week 6

Question 1

Politics, status & leadership (An evolutionary perspective)

Answer 1

Politics, status & leadership (An evolutionary perspective)

Rise of urbanism and social complexity which helps us adapt to changing environment, fend off predators and increase resources extracted from the environment. On the flip side, it increases need for social management which is done through stratification and with appointing social leaders.

Question 2

Key points: 1

Answer 2

§ Leadership can be rooted in dominance or prestige
§ Importance of either component depends on the
environment
§ Ancestrally relevant factors might influence decision
making on social redistribution.

Question 3

Political Leader examples

Answer 3

1. Joesph stalin
2. Franis Franko
3. Donald Trump
   * all political leaders associated with a populist style of
   leadership. Why is it sometimes preferred?

Question 4

Are questions about why people have a tendency to prefer dominant leaders in certain contexts purely a modern problem?

Historical example and the philosophical question they pose about leaders

Answer 4

This is not a ‘modern’ question it is a tale as old as time.

Historical Examples:
Di Nocolo Machiavell
 He wrote a book called the mirror of princes where
instructors write philosophical handbooks for young
astrocytes to reflect on.
 He asked in reference to leaders:
o Is it better to be feared or loved?
o Stalin was so feared his doctor didn’t interrupt his
speech when he was having a heart attack in fear
that he would get in trouble. People may want to be
both but when only one is possible it is better to be
feared than loved. Altruism is based on reciprocity;
in good times you can rely on it to work but in times
of social unrest or need the only way to ensure that
they stay is to drive up the cost of defecting (greater
than the benefit of abandoning you).
o When is it necessary to conduct cruelty on someone
else; must do it with justified and obvious reasons.
You can hurt man but not their property because man
will forget about the lose of their father quicker than
the loss of their inheritance.
o He distinguishes about emotional and resource
factors in decision making regarding politics.
Economics is important. Use must trickle resources
to followers to keep their allegiance and secure
power that can be transferred into resources.
o No one really rules alone. He needs trusted followers
to maintain a united army. No matter how physically
powerful you are you need social
structure/hierarchies to keep control.
o Dominance: physical strength and violence through
others (decimation; punishment in roman army where
if you show cowardness; each 10 man was whipped
by the other 9; show dominance; loyalty is to the
dictator not the men around you).
o Prestige: rewards you can dish out and own
resources.

Question 5

Tradition of Geopolitics:

Answer 5

Tradition of Geopolitics:
 A view prominent in evolutionary psychology where
people look at political relationships as if they are
power relationships. Devoid of moral concerns and
more in terms of the exchange of benefits and costs.

Question 6

You are the Chosen One: two key strategies towards leadership and a historical example of how these can conflict using the two sword docterine

Answer 6

You are the Chosen One
 Dominance is the key factor in staying in power.
o Feared better than loved in times in crisis.
Dominance can be show in multiple ways.
 Prestige:
o Whether people think they’ll benefit from you. Rulers
exert a lot of effort to portray themselves as wealthy
and having desirable qualities. Emotions is more tied
into decisions about prestige (how we evaluate
others) rather than dominance.

Why do Rulers Care about Prestige:
(A)	Henry (4th):
        \+ holy roman emperor
        \+ Has an army
         -  He gets betrayed a lot (wife/children) 
(B)   Gregory (7th)
        \+ the pope (messenger of god)
        \+ educated (read/write)
         - low evolutionary fitness (not a lot of offspring)

Two sword doctrine:
 In medieval times stated that the pope represents
gods will on earth and the emperor represents
mortal dominance and rulership.
 The emperor is crowned by the pope to represents
his divine backing by god (very prestigious).
 They had a scabble about who had the right anoint
bishops. The pope played a power move and told
everyone that the emperor is no longer favored by
god; Christians no longer needs to serve him.
 No power shifted but his prestige vanished. Then
over time all his followers abandoned him and he
then needed to go to another castle in the snow and
cried at the pope to reinstate him as holy.
 He was reinstated and Christian’s were expected to
follow him.

