13 Social Cognition Flashcards
Social Cognition
How people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations
Seven Key components for successful human-social interaction
- Social perception
- Social inferences, such as mentalizing
- Social learning
- Social signalling through verbal and nonverbal cues
- Social drives (how to increase one’s status)
- Determining the social identity of agents, including oneself
- Minimizing uncertainty within the current social context by integrating sensory signals and inference
What is the Stimulation theory?
proposes that some aspects of our ability to understand others is based on our ability to mimic their experience - to mentalise and empathise.
What are mirror neurons?
First described in VENTRAL PREMOTOR CORTEX but since discovered in a wide range of brain regions.
Effects of TMS applied to premotor cortex prior to action recognition (hand or lip area)
When looking at video of people moving lips (where phone is most appropriate) and then apply TMS to hand region, performance is not impaired, but it is when applying TMS to lip region and vis versa.
What is the Faux Pas Test? And what are its elements? What area of damage fails the test?
Detecting a faux pas is detecting what someone should have said. Example of a girl getting new curtains and then her friend says they’re ugly.
- Medial Frontal Cortex Group
Area of the brain activated for self-focused warm thoughts vs other-focused warm thoughts.
Overall ventral frontal cortex
Self-focused = Ventral Medial frontal cortex
Other-focused = Anterior cingulate cortex.
What social connection levels are there?
Structural - the existence of interconnectedness among social relations and roles e.g. status
Functional - perceived loneliness and support
Quality - relationship strain etc
What mental illness is social connection related to?
Dementia
Mortality (more alone more likely you are to die)
What is the social control hypothesis?
Impact of friends and family on health through behaviours through obligations and influences e.g. sleep-died exercise
e.g. our friends and family are always monitoring our behaviour and the more support you’d have.
Evolutionary hypothesis in social cognition?
Social structures and behaviours have evolved to contribute to survival and reproduction and the underlying mechanisms are instantiated in the brain
Detect social danger
detect kin and group members
detecting disease and health
fitness and beauty
trust and cheaters
protection and competence
status and dominance
The idea is that in social species it is dangerous to be lonely, therefore, our brains have developed these signals of loneliness that attempt to drive you toward people
Monkey Fairness study?
Monkeys give a fuck about equality and they can tell when they were getting jewed out of a grape.
How does being married affect cortisol levels
Those who are married have lower cortisol levels, cortisol is associated with negative things, therefore living healthier lives.
How has social interaction changed over time?
There are more people living on their own. More feeling alone or misunderstood, more feeling isolated.
Does connection through the internet substitute for face-to-face interactions?
Participants in the highest quartile of social media use had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those in the lowest quartile. Difficult to interpret though, maybe they were isolated before hand? e.g. chicken and the egg issue
Why should you be cautious of a strong evolutionary approach?
It implies we are behaving just because of our genes and there is no free will.
Could be used politically, the strong survive and they deserve to survive. However, this is a terrible idea and this isn’t how genes work.
Impossible to unfalsify.
Modern understanding acknowledges nature and nurture are interwoven. - genes can change due to the environment
- kid seeing a psychologist for anger, he may have a variation in his genes that makes him aggressive. then if he gets angry he will have more negative responses.
Effects of stress in the hippocampus
Mild-Moderate stress grows the hippocampus. High levels shrink the hippocampus.
