European Social Cognition Network (ESCON)

Research in social cognition, like that in most sciences, is becoming increasingly collaborative. As research becomes more complex, and as the research process requires more specialized expertise, collaboration provides often-essential skills and knowledge for conducting research. In some instances, collaborators add special expertise in a high-tech method or statistics. In other instances, collaboration allows hypothesis testing at different sites or across cultures, which may help identify contextual moderators of a process or phenomenon. In still other cases, collaborators each possess specialized theoretical expertise relevant to different aspects of a problem (e.g., if a group of researchers knowledgeable about the language - social cognition interface were to team up with others expert in motor programs and their influence on social cognitive processes) or are interested in testing competing models and predictions (e.g., so- called adversarial collaboration ). Our central objective is to create a platform that facilitates European research collaboration in the field of social cognition and leads to the   formulation of cutting edge collaborative European research programmes.