*Subjective factors (prestige) plays a huge role in
leadership.

Question 7

The duality of power:

what’s the evolutionary perspective?

Answer 7

(A) Dominance:
• The raw ability to punish and exert strength.
(B) Prestige:
• Enticing others to follow you through providing
benefits to them or they see positive qualities in you.

An Evolutionary perspective:
 Consider the ancestral environment; patches where
collaborative foraging is optimal. This requires a
leader. Who will lead? The prestigious man
(successful in foraging or extracting resources).
 What happens when we go foraging when there is
not enough for everyone? How do we ensure
everyone continues foraging so everyone can eat
(reciprocity). Who decides how resources are
distributed?
 What if people steal my berries? How is punishment
dished out to ensure cooperation (increase cost of
defecting greater than its benefits)

*Leadership is key

Question 8

Two problems for coordinating social living

Answer 8

(A) Leadership choice

(B) Resource disatribution

Question 9

Old Problems are New Problems

Answer 9

Old Problems are New Problems
 Ancestral problems are equivalent to modern
problems. Transitions from agriculture settlements
into state societies produced created social
complexity which required more complex social
structures like democracy which involves these two
problems/concerns: Leadership choice and
Resource distribution.
 Less violence to resolve conflict and promote
cooperation, laws and regulations of social
behaviours, punishments.
 Content of political decisions (welfare of self &
significant others)

 Everyone has their own opinion on these problems.
In some form these questions are tied to ancestral
problems (distribution of resources).
 Michael Bang Petersen & Lene Aarøe looked at this
and compared adaptive problems in modern to
ancestral society.

o The transition into agriculture between hunter-
gatherers occurred relatively equally. The transitions
into state societies most have only transitioned into
legal state societies (large-scale) relatively recently.
o Note: The evolution of agricultural groups increased
the group sizes which placed selective pressures of
developing complex social structures to facilitate
social living. Political heuristics evolved to make this
process more efficient but may bias political
decisions in modern societies (similar problems but
more complex and abstract; larger scale issues).

Question 10

We Are Not Adapted To Democracy? Are we?

Answer 10

We Are Not Adapted To Democracy? Are we?
 Think of ancestral environment where group sizes
were between 50-150 people. Small enough to
allow for people to voice their own opinions.
 Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch’ ich Gewalt.
o In the past; we regulated group dynamic in a more
face to face way. Resolving disputes can be solved
through violence (dominance) and replace them as
the dominant leader. This was common in within
and between group conflicts.
 We saw a reduction in violence dispute resolution
worldwide as people transitioned into state
societies.

Question 11

Mismatch

Answer 11

 State societies that are democratic are a modern
problems not in ancestral problem (i.e. didn’t vote;
more complex now; abstract problems).
 Many modern problems – no relevant cognitive
mechanisms available (parliamentary procedures,
etc.)
 Contextual differences (many modern social
problems are exceptionally complex – no adaptive
cognitive problem solving mechanism; cues for
social decision-making were based on face-to-face
interactions, intimate social information about co-
citizens is lacking)
 Modern rules are about establishing general rules
that apply across specific cases, our ancestral logic
is targeting specific others.
 Our laws are more complex. They had do not steal,
share, punishment will be issued if broken (specific
problems; berries). Our laws are more abstract to
cover more cases/problems

Question 12

Old Minds in New Worlds
(A) Why do we choose certain leaders in democratic
societies?

Answer 12

Two evolutionary strategies for status competitions
 Two strategies leader can use:
o dominance (fear/power),
o prestige (personal characteristic or resources you can
benefit from).

Study that compares them:
Facial Features

 Ratings of leadership styles and facial features; we
use facial features as cues of testosterone to identify
if they are a dominant leader or a trustworthy leader
(square face or downward facing eyebrow =
dominance). The blurred out facial features but these
and then got people to judge which leadership style
they were.
 They often use testosterone as the underlying cause
for those facial features and dominance orientation.
 Evidence for this: testosterone increases in winner of
video game match. It is related to dominance. A
feedback loop where winning increases testosterone
and testosterone makes you more dominant.
 Similar to ancestral times where more dominance
leads to winning more contest competitions and
showing more dominance.

