CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Social Approach: Mind as Society
Social Cognition
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Social cognition is the study of how people make sense
of other people and of themselves.
There are four assumptions (Fiske & Taylor, 2008):
1.
2.
3.
4.
People use mental representations and processes.
How they develop, operate and change over time.
An interdisciplinary approach.
Applicability to the real world.
Evolution and Social Cognition
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The cultural intelligence hypothesis. Social interaction
led to the development of intelligence.
The general intelligence hypothesis. Intelligence
developed in a general way to solve all kinds of
problems.
Herrmann et. al. (2009) tested young human children
and primates on physical (non-social) and social
problems. The children scored on social problems,
supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis.
Also, there is a positive correlation between relative
size of the neocortex and social factors like group size
and grooming clique size (Dunbar, 2003).
Attention and Social Cognition
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Joint attention is the ability to focus attention where
somebody else is focusing.There are two forms:
In responding to joint attention (RJA) we follow the
gestures and gaze direction. This is more passive.
In initiating joint attention (IJA) we use gestures and
eye movements to direct attention to people, objects,
and events. This is more active.
Autistic children and chimpanzees have RJA but not
IJA.
Joint Attention
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There are two neural systems that underlie joint
attention (Mundy, Card & Fox, 2000):
The posterior orienting and perceptual system consists
of the parietal and superior temporal cortex. It is
involuntary and directs our gaze to biologically
meaningful stimuli.
The anterior attention system consists of frontal brain
areas including the orbital frontal cortex, prefrontal
association cortex and anterior cingulate. It is
voluntary and mediates goal-directed attention.
Posterior and Anterior Attention Systems
Underlying Joint Attention.
Social Cognitive Neuroscience
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Are there specific parts of the brain that are used
only in thinking about people?
Researchers have found mPFC activation for social
tasks only (Fletcher et. al., 1995).
But there is also functional overlap between social and
non-social brain areas. The right temporoparietal
junction (rTPJ) activates only for some kinds of social
thinking, not others (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003).
Mitchell (2008) found resting metabolic rate of social
areas high, suggesting a default “people mode” way
of thinking. We may need to shut off these areas
when reasoning non-socially.
Mirror Neurons
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A mirror neuron fires when an animal performs some
action and also when watching another animal
perform the same action. So we would see activity
when monkey A grasps an object, but also activity
when monkey A sees monkey B grasp an object.
These cells probably play a role in observational
learning, learning by copying other’s actions. Also
used in behavioral intent, trying to figure out what
others are doing.
Have not been identified in people but in macaque
monkeys are located in the inferior frontal gyrus and
the inferior parietal lobe.
Mirror Neurons
They may also be involved in our experience of
empathy. Imaging studies with human patients show
activity in brain areas that feel pain and when
watching a video of somebody else about to
experience pain (Decety & Jackson, 2004). Watching
somebody else about to cut themselves with a kitchen
knife can hurt us!
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These studies show global activity, not individual
neuron activity as single cell recording cannot usually
be done with human subjects.
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Theory of Mind
• A theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to understand
other’s mental states and to use them to guide our
actions when dealing with others.
• Children have been found to acquire a ToM by the
age of 4-5 years.
• This has been discovered with tests like the SallyAnn task.
Autism
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A developmental disorder characterized by impaired
social interaction and accompanied by restrictive and
repetitive behavior. Language deficits also present.
Symptoms persist throughout life but vary in their
severity. Males more than three times as likely to have
it.
Currently, there is no “cure” but there is compensatory
cognitive and behavioral training.
There is a genetic basis. Environmental causes have
also been proposed and include heavy metals and
pesticides.
Autism and Theory of Mind
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Autistics are “mind blind”, they have a limited or no
ToM. They do not show a fully developed RJA or IJA.
Preschool autistic children do not prefer facial to other
visual stimuli or speech to other auditory stimuli.
Adult autistic individuals do not show mPFC activation
in a mentalizing task (Happe et. al., 1996).
High functioning autistics have less gray matter in
some brain areas but more in others (Abell et. al.,
1999).
Other Social Cognitive Disorders
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William’s syndrome is a genetic disease. Patients
manifest hypersociability, an exaggerated interest in
other people, increased expressiveness and social
communicability. However, they also have limited
spatial skills, motor control and suffer from mental
retardation along with other physical defects.
Social phobia is characterized by a fear of public
places, social interaction, and of being evaluated
negatively by others.
Attitudes
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A learned predispostion to respond to a particular
object, person, or idea in a particular way.
They have three components: thoughts, feelings and
actions.
Example: Your negative attitude toward your
roommate. You may think that he is inconsiderate,
feel angry and tell him to turn down his music.
Cognitive Dissonance
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Results from an inconsistency between our attitudes
and our behavior. If we think we are a good student
and fail an exam, then we feel bad and undergo a
heightened state of arousal.
How do we reduce it? Making up an excuse,
trivializing the incident, or compensating for it by
doing better in another area.
Attitudes affect our perception, attention,
interpretation, learning, and memory.
Attitudes and Neuroscience
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Cacioppo, Crites, and Gardner (1996) did ERP recordings on people asked
to make evaluative and non-evaluative judgments.
An evaluative judgment is one involving good or bad, i.e., whether you like
one baseball team more than another. A non-evaluative judgment is neutral.
It would involve categorizing whether a word is a noun or verb.
