English (for non-native speaker), are not highly technical so that they can be read by a wide range of readers having already a certain acquaintance with the domain. The articles have an epistemological character, and attempt to give an account of the main tendencies around the theme in question. Potential authors can consult the online archives of Intellectica to see the sort of article that the journal has published over the years (https://intellectica.org/en/issues).
General Argument
Research on the social cognition of non-human animals is often based on comparative arguments, and one species in particular tends to act as a benchmark: the human species, against which – whether implicitly or not – we compare, evaluate, measure, and attempt to understand the behavior of other species. This special issue is concerned with social cognition, understood primarily as a form of cognition that unfolds in and through interaction with others. When investigating the cognitive abilities of non-human species from a comparative perspective, what are we actually assessing? If it is their capacity to display forms of cognition valued for their similarity to that of humans, isn’t there a risk to insidiously restore a scala naturae? Therefore, is there not, for the comparative approach, a danger to deviate from the evolutionary view according to which organisms have developed forms of cognition adapted to their specific “cognitive niches”? Contemporary comparative social cognition is ambiguous on this point, and this special issue aims to provide an opportunity for an in-depth historical and critical assessment.
The historiography of comparative psychology is permeated by a widespread view, yet challenged by Dewsbury (2000), according to which research concerned with the social cognition of animals did not flourish until the 1960s – the preceding decades being marked by the hegemony of behaviorism and its mechanistic conception of behavior (thus neglecting its specifically social dimension). This view also holds that research on animal (social) cognition emerged under the impetus of a widespread “cognitive revolution”, documented elsewhere in the history of ideas (Shettleworth, 1993). Dewsbury reminds us that, on the contrary, as early as the late 19th century, numerous studies on the “intelligence” or “mind” of animals already existed, and continued to proliferate during the behaviorist period, particularly at Yerkes’s laboratory in Florida (see Dewsbury, 2000; Haraway 1989; Montgomery, 2015; Thomas, 2024). As a matter of fact, these studies had already highlighted the significance of the “social” (i.e., its collective, cooperative and interactive) dimension of cognition. These hypotheses will be somehow “rediscovered” by contemporary comparative social cognition research, which, it seems, does not draw on this early body of work (but rather on Humphrey (1976) and his “social functions of intellect”). Although comparative psychology was declared moribund from the second half of the 20th century (Beach, 1950; Lockhard, 1971), and was consequently largely marginalized (see Abramson, 2018 for a comprehensive overview eloquently detailing the gradual exclusion of all topics central to comparative psychology from textbooks and journals), the study of animal social intelligence has not disappeared – quite the contrary.
Comparative psychology, which was originally defined as “the study of mind and behavior”, has thus gradually given way to “comparative cognition”, placing greater emphasis on mental phenomena than on the study of animal behavior. This trend followed the decline of behaviorism as a scientific paradigm and reflects what some authors have described as a “cognitive creep” in the literature on animal behavior (Abramson, 2018; Robins & al., 1999). This was also surely facilitated by the involvement of the philosophy of mind in the debate on animal cognition (see the 1978 Special Issue of BBS). This dual shift – toward cognition (as opposed to behavioral laws) on the one hand, and toward social cognition (as opposed causal reasoning) on the other – constitutes the general framework within which the contributions to this special issue might find their place.
The aim of this special issue is twofold. Firstly, it seeks to offer an historical account of the “cognitive shift” that saw comparative psychology evolve into “comparative social cognition”. Furthermore, it aims to examine the effects and limits of the comparative method as applied to the study of social cognition: once the social parameter is under investigation, what about the necessary processes of standardization and reduction at the heart of the experimental approach in psychology (Logan, 2001; Gerber, 2019)? The experimental approach indeed relies on standardized organisms or procedures (e.g., the Wistar rat, the maze, the Wisconsin General Test Apparatus, etc.). In social cognition experiments, individual and species-specific variations (biological and behavioral) emerge as significant epistemological obstacles, often overlooked by researchers, but highlighted by an emerging, though still marginal, critical literature (Andrews & Monso, 2025; Card & Leavens, 2014; Boesch, 2007; Braüer et al., 2020; Leavens et al., 2014; Racine et al., 2008; Webb, 2025, inter alia). The problem stands as follows: if the young human subjects and the ape subjects in a given experiment are not socialized in the same way, nor subjected to the same experimental setup (in the warm environment of a baby-lab for the former, and behind the bars of a cage for the latter), what exactly are we assessing when we compare the social cognition of the ape and the child?
This issue will feature contributions from researchers in the history of science, the history of ideas, philosophy, linguistics, comparative psychology, and /or primatology.
The following themes are only indicative:
We welcome articles in the history of science and ideas focusing on the pioneering works in animal psychology, especially those exploring “animal intelligence” by focusing on its “social” dimension. This could involve, for example, examining the work of Margaret Washburn, George Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, or taking a close look at the concept of “insight” in Koehler, as it is reinterpreted experimentally by Yerkes or Maier. The aim would be to discuss and illustrate, from a historical and empirical perspective, Dewsbury’s (2000) argument that it is inaccurate to claim that, prior to 1960, there was no research on “cognition”, and “social cognition” in particular (although these terms now appear anachronistic) in comparative psychology.