The dominance-testosterone cycle depends on the environment. Peacetime leaders and constrained situations requires a different type of leader. This study morphed faces to make faces look more dominant and others more prestigious/agreeable face. In war people selected dominant leaders (decontextualised study of war leadership choices/in labs/artifical).

Linking evolutionary psychology to behavioural ecology
 Other authors look at how dominance and prestige influence voting behaviours.
 Before the election Hilary was rated higher in prestige and Donald was higher in dominance (pervasive issues with economic and climate problems/crisis makes people prefer a more dominant leader).

Environmental certainty as the crucial condition
 Study 1:
o Economic uncertainty was operationalized by
aggregating the three key economic indicators,
unemployment, housing vacancy rate, and poverty
rate (α = 0.72), that are regularly monitored by the US
Treasury Department to make economic forecasts
and assess development in a particular region (37).
o Empirical test not done in a lab. Economic
(unemployment/poverty) and climate (abandoned
homes) deprivation indexes on real life data.
 Study 2: Local Politicians
o Preference for prestige (age, women)
o Preference for dominance leader (economic
uncertainty is higher; noise in the data means we can
only explain 9% of their voting behaviour)
 Study 3: World Value Survey
o 138,323 responses in 69 countries. IV: Change in
unemployment (from World Development Indicators).
Individual level Mediator: How much control do you
have over your life. DV: Having a strong leader who
does not have to bother with parliament and
elections.
o Replicated cross-culturally. DV: preference for
dominance. IV: change in economic deprivation.
(mediator = agency)
o Changes in unemployment reduced agency which in
turn lead to them preferring a dominant leader
(especially if they expressed more national pride;
primed to follow leader).
o
 Supplementary Experimental Study:
o They used the same indicators and had people write
about a time they had lots of personal control and
little personal control (=prime).
o Low control prime = dominance leader preference
(can’t profit from prestigious leader)

Question 13

(B) What about resource distribution?

Answer 13

 Ancestral conditions & logic
 The influence of changing people’s glucose levels.
Low glucose made people hungry people were
more in favour of resource redistribution but were
less likely to share (people desires and actual
behaviours can deviate from one another).
 How does this link to people tendencies towards
social support. Male upper body strength as an
indicator of ancestral fighting capacity, SES, and
asked them if they would be supportive or
unsupportive of social redistribution of resources.
They found that men with higher upper body
strength and more SES were less supportive of
social support; high strength and low SES were
more supportive of social support

Question 14

Key points: 2

Answer 14

 Conflict is costly & obedience can be adaptive
 Mass mobilization due to activating in-group
members (ready for violence)
 Sharing of hostile fake news – undermining the
current hierarchy & social system by individuals that
are motivated to increase social status

Question 15

Manipulation of Threat

Answer 15

 Unfortunately, trump is a prime example or
manipulation of threat. He spent a lot of time.
manipulating people’s perceptions of threat and
raising the level of threat (i.e., the decline of
American value system, manufacturing sector, North
Korea friction).
 Inconsistently in his behaviour where he raises
threat levels when it suits him; or he is concerned
about fake news even though he contributes a lot to
it.).
 Another example, of leader who manipulate threat is
victor alban who is concerned about the LGBT
community.
 Alexander von gauland; the alternative for Germany
movement; he is concerned about Islam;
immigration issues; homeopathy.
 This is not new; leaders have historically raised
awareness to external threat. For example, the red
scare.

