Researching Self-Face Recognition from the View of Evolutionary Psychology

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (6) : 1524-1529.

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PDF(6239 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (6) : 1524-1529.

Researching Self-Face Recognition from the View of Evolutionary Psychology

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Abstract

Face is a unique self-referential stimulus, presumably one’s most distinctive physical feature. A lot of human self-face recognition researches have been done on phylogeny, development, processing advantage and social situation adaptation. According to the surmise of evolutionary psychologists, self-cognition is a set of cognitive processing abilities developed from different evolutionary courses. There are five forms of self, ecological self-knowledge, interpersonal self-knowledge, extended self-knowledge, private self-knowledge and conceptual self-knowledge. They have different evolution and development process. Among them, self-face recognition is an important component. Its development rely on the processing of the extended self-knowledge. We can find its early form in the common ancestors of human beings and chimpanzees and bonobos lived in 6.5 to 4.5 Ma. In the coming evolutionary process, private self-knowledge and conceptual self-knowledge appeared in succession. The whole process recapitulate itself in the mankind's individual development. With the combination of extended self-knowledge, private self-knowledge and conceptual self-knowledge, human beings developed complicated and diversified behavior. It may well be this capacity that distinguishes humans, setting them apart from other animals. At present, though it's just the beginning for studies of neuro-mechanism of self-cognition and self-consciousness, more and more attentions from different researchers were focused in this field. Using self-face as object of study, a lot of works have done on the neurological basis of self-face cognitive processing, allocation of attention, development characteristics, relationship between theory of mind (ToM) with self concept, inhibition mechanism and its relationship with social adaption. Self-face, as the most significant mark for human individual, can be used as unique stimulus in the processing of extended self-knowledge, private self-knowledge and conceptual self-knowledge and also play important role in the exploration of the mechanism of self-processing. Evolution is a very long process and it is also prone to biology. Thus, the theory of evolutionary psychology is an appropriate frame for self cognition processing research, which suggests that the human beings are still in the progress of adaption to the social environment. As the environmental pressure for humans to survival is very little while the human relationships have become more and more complicated, future researches may focus on self awareness and self recognition processing in contemporary social situations, especially in different environment and relationships, which may indicate more and more evidence for the adaptive performance on human behavior.

Key words

self awareness / self cognition / self-face recognition / evolutionary psychology

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Researching Self-Face Recognition from the View of Evolutionary Psychology[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2014, 37(6): 1524-1529
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