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Toward a unified theory of social relationships and social networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2026

Jae-Young Son Open the ORCID record for Jae-Young Son [Opens in a new window]
Jae-Young Son*
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA jae@brown.edu
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

Navigating the social world requires representing how people relate to one another and how people are connected in a network. Though both are forms of relational knowledge, it is difficult to unify them in a single theoretical framework. I hypothesize that the statistics of observation may be sufficient to learn both network structure and an intuitive theory of relationships.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 49 , 2026 , e50
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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