Question 16

External Threats:

Answer 16

External Threats:
 A real external threat is parasite stress. It varies
globally, high or low, and overtime, high or low.
 Behaviour ecologists’ theory of parasite stress claim
that we have a bodily immune system and
behavioural immune system to avoid getting infected
by a disease.
 Balance mate search, evaluation, causes people to
remain in tight groups, reduce contact with
strangers, makes people more aggressive and
hostile to outsiders, changes political views
(xenophobia or resistance to foreigners; they bring
us crime or disease, take our jobs)

Question 17

Behavioural Immune System
(Schaller et al., 2015)

Has two components

Answer 17

Has two components:
(A) Reactive
 Avoidance of social interactions that pose a
potential infection risk
 Indirect inference based on presumed diagnostic
cues (do people look ill or different; disgust as a
moral emotion to facilitate avoidance of people that
may be infected; heuristics effect because at this
time people had not developed theories of
contagion yet; more emotional reaction).
 With illness it is better to be over cautious than
under cautious. More costly to not avoid them and
get sick.
 False-negative errors more costly (failing to avoid
things that do pose an infection risk) – increase false
positive errors
 Cost-contingent responding
 This photo is of brownies, we wouldn’t eat them
even if we know its brownies because it’s better to
be safe than sorry (intrinsic disgust responses).

(B) Proactive
 The second component is: we preemptable set up
more rules or boundaries to avoid risk of illness
(before we had theories of contagion as example
the witch craze where someone had a migraine but
was called a witch)
 Conformity & maintenance of cultural norms
 Superstitious cultural beliefs (prior to germ theory)

*There is an interesting link between individuals disgust and morality.

Question 18

You make me sick

Answer 18

 Can you manipulate people’s levels of disgust?
o People were given a sugar pill or ginger pill. Double
blind experiment. Showed them morally violating
scenarios based of Haidt’s moral foundations theory
in varying degrees of severity. They found that
people who ingested ginger which suppresses
nausea showed fewer moral responses relative to
the control group. This only worked for low level
moral transgression, stealing. Not big things like
incest or bestiality.

*Emotional experiences of disgust are transformed into a
moralizing norm. this happens at individual and group
levels.

Question 19

Pathogen Prevalence & Conformity

Answer 19

Pathogen Prevalence & Conformity
 Asch’s conformity test, room full of confederates
judging the length of lines. Does the participant
conform to the wrong answer if majority of people
say it is true? Looking at personality traits distributed
within a population we can have high or low
variability around the mean. We can have
handedness which is a sign of conformity where left-
handed people conformed to the norm of right
handedness and wrote with their non-dominant
hand. Childhood raring sternness are all measures of
conformity.
 In areas with high pathogen load we see societies
show signs of moving towards conformity in
dimensions of preformaty issues, lower personality
variability, less left handedness, higher attitudes
towards strict up bringing- people are motivated to
conform to be viewed as the same as everyone else
to avoid being ostriches by the group for being
different and a disease risk.

 Left handedness makes you a better fighter because
most people are right-handed which is unusual to
most people.
 People with unusual traits can be beneficial but in
high pathogen load the benefits turn into costs

Helzer & Pizarro (2011)
 Experimentally priming pathogen stress (sanitizer
there or not) where people judge different purity
violations. They found that people who were
exposed to the sanitizer judged purity violations as
being more severe transgressions/norm violations.

Fincher, Thornhill, Murray, Schaller (2008)

Pathogen prevalence has knock on effects onto…
 Family ties & religiosity (Fincher & Thornhill, 2012)
 Homocide & Child maltreatment (Thornhill & Fincher,
2011)
 Xenophobia (Thornhill et al., 2009)
 Democracy, gender relations, sexual restrictiveness,
values (Thornhill et al., 2010)
 Personality (Schaller & Murray, 2008)

Question 20

Preliminary summary

Answer 20

 Parasite stress hypothesis & behavioural immune
system
 Reactive & proactive components
 Under disease threat: typically a shift towards more
conservative ideologies (political conservatism and
collective societies)

Question 21

Individual Level: Mass Mobilization, Fake News and Social Unrest

Why do people obey?

