ABSTRACT
How do we get to know and understand others? Is social cognition perceptual or inferential in nature? Is our understanding of others in principle like our understanding of trees, rocks, and clouds, or does it differ in fundamental ways from our understanding of inanimate objects? Do we understand others by analogy to ourselves, that is, does self-understanding have primacy over the understanding of others, or is the understanding of self and other equally primordial, basically employing the same cognitive mechanisms?
