From the Social to the Individual: Human Interdependence Calls for Explanatory Reversal in Mind and Brain
Haily Merritt, Dimitris Bolis
PsyArXiv April 30, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/eabr5_v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review |
|---|---|
| Topics | Addiction |
| Key findings | Argues that cognitive science's "interactive turn" has not gone far enough and proposes a "social-first" explanatory reversal in which human interdependence is primary and individual cognition emerges from relational dynamics. Contends that interpersonal synchrony can serve as an entry point for analyzing how interaction reorganizes cognition across minds, bodies, and environments, and that coordination shapes not only social outcomes but also apparently individual processes. |
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed an “interactive turn” in the cognitive sciences, increasingly foregrounding real-time social interaction and organism–environment dynamics. Yet, even the interactive turn often stops short of its own implications, leaving an individual-first explanatory order largely intact. Taking these implications seriously points toward an explanatory reversal: human interdependence is primary, and individual cognition emerges within—and remains dependent upon—relational dynamics. In this review article, selectively drawing on philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, social neuroscience, neurophysiology and neuroecology, we set out a social-first perspective in which regulation, vulnerability, and agency are shaped through histories of affective, behavioral, and physiological co-regulation, including patterns of attunement, misattunement, and repair. Using interpersonal synchrony as a diagnostic case, we argue that recent work makes it increasingly feasible to treat synchrony not only as a statistical marker of coordination, but as an entry point for analysing interactional organization and its effects on individual cognition across causal, directional, and multiscale dimensions. In this regard, we synthesize findings indicating that interpersonal coordination can shape not only social outcomes but also apparently individual processes, motivating closer attention to social-to-individual pathways across scales. Making these commitments explicit supports an explanatory reversal that proceeds from the social to the individual, initiating a shift from documenting covariation to explaining how interaction reorganizes cognition across minds, bodies, and environments. We conclude by drawing out the implications of this shift for theory, empirical research, artificial intelligence, and societal practice.
Comparable studies
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| Mindfulness meditation–based pain relief: a mechanistic account | 2016 | Review | |
| Psychedelics as anti-inflammatory agents Animal models and cellular studies | 2018 | Review | |
| A narrative review of yoga and mindfulness as complementary therapies for addiction. | 2013 | Review | |
| The neuropsychopharmacology of cannabis: A review of human imaging studies | 2018 | Review |