Answer 21

Why do people obey?
 Obeying can be expressed in multiple ways. One
way is looking at the SDO (social dominance
orientation; hierarchies in the world are rightfully
there, upper and lower class is necessary).
 SDO which manifest in societal constructs such as
hierarchal systems or SDO in individuals’ preference
for social structures (Kunst et al., date).

Elephant Seals
 Sneaky seals (weak) and beach master (strong).
 Weak seal has no chance in beating the beach
master. Think about social inequality (SES).
 Low SES can respond to their disadvantage in one
of two ways react negatively to the system and
receive negative back lash or internalize it and
believe that you are in this position because you
don’t work hard enough.
 Social inequality allows for the rise of dominant
structures, social elites and reduces societal well-
being.
 These two paths’ ways (state and individual levels)
reinforce one another and is why the system stays in
place (high cost for lower SES to break the system;
elites are defectors which obtain a cost and do not
contribute; lower level do not profit from system).

Question 22

Fake News

Answer 22

 The manipulation of threat is not a new thing. It
occurred before social media came into being. It was
just spread less quickly and less enticing to read.
 Fake news can have tremendous impacts on
individual and societal level; injecting blech to
remove coronavirus is not legit and can have
negative health benefits.
 Fake news can target health and other beliefs that
groups can benefit from.
 The logic of hostile rumours:
o the enemy is evil,
o the enemy is strong,
o the enemy is about to attack.
 A sign of fascism or totalitarianism. The enemy is
amoral, strong and weak, ready to attack. The ironic
thing is that you can get people to believe both at
the same time. For instance, xenophobia, they will
come and attack to strong but weaker than us.

Question 23

Theoretical Reasons to Explain the Rise of Fake news.

Answer 23

Theoretical Reasons to Explain the Rise of Fake news.

Over time cognitive distortion in the population have arisen through the development in social media, changes in societal living from children not experiencing risk.

Example of cognitive distortions:
 Dichotomous Reasoning: Thinking that an inherently
continuous situation can only fall into two categories
(us the righteous and them the immoral)
 Emotional Reasoning: Thinking that something is
true based on how one feels, ignoring the evidence
to the contrary (e.g., disgust reactions rather than
evidence)
 Fortune-telling: Making predictions, usually negative
ones, about the future (predictions but no evidence
for it)
 Labelling and mislabelling: Labelling yourself or
others while discounting evidence that could lead to
less disastrous conclusions (American patriates but
boo the American team for kneeling for America)
 Mindreading: Believing you know what others are
thinking (I judge your action based on what I think
your actions was meant to do or was motivated by)
 Historical writing to see what cognitive distortions
were present since 1980-1990s we see an upwards
trend of increasingly more cognitive biases in written
text, coincides with increases in inequality, instability
causing people to rely on distortions.
 Once people form cognitive distortions, they try to
rally together people who all believe it to. Leader
exploit existing cognitive distortions (rather than new
ones) to rally people around a belief for a cause.
Same message can be distorted to suit people’s
goals to rally people together to suit your needs.

*Leaders capitalize on humans’ tendency to hold
cognitive distortions, fear of external threat and
uncertainty which allows them to rally them together
behind their cause and raise to power.

Question 24

People who just want to see the World Burn

Correlations with…
Need for chaos is related to…

Answer 24

 There are some people who just want to see the
world burn which is measured on the need for chaos
scale.
 This measures peoples desires to see the world
burn and correlates highly with status seeking: SDO,
Status driven risk taking (world burn I can rise from
ashes as leader), psychopathy (not beliefs in a
competitive jungle worldview), loneliness, low social
status (tend to by into desire to see the world burn).

