The present doctoral thesis aimed at identifying biological mechanisms underlying social perception by combining behavioral, psychological, as well as neuro-physiological measures in humans. In so doing, two core processes of social neuroscience, namely emotion perception and regulation, were investigated from a social psychology perspective, emphasizing the importance of social context and motives as key determinants of human social functioning. The results of the performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments revealed for the first time that the social (or non-social) nature - and the specific conveyed meaning - of emotional stimuli differentially modulated brain activity associated with emotion perception, as well as regulation. In addition, several of these relations were crucially dependent on individual differences in avoidant and anxious adult attachment style. The new data thus disclosed so far unknown direct interactions between personality, social context, and emotion regulation strategy use, together with the corresponding underlying brain activity.