社会神经科学（英语：Social neuroscience）是一门新兴的交叉学科，它的研究目标是了解社会过程和社会行为的生物学机制并且利用生物学的概念和方法来启发和完善社会过程和行为的理论。从根本上来说，人类是一种社会动物。作为一种社会动物，人类创造出了很多个体以外的涌现性组织，即诸如二元关系、家庭、集体、城市、文明和文化这样一些社会结构。这些涌现性组织的产生和发展与支持它们的神经和内分泌机制的产生和发展紧密相连的。其原因在于这些涌现性组织所导致的社会行为帮助个体成功地生存、繁衍和养育后代，所以这些涌现性组织本身能够得以保存并不断繁衍。“社会神经科学”一词的产生可以追溯到 John Cacioppo 和Gary Berntson 于1992年在《美国心理学家》杂志上发表的一篇文章。作为一门年轻的学科，社会神经科学所关注的是大脑如何介导社会交互，并且由于它与情绪神经科学以及认知神经科学有着紧密的联系。

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than individualists. As such, Homo sapiens create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce. The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to a publication entitled "Social Neuroscience Bulletin" that was published quarterly between 1988 and 1994. The term was subsequently popularized in an article by John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992. Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions.