Altercentric Cognition: How Others Influence Our Cognitive Processing

Humans are ultrasocial, yet, theories of cognition have often been occupied with the solitary mind. Over the past decade, an increasing volume of work has revealed how individual cognition is influenced by the presence of others. Not only do we rapidly identify others in our environment, but we also align our attention with their attention, which influences what we perceive, represent, and remember, even when our immediate goals do not involve coordination. Here, we refer to the human sensitivity to others and to the targets and content of their attention as 'altercentrism'; and aim to bring seemingly disparate findings together, suggesting that they are all reflections of the altercentric nature of human cognition.