Social cue

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion (and more) and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others.^[1] These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.^[2]

A few examples of social cues include:

• eye gaze
• facial expression
• vocal tone
• body language

Social cues are part of social cognition and serve several purposes in navigating the social world. Due to their social nature, humans rely heavily on the ability to understand other peoples' mental states and make predictions about their behaviour. Especially in the view of evolution, this ability is critical in helping to determine potential threats and advantageous opportunities;^[1] and in helping to form and maintain relationships in order to fulfill safety and basic physiological needs.^[3] These cues allow us to predict other people's meanings and intentions in order to be able to respond in an efficient and adaptive manner,^[1] as well as to anticipate how others might respond to one's own choices.^[4] For instance, people were found to behave more prosocially in economic games when being watched which indicates^{[clarification needed]} potential reputational risk (see also watching eye effect).^[5]

The ability to perceive social signals and integrate them into judgements about others' intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs, desires, emotions, knowledge)^{[clarification needed]} is often referred to as theory of mind or mentalization, and is evident from about 18 months of age.^[6]

Processing and decoding social cues is an important part of everyday human interaction (e.g. turn-taking in conversation^[7]), and therefore a critical skill for communication and social understanding. Taking into account other people's internal states such as thoughts or emotions^{[clarification needed]} is a critical part of forming and maintaining relationships. The social monitoring system^{[clarification needed]} attunes individuals to external information regarding social approval and disapproval by increasing interpersonal sensitivity, the "attention to and accuracy in decoding interpersonal social cues"^[3] relevant to gaining inclusion. Being able to accurately detect both positive and negative cues allows one to behave adaptively and avoid future rejection, which therefore produces greater social inclusion. High need for social inclusion due to situational events (e.g. rejection) activates higher social monitoring; and individuals that generally experience greater belonging needs are associated with greater interpersonal sensitivity. However, this mechanism should not be confused with rejection sensitivity—a bias that decodes ambiguous social cues as signs of rejection.^[3]

Under-developed awareness of social cues can make interaction in social situations challenging. There are various mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia) that impair this ability, and therefore make effective communication as well as forming relationships with others difficult for the affected person.^[8] Additionally, research shows that older adults have difficulties in extracting and decoding social cues from the environment, especially those about human agency and intentionality.^[9] Children rely more on social cues than adults as children use them in order to comprehend and learn about their surroundings.^[10]