Social Neuroscience Flashcards
What are the 3 kinds of bonds that explain why we socialize and form bonds?
- Mother-infant bond
- pair-bond
- friendship/communal bond
What are the 2 dimensions of social cognition?
warmth and competence
what is the opposite of warm and competent
cold and incompetent
what is trying to be determined by the social cognition dimensions?
- if the individual is hostile or safe
2. if the individual is capable of executing their intentions
what 3 properties do social networks show?
- power law
- short distances
- high clustering
what do the social networks demonstrate?
how far someone is in a social network compared to someone else
what is social cognition?
cognition applied in the social world
name 3 concepts that are used in social cognition
self
attributions
attitudes
what are the 2 social schemas/categories
in-group
out-group
what are the basic social behaviours? (4)
- selfishness
- cooperation
- altruism
- spite
define selfishness in social behaviour
benefiting self while harming others
define cooperation in social behaviour
benefiting self while benefitting others
define altruism in social behaviour
paying a cost to benefit another
define spite in social behaviour
paying a cost to harm another
what subcortical structure correlates with social network size and complexity?
amygdala
what are the 3 social networks?
- social perception network
- social affiliation network
- social aversion network
what is the social perception network for and what cortical structure/ amygdala part is involved?
used to identify others and stimuli that is related to others
- lateral orbitofrontal cortex
- ventrolateral amygdala
what is the social affiliation network for and what cortical structure/part of the amygdala is involved ?
used to observe and encode trust, empathy, and the motivation to socialize
- ventromedial prefrontal cortex
- medial amygdala
what is the social aversion network for and what cortical structure/part of the amygdala involved?
involved in rejecting others, and avoiding the untrustworthy
- caudal anterior cingulate gyrus
- dorsal amygdala
what 3 things make up social neuroscience?
- social signals
- social judgements
- social interactions
describe social signals; what 2 things are involved?
social signals = social perception
- verbal communication
- non-verbal communication
facial expressions and autonomic nervous system responses are considered what?
non-verbal communication
describe social judgements ; what 5 things do people judge about another person?
social judgment = social cognition
- warmth
- competence
- identity
- network
- reputation
what 2 things are observed when judging someone’s social network?
size and status within
describe social interactions; what 4 things are involved?
social interaction = social behaviour
- approach
- avoiding
- indifferent
- interaction norms
in social interaction, what heuristics are used for achieving it?
evaluating the mood and appropriate conversational topics
what is important about any form of learning?
- maximizing benefits/resources
2. minimizing costs
in social learning: what are considered benefits and costs
benefits: potential relationships
costs: people-related threats
what does learning FROM others allow?
- using others’ trials and errors rather than our own
2. others teaching their knowledge and skill
what is the rationale behind learning FROM others?
people serve as a potential model that reveals context-dependent behaviours and their outcomes
when learning FROM others, what challenges arise?
attribution and accurate modelling
what is observational learning?
learning by observing
what kind of conditioning is involved in observational learning?
social/vicarious conditioning
can social/vicarious learning include conditioned stimuli extinction?
yes
which brain structures show increased activity to observationally learned cues?
amygdala
rostral anterior cingulate cortex
insula
which brain structures encode observational prediction error signals?
medial prefrontal cortex
striatum
intraparietal sulcus
what brain structures encode action prediction error signals?
lateral prefrontal cortex
observation prediction error vs action prediction error
observation: when we watch someone else fail to perform an action
action: generated when we see someone exhibit some unpredictable or erratic behaviour
what are social nudges?
the use of social referencing where evaluation concerns influence decision-making
people become more risk averse/seeking when others are more risk averse/seeking, this is tracked by what?
ventral medial prefrontal cortex
what is instructed learning?
being told how to execute a task
what is the benefit of instructed learning?
done to guide away from errors and reduce error frequency
what PFC activity can regulate striatal conditioning?
top-down knowledge
what does learning ABOUT others demonstrate?
- social judgements for warmth and competence in various contexts
- social judgements about their social network based on schemas and norms
when learning ABOUT others: trait learning and impression updating involve what kind of information? (5)
- valenced social information
- general social information
- diagnostic inconsistences
- positive impression changes
- negative impression changes
what is valenced social information and what brain structures track it?
their warmth and competence
- amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex
what is general social information and what brain structure tracks it?
dorsal medial prefrontal cortex
what are diagnostic inconsistencies and what brain structures track them?
dorsal medial prefrontal cortex
posterior cingulate cortex
superior temporal sulcus
what are positive and negative impression changes and what structures track them?
positive: going cold to warm and incompetent to competent
- lateral prefrontal cortex
negative: going from warm to cold and competent to incompetent
- medial prefrontal cortex
- striatum
- superior temporal sulcus
when learning ABOUT others: what information is involved in social interactions and reputation?