They found right hemisphere activation for evaluative categorizations and
activity in both hemispheres for non-evaluative ones.
The results suggest a fast automatic process that “kicks” in quickly to assess
whether something is a threat for evaluative decisions and a slower more
deliberative process for judging making neutral decisions.
Impressions
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An opinion or belief that you form about another
person.
Early impressions are very powerful. In one study
participants were able to judge accurately what
teachers thought about students after watching a
10 second video clip of the two interacting.
Several factors influence our impressions. Physically
attractive people are judged more positively but
not to have greater integrity, modesty, or concern
for others.
Impressions
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According to the halo effect, we see positive traits
go together. If someone is attractive, we also think
they are intelligent, wealthy, etc.
People who talk in a clear and direct manner are
judged better than those who use filler words such
as “like” and “you know”.
We like people who self-disclose but not too much
(Colins & Miller, 1994).
Attribution
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An explanation we give for the causes of events or
behaviors (Forsterling, 1998).
An internal attribution explains a person’s actions in
terms of their personality. This person is tail-gating
me because he is aggressive or hurried.
An external attribution explains a person’s behavior
in terms of environmental causes. This person is tailgating me because someone is tail-gating him.
Factors Affecting Attribution
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According to the fundamental attribution error, we
have a tendency to make internal attributions.
In the self-serving bias, we tend to explain our own
failures as due to external causes but other people’s
failures to internal ones.
By the belief in a just world phenomenon we think that
people get what they deserve. A street beggar got
that way because he is an alcoholic. A rich person got
that way because he is smart and works hard. The
end explains the cause.
Attribution and Neuroscience
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Rillings et. al., (2004) found different brain areas
involved in thinking about abstract situations
involving people (like a scenario or story) and for
real world people scenarios (like a game with
people who are physically present).
The anterior paracingulate cortex (pACC) and the
posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) were used
for the real world situation. There was less activation
in these areas for they hypothetical situation.
Stereotypes
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A stereotype is a type of schema, an organized
body of knowledge we use to help us deal with
some object, person, or situation.
Stereotypes are those schemas that are specifically
about people. They can be defined by any
category like skin color, sex, or religion and they
can be positive, negative, or neutral.
Stereotypes and Cognitive Processes
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Stereotypes help us to organize and understand
other people (Kulik, 2005). However, we can
oversimplify and be wrong.
We prefer information that is consistent with our
stereotypes and process that information more
quickly. Hugenberg and Bodenhausen (2004) found
that tend to forget or ignore information that does
not fit our stereotypes.
Ingroups and Outgroups
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We classify ourselves as part of a preferred group
of people called the ingroup and others as part of a
less preferred group called the outgroup.
We perceive more diversity among our ingroup and
more similarity between individuals in the outgroup.
This later phenomenon is called the outgroup
homogeneity effect.
Those in the ingroup are also thought of as being
more attractive, having better personalities and more
socially acceptable, what is known as ingroup
favoritism.
Automatic Stereotyping
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We can very quickly associate certain traits or values
with particular groups.
In the implicit association task, a word appears in the
center of a computer screen. There are two other
words to the left and right of this. You are to press
one of two buttons to indicate which of these two
words goes along best with the central word.
For instance the central word may be “salary”, with
the word “woman” to the left and the word “man” to
the right. Most people in this condition push the right
button because they believe that historically the two
go together.
Stereotyping and Neuroscience
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Hart et. al. (2000) had whites and blacks view
unfamiliar white and black faces and asked the to
identify their gender.
Early on there was amygdala activation for both
groups viewing both races, since any of them could be
a potential threat.
With later viewing there was reduced amygdala
activity, but only for ingroup judgments. This was true
for blacks and whites. Apparently we get used to
seeing members of our own ingroup and are less
likely to judge them as a threat.
Prejudice
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A “prejudgment”, a decision or opinion we have
made about someone or some group. They consist of
thoughts, emotions, and predispositions to act (Myers,
2001).
Someone may believe that immigrants are violent, be
fearful that they might steal, and be unwilling to
adopt one as a friend.
Research shows that prejudices are both conscious
and unconscious. If unconscious, they may be difficult
to change.
The Stereotype Content Model of
Prejudice
Low Competence
High Competence
High Warmth
Elderly and disabled
(pity)
Middle-class, Christian
and homosexual
(favorable)
Low Warmth
Homeless, drug addicts
and the poor (disgust)
Jews, Asians, the
wealthy and
professionals (envy)
Interdisciplinary Crossroads: Game
Theory
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The field of game theory looks at situations where
an individual’s success in making choices depends on
other’s choices.
The situations themselves are referred to as social
dilemmas.
One of the best known social dilemmas is called the
prisoner’s dilemma.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Your partner
confesses
Your partner
cooperates
You confess
Both serve four-year
sentences
You go free, partner
serves ten years
You cooperate
Partner goes free,
you serve a ten year
sentence
Both serve one year
sentences
Game Theory
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The most frequent outcome is that both defect and end up
serving four years.
This is a shame, since if both cooperated, it would have been
only one year each.
In the real world, people usually cooperate. Why? Because
we have to deal with people in the future and if you “screw”
them, they will retaliate and “screw” you.
In iterated versions of the prisoner’s dilemma a strategy of “tit
for tat” develops where people do whatever their opponent
did to them in the previous round.