The field of social cognitive neuroscience has captured the attention of many researchers during the past ten years‎.‎ Much of the impetus for this new field came from the development of functional neuroimaging methods that made it possible to unobtrusively measure brain activation over time‎.‎ Using these methods over the last 30 years has allowed psychologists to move from simple validation questions ‎- would flashing stimuli activate the visual cortex ‎- to those about the functional specialization of brain regions ‎- are there regions in the inferior temporal cortex dedicated to face processing ‎- to questions that‎,‎ just a decade ago‎,‎ would have been considered intractable at such a level of analysis‎.‎ These so‎-called "intractable" questions are the focus of the chapters in this book‎,‎ which introduces social cognitive neuroscience research addressing questions of fundamental importance to social psychology‎:‎ How do we understand and represent other people‎?‎ How do we represent social groups‎?‎ How do we regulate our emotions and socially undesirable responses‎?‎This book also presents innovative combinations of multiple methodologies‎,‎ including behavioral experiments‎,‎ computer modeling‎,‎ functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ‎(‎fMRI‎)‎ experiments‎,‎ Event‎-Related Potential ‎(‎ERP‎)‎ experiments‎,‎ and brain lesion studies‎.‎ It is divided into four sections‎.‎ The first three sections present the latest research on‎,‎ respectively‎,‎ understanding and representing other people‎,‎ representing social groups‎,‎ and the interplay of cognition and emotion in social regulation‎.‎ In the fourth section‎,‎ contributors step back and consider a range of novel topics that have emerged in the context of social neuroscience research‎:‎ understanding social exclusion as pain‎,‎ deconstructing our moral intuitions‎,‎ understanding cooperative exchanges with other agents‎,‎ and the effect of aging on brain function and its implications for well‎-being‎.‎ Taken together‎,‎ these chapters provide a rich introduction to an exciting‎,‎ rapidly developing and expanding field that promises a richer and deeper understanding of the social mind‎.‎