Correlations with…
	Status-seeking traits such as:
–	SDO
–	Status-driven risk taking
–	Psychopathy
•	(but not with beliefs in a competitive jungle 
        worldview)
	Loneliness
	Low social status

Need for chaos is related to…
 Idealizing oneself as being amazing and negatively
idealizing others (they are bad and never will make
it), correlates highly with meaninglessness (the world
is meaningless and needs to go).
 NFC also correlates with sharing negative rumors
about the political opposition (beneficial to get your
own party to win) but they also share rumors about
their own leader 9the do not care about the
wellbeing of the group; use it as a means to get the
world to burn).
 Leads to issues with the republican party and other
global issues such as riots. They’re Diagonal thinkers
—bad thinkers; from alliance between unlikely
people (religion, ethnicity, migrants etc.) together for
the goal of causing chaos = Conspiracy theorists.
 Conspiracy theories spread to cause chaos, are
spread globally even if not relevant in that country in
order to cause maximum chaos because they think
the world would be better after it crumbles.

 Men (blue) women (teal); lateral thinker; gender
differences in beliefs, more women believe in
alternative medicines.
 Lateral thinkers are not all RW political, people voted
for all parties (heterogenous population not
homogeneous).

Taken together:
 Political leaders who can profit from manipulating
threat by increasing cohesion and capitalize of it.
Individuals spread fake news due to believing it or
make the world worse. At a group level- political
groups in Russia cause chaos in US.
*Individual and group levels.

Solution:
 Inoculate people who are not trolls against fake
news. If you get people to play social roles get better
at spotting fake news and more resilient to them by
engaging in critical thinking skills.

Question 25

Key Points: 3

Answer 25

§ Consciousness might result in survival benefits
§ Self-other distinction is a crucial element present in
children and many animals
§ Agency detection is contingent on the context

Question 26

Stock Images:

Answer 26

• These stock images are perceived as fake because
this is not how we burn our hand, we do not have
time to push the tray back in, put the cloth down by
the oven.
• We automatically drop the pan before we register in
our minds the pain. How does our consciousness
work?
• Why do I need to be consciously aware of the pain if
my automatic and implicit response has already
caused me to let go of the pan? Why should I feel
pain?

Question 27

Nick Bostrom

Answer 27

Nick Bostrom
• On stance on why we feel pain. He argues we live in
a computer simulation.

Cogito, ergo sum
• Simulation; How does it relate to human awareness
and evolution? Cogito, ergo sum (I think therefore I
am; doubting my own existence means requires
awareness; if I have the ability to doubt, think about
my own existence then I have evidence of my own
existence).

Visual Example
• A visual illusion where these two blocks that are
different colours. However, on the next slide when we
lock out the transition points (shaded edges which
give form) we would see that the blocks are actually
the same colour. Why does our brain construct wrong
versions of reality?

The Brain Reconstructs Properties of Objects:
• One argument is that the brain must reconstruct the
properties of objects we see from the information
which it receives that is not constant or stable.
• What we see is not how it actually exists because of
the fluctuation in the information our brain receives.
• It is guided by heuristic processing to construct
reality of the world around us based on the sensory
information it receives (light/shadow/colour).

Question 28

Conscious Awareness in Our Daily Lives:

Answer 28

• The way we live our lives is largely unconscious,
majority of the things we do not reach our conscious
awareness.
• For example, turning on the light or boiling a kettle is
not thought about effortfully in what and how things
happen we just do it. We become consciously aware
when our perceived reality and reality diverge (when
turn on light and light doesn’t turn on or judge
doesn’t boil, we go huh; if we were consciously
aware all the time we wouldn’t be surprised and
would’ve noticed it sooner).

• Unconscious actions like a heart beating or
breathing are done automatically and keep us alive.
Jeffery Gray’s work on consciousness and developed
the “Bayesian brain hypothesis” our brain
consistently simulates a reality in which we operate.
• In his model, we have a system in which we
generate predictions about current states and future
events which runs consistently, this system can draw
from stored regulators (experience, stored
knowledge, memories, culturally inherited schema’s).
• These predictions are imposed onto the world,
guides our actions and sends feedback information
to the “comparator” which is where consciousness
occurs; the awareness of our predicted states in
comparison to reality. If the mismatch between