Social interactions require knowledge of the environment and status of others, which can be acquired indirectly by observing the behavior of others. When being observed, animals can also alter their signals based on who is watching. Attention structures of this kind are fundamental to competently navigating a dynamic social world and depend on advanced social cognition capabilities along with mechanisms for assessing, evaluating, and responding to a variety of social cues. Given the importance of attention structures in social groups it is surprising how little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. Here, we use the highly social African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, to assess how socially dominant males – after having experienced a simulated territorial intrusion – adjust both their attention and behavior when a neighbor is subjected to the same treatment. Following intrusions, we harvested blood and brains from males to assay circulating levels of steroid hormones and neural activity patterns throughout the social decision-making network, respectively. Our results show that males are keenly aware of their social environment and adjust their behavior strategically for reproductive and social advantage. This work increases our understanding of individual’s social interactions by taking an integrative approach to examine behavior and the neuromolecular basis of such behavior.