Executive Function and Social Behaviour: Causal Evidence from Loading Working Memory and Inhibitory Control

This article investigates how domain-specific executive functions contribute to perspective-taking and prosocial behavior. Across two preregistered experiments, we independently manipulated working memory (WM) and inhibitory control to assess their effects on social cognition. In Experiment 1 (N = 128), WM load was varied using a dual-task paradigm, and participants completed behavioral and eye-tracking measures of perspective-taking and prosociality. WM load impaired perspective-taking, and this effect was larger under nonsocial than social load. Conversely, individual differences in prosocial behavior were associated with higher social (but not nonsocial) WM capacity and larger support cliques, suggesting that dissociable cognitive mechanisms underpin different social outcomes. Notably, WM performance did not vary across social versus nonsocial conditions, indicating that increased social complexity did not impair WM and that the relationship is not bidirectional. In Experiment 2 (N = 122), inhibitory control was manipulated using an ego-depletion task, but no significant effects of load emerged. We discuss the challenges of isolating inhibitory control from WM and highlight the need for improved methods in future research. Overall, these findings provide causal evidence linking WM to social skills, underscore the importance of distinguishing between social and nonsocial domains of executive functioning, and point to key conceptual and methodological priorities for the field.