It is widely believed that the demands of living in large, complexly bonded social groups played a key role in the evolution of human cognition. This review focuses on a critical but understudied skillset in the social-living toolkit: the ability to acquire, maintain, and use knowledge of the interpersonal relationships among the people around oneself. We provide a multidisciplinary synthesis of a diverse set of relevant findings, including recent work on the neural encoding and cognitive and behavioral consequences of knowledge of real-world social networks, research on how third-party relationship knowledge is tracked and used by children and other highly social primates, and research examining how people’s knowledge of their social networks can be leveraged to inform the design of interventions aiming to promote behavior change or to efficiently spread information. We also highlight important unanswered questions and avenues in need of further exploration.

人们普遍认为，生活在庞大而复杂的社会群体中的需求在人类认知的演变中发挥了关键作用。这篇评论侧重于社交生活工具包中一个关键但未被充分研究的技能：获取、维持和使用自己周围人之间人际关系知识的能力。我们提供了多种相关发现的多学科综合，包括最近关于现实世界社交网络知识的神经编码和认知和行为后果的研究，关于儿童如何跟踪和使用第三方关系知识的研究以及其他研究。高度社交的灵长类动物，以及研究如何利用人们对其社交网络的知识来指导旨在促进行为改变或有效传播信息的干预措施的设计。我们还强调了重要的未解决问题和需要进一步探索的途径。