- violations of social expectations
- absolute valence of social outcomes
- trust/reciprocity
what are violations of social expectations and what brain structure tracks it?
violating social norms
- dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
what is absolute valence of social outcomes?
interaction experience regardless of subjective association of them
- ventral anterior cingulate cortex
what is trust/reciprocity in social interactions and what brain structure tracks it?
trust/reciprocity: warmth/ability to reciprocate energy of the interaction
- corticostriatal circuitry and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex
what signals update impressions?
social reward/prediction error signals
what can override top-down trust signals about a person?
reputation
when learning ABOUT others: trust and reputation involves encoding what/by what?
generosity
- posterior cingulate cortex
- precuneus
- right temporal parietal junction
generosity is observed how?
from a higher than expected sharing of a common resource
what kind of priors for impressions affect social decision-making?
direct experience
indirect experience
how does direct experience affect social decision-making?
consistent interactions that match with first impressions leads to faster social learning
how does indirect experience affect social decision-making?
reputations can inhibit impression updating when the reputation violates trust
when learning ABOUT others: mental representations are?
models of others characterized by their goals, mental states, and emotional experiences
what brain structure encodes mental representations of others?
dorsal medial prefrontal cortex
encoding someone’s rationality is done by?
dmPFC and anterior temporal lobe
encoding someone’s social impact/relevance is done by?
temporal parietal junction
precuneus
dorsal/ventral ACC
encoding the someones valence (what is valence) is done by?
their ingroup/out group status TPJ dlPFC IFG insula
when learning ABOUT others: social space involves what?
social network complexity
what can predict social network complexity?
lateral and medial amygdala functional connectivity and volume
mPFC encodes perception of others, but what specifically?
closeness to self
ingroup/out group status
social distance judgements are processed similarly to/by what?
space and time perception
- right inferior parietal lobule
when judging someone’s popularity what structures does the brain recruit?
mPFC
amygdala
precuneus
left TPJ
what is social learning?
behaviours acquired while observing and imitating others
what is asocial learning?
learning from observing events that do not have a model present therefore learning solely from the outcome
what is the key distinction between social and asocial learning?
empathy
what are the 2 components of empathy?
affective
cognitive
describe the cognitive component of empathy
imagining what it is like to be in someone’s place
describe the affective component of empathy
ability to understand another person’s emotions and responding appropriately
if someone is more empathetic, will they have a faster social learning rate?
yes
what are neural correlates of threat learning and the amygdala?
capgras delusion
CS-US associations
contextual information
receiving/anticipating/controlling aversive stimuli
what is the cause of capgras delusion?
an amygdala and temporal lobe disconnection
what part of the amygdala forms CS/UCS associations?
lateral
where do the lateral and basolateral amygdala receive contextual information from?
PFC and hippocampus
the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex are involved in which amygdala neural correlate?
aversive stimuli
what are the neural correlates of formal theories?
rewarding/reinforcement prediction errors
aversive/punishment prediction errors
social learning of threat allows what? (3)
- avoid making our own mistakes
- identifying a good model with high social status
- observational threat learning
the affective component of empathy involves which structures?
visual cortex IFG inferior parietal lobe insula PM
the cognitive component of empathy involves which structures?
mPFC TPJ, STS, precuneus, temporal poles
safety learning is
threat extinction
safety learning relies on which structure?
vmPFC
what is active when observing someone’s action?
dlPFC
what is active in addition to dlPFC with an outcome?
dmPFC and VS
what is prosociality?
behaviours that are intended to benefit others
what 4 factors does game theory introduce to interactions?
- number of players
- available actions
- payoffs
- information
what is a positive sum game?
total gains and losses are greater than 0
- strategy that benefits everyone was used
what is a negative sum game?
total gains and losses are less than 0
- not everyone was benefitted
what is a zero sum game?
when one party wins and the other loses
- net wealth is 0
what are free riders?
someone who benefits at the cost of the group
where are free riders seen?
in social dilemmas that involve self/group interests
what 3 factors promote prosocial behaviour?
- kin selection
- reciprocity
- multilevel selection
social cognition involves?
behavioural restraint and prosocial intuition
social dilemma games involve (3)
prisoner’s dilemma
public goods game
hawk-dove game
bargaining games involve (3)
dictator game
trust game
ultimatum game
what kind of game strategies are beneficial for one shot games but ambiguous for repeated games?
rational
what can significantly influence behaviour
presence of potential reward or punishment for a particular strategy
intuition vs deliberation models
intuition: fast/automatic/unconscious
deliberation: slow/controlled/conscious
the prosocial restraint model argues…
cooperation stems from restraint of selfish impulses
the prosocial institution model argues..
cooperation stems from intuition and is corrupted by selfish needs
state the social heuristics hypothesis
- rational agents shouldn’t cooperate in one-shot games
- cooperation stems from error-prone intuition/self interest stems from corrective deliberation
- increasing intuition should not decrease cooperation
dlPFC activity correlates with..
selfish gain
dlPFC activity negatively correlates with
generosity
utility models argue ___ activity reflects congruent social preferences
vmPFC
if vmPFC reflects congruent social preferences, what reflects incongruent social preferences?
dlPFC
vmPFC-dlPFC activity increase when?
social preference decisions conflict with social norms
what contextual factors are invovled in utility models?
social norms and social identity
majority of people are..
conditional cooperators
minority of people are
consistently cooperative
a good 23-30% of people are …
free riders
personal identity involves what kind of comparison?
intragroup comparison
= between different ingroup members
social identity involves what kind of comparison?
intergroup comparison
= between other out groups’ members