A possible line of research could to build on Thomas’s argument (2024: 179), demonstrating that in the experiments conducted by early animal psychologists, cooperation (between the animals and the experimenters) and trust were believed to have an “epistemic value” – the (relative) will and confidence of the animals ensuring the success of the protocol. Considerations for house-keeping issues (Montgomery, 2015: 32) for instance, although probably more methodological than ethical, are an illustration of the special care that psychologists believed they were showing toward the experimented animals.
A contribution could trace the emergence of explicitly cognitive themes in comparative research beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, in the perspective of a history of science or a history of ideas. A related topic could be to examine the impact that the research on “theory of mind” in both fields of animal behavior research and philosophy of mind, as well as the links between comparative social psychology and cognitive ethology. Alternatively, contributions could focus on the proposition made by sociobiology to “cannibalize” other disciplinary fields including comparative psychology (Wyers & al, 1980) and the reactions it gave rise to (Stuhrmann, 2022).
An article examining the links between comparative psychology (or, more broadly, research on animal behavior) and social theory would be welcome. There are indeed relationships, whether thematically (studies on “cooperation” typically rely on a tacit social theory) or historically, given the tenuous links that have connected researchers in animal psychology on the one hand, and philosophers and sociologists on the other. From this perspective, an article on the connections between American pragmatism and animal behavior studies, for instance, would be relevant.
The special issue could include an article from researchers practicing a somehow heterodox comparative psychology or reviewing this body of work (e.g. Leavens, Bard, Andrews & Monzo, Webb, inter alia).
It could also be relevant to include an article by researchers working on nonhuman primate social cognition, that might address the methodological issues of doing comparative research, particularly by someone examining issues of ecological validity and/or conducting “field experiments”; or simply primatologists interested in examining epistemological and methodological questions pertaining to the specificities of comparative research on social cognition.
References
Abramson, C. I. (2018). Let us bring comparative psychology back. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 31.
Andrews, K., & Monsó, S. (2026). Does comparative cognition have a WEIRD problem?. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 140(1), 4.
Bard, K., & Leavens, D. (2014). The importance of development for comparative primatology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43(1).
Beach, F. (1950). The snark was a boojum. American Psychologist, 5(4), 115.
Boesch, C. (2007). What makes us human (Homo sapiens)? The challenge of cognitive cross-species comparison. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 121(3), 227.
Bräuer, J., Hanus, D., Pika, S., Gray, R., & Uomini, N. (2020). Old and new approaches to animal cognition: There is not “one cognition”. Journal of Intelligence, 8(3), 28.
Dewsbury, D. (2000). Comparative cognition in the 1930s. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7(2), 267-283.
Gerber, L. (2022). Le laboratoire des esprits animaux. Modéliser le trouble mental à l’ère de la psychopharmacologie. BHMS Editions.
Haraway, D. (1989). Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. Routledge.
Humphrey, N. (1976). The social function of intellect. In Growing Points in Ethology (ed. P. Bateson & R. Hinde), Cambridge University Press, pp. 303-317
Leavens, D., Bard, K., & Hopkins, W. (2019). The mismeasure of ape social cognition. Animal cognition, 22(4), 487-504.
Lockard, R. B. (1971). Reflections on the fall of comparative psychology: Is there a message for us all?. American Psychologist, 26(2), 168.
Logan C., (2002). « Before there were standards: the role of test animals in the production of empirical generality in physiology », Journal of the History of Biology (35), 329-363.
Montgomery, G. (2015). Primates in the real world: escaping primate folklore and creating primate science. University of Virginia Press.
Racine TP, Leavens DA, Susswein N, Wereha TJ. 2008. Conceptual and methodological issues in the investigation of primate intersubjectivity. In Enacting Intersubjectivity: A Cognitive and Social Perspective to the Study of Interactions (ed. F Morganti, A Carassa, G Riva), Amsterdam: IOS, 65-79.
Robins, R., Gosling, S., & Craik, K. H. (1999). An empirical analysis of trends in psychology. American Psychologist, 54(2), 117-128
Shettleworth, S.J., 1993. Where is the comparison in comparative cognition? Alternative research programs. Psychological Science 4, 179-184.
Stuhrmann, C. (2022). “It Felt More like a Revolution.” How Behavioral Ecology Succeeded Ethology, 1970–1990. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 45(1-2), 135-163.
Thomas, M. (2024). Chimpanzees as “Resisters” or “Collaborators”: Animal Agency in Biomedical and Psychology Experiments at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Yale Laboratories for Primate Biology in the US (1903–1930). In The Riddle of Organismal Agency, Routledge, 171-185.
Webb, C. (2025). The arrogant ape: the myth of human exceptionalism and why it matters. New York, NY: Avery.
Wyers, E.., Adler, H., Carpen, K., Chiszar, D., Demarest, J., Flanagan Jr, O. J., ... & Tobach, E. (1980). The sociobiological challenge to psychology: On the proposal to" cannibalize" comparative psychology. American Psychologist, 35(11), 955.