Quiz 5 Flashcards
Face Painting:
What does the experiment which asks participants to draw the letter Q on their own forehead tell us?
Take your index finger and draw a letter on your forehead, you start with a circle but the position you put the tail of the Q tells a lot about what stage of theory of mind you have. Children drew the Q so it was readable for them but adults draw it so others looking at them would be able to read it. TOM people have mental states different to us; good for social interactions and developing a sense of identity.
How was TOM discovered?
A pervasive human ability we found when studying people with autism.
TOM definition:
TOM: the ability to understand other agents’ mental states (invisible; not observable; intuition).
We predict their behavior based on what we interpret their beliefs, desires or emotions (not about reality but their internal states which guide their behavior).
People will autism do no have TOM…
which is why they struggle to have reciprocal social interactions; track others’ internal states. Implicit theory of mind ability is like having a GPS but autism has a map that takes more time and effort.
Mentalising
Mentalising has an advantage because people are able to predict other social agents’ behavior and explain it in terms of their mental states. It also allows us to lie; predict what people want to hear, judge whether you would accept a false belief as true (lie), would require me to track what beliefs I’ve told to ensure the lie isn’t found. Autistic people can’t lie or understand why people lie because they do not have TOM. We tell white lies to be polite, unconscious, implicit mentalizing skills to facilitate positive social interactions. We can use neuroimaging methods to support TOM capability, comparing TOM tasks and untreated tasks. Frontal and temporal regions networks are highly interconnected in people with TOM (not autistic people).
Where does it come in our evolution? Is it specific to humans?
Studies show that animals have some extent of theory of mind. Birds hide food; if being observed will wait till they are alone and move it so others don’t find it. TOM without language in animals. Humans have a more advanced theory of mind with language (automatic version and more sophisticated form of TOM; we have two).
Is TOM the same as Empathy?
People mistake TOM for empathy. They are two distinct constructs. Tracking other people’s internal states vs. Having an emotional reaction to others’ mental states and changing our own behavior is two different things. Empathy: what you feel i feel too (contagion; different brain regions). Autistic people have intact empathy skills. They are not missing all social skills just mentalizing skills.
Social Welfare policies are a modern example of what ancestorail problem
resource distribution; specifically food sharing to non-kin.
Hunger Games Study Abstract
The prediction is that attitudes regarding welfare politics are influenced by short-term fluctuations in hunger. Using blood glucose levels as a physiological indicator of hunger, we tested this prediction in a study in which participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which they consumed soft drinks containing either carbohydrates or an artificial sweetener. Analyses showed that participants with experimentally induced low blood glucose levels expressed stronger support for social welfare. Using an incentivized measure of actual sharing behavior (the dictator game), we further demonstrated that this increased support for social welfare does not translate into genuinely increased sharing motivations. Rather, we suggest that it is “cheap talk” aimed at increasing the sharing efforts of other
Q: do mental programs that evolved to solve an adaptive problem for ancestral problems of food sharing still influence modern problems of social welfare?
Anthropological records show that hunter-gatherers would have often felt hunger by coming home unsuccessful from foraging trips (they only had a 4% success rate in patchy grasslands).
To cope with low rates of foraging success may have placed selective pressures for cognitions to evolve to increase motivation to continue foraging when body-energy depletes. This claim may be supported by modern humans’ responses to hunger states.
The current study induces “hunger” states by manipulating blood glucose levels via sugar drinks and no-sugar drinks. Low blood glucose levels are used as a proxy for a low body-energy state. Other researchers have shown low blood glucose levels are associated with heightened greed, reduced self-control, reduced impulse inhibition, increased risk-taking, and greater discounting of the future.
Two interpretations of these effects are:
(A) depletion of metabolic resources reduces
self-control
(B) in states of low-energy adaptive
strategies for aggressive resource
acquisition via stealing from others our
protecting our own are activated.
However, there is evidence of aggressive resource acquisition being punished in small-scale societies and hunger is mainly alleviated by willful food sharing.
The ecologically rational strategy is not aggression, it is better to use social cues to make people more likely to share/redistribute food willingly. Proximally (now), this would be an increase in (a) the value placed on sharing and (b) the motivation to express support for sharing in the hungry individuals. Ultimately, (evolution) verbal expressions of support for sharing could serve to remind potential food donors about norms of communal sharing and reciprocal obligations. Hence, in any complex social context, by making sharing norms salient for potential food donors, individuals can increase the likelihood of resource transfers. Especially, if the potential donors are satiated (not hungry) because it reduces the perceived cost of sharing food if you are not currently in need.
Sharing of resources in the large-scale setting of mass politics, economic redistribution, is managed by an evolutionarily novel and highly complex system: the modern welfare state.
It’s common that solutions to modern problems arise from evolved cognitive modules that address adaptive problems for our ancestors still found in modern society (i.e., hunger-food sharing in hunter-gatherers is equivalent to modern resource redistribution in social welfare states).
Predict that manipulating blood glucose levels (hunger) will influence people’s attitudes and behavior towards social welfare issues. If social norms about food sharing are made salient then we expect that people with lower glucose levels (hungry) will be more in favor of others sharing food. We predict attitudes towards food sharing will increase but it will not translate into their behavior (i.e., not more willing to share their own food when they’re hungry because it’s more costly to share).
(IV) Drinks were either with carbohydrates or artificial sweetener.
(DV) Attitudinal support for food sharing and food redistribution behaviors. (in dictator economic game).
results: 1 carbohydrate drinks (satiated) showed 10% reduced attitudinal support for social welfare.
Hunger increased their motivation to disseminate information that was likely to increase welfare support of other individuals which indicates that it is to do with making food sharing norms more salient.
results: 2
mediation model where glucose levels are a mediator (hunger) for the effect of condition on social welfare .
T2 glucose levels were negatively associated
with support for social welfare which
implies, as predicted, that individuals with low glucoseelevels express stronger attitudinal support for social welfare which suggest that the effect of the soft drink on welfare support was driven by physiological reactions to the glucose content.
Heightened prosociality associated with support for social welfare in situations of low
body energy might not generalize to behavior.
Lower blood glucose levels increased
support for social welfare, which in turn was associated with increased donations to other individuals. ). When people are given actual incentivized opportunities to distribute resources, the apparent prosocial effects of low blood glucose levels are offset by a countervailing motivation for keeping resources. Individuals with low levels of blood glucose did not share more resources , although they moralized that people ought to. The expressed prosociality in conditions of hunger is, in other words, “cheap talk.” This is consistent with the theoretical notion that the effects of hunger on social-welfare support do not reflect genuine increased prosociality but, rather, constitute a strategy designed to induce other individuals to transfer resources.
conclsuion
We showed that individuals with low body-energy levels (a) express greater
support for social welfare but (b) do not share more resources with other individuals when given actual, incentivized possibilities. Low blood glucose as a physiological indicator of hunger seems to PROXIMALLY increase the value put on resource transfers and, as revealed by additional analysis ), the motivation to disseminate expressions of
support for such transfers. ULTIMATELY, we argue that these proximate effects indicate that hunger activates clusters of strategies working together to alleviate hunger through resource acquisition by means other than foraging: Strategies for keeping and defending resources are joined by attempts to increase the willful sharing of other individuals by reminding them of sharing norms. In this perspective, the increased prosociality is a strategic social signal to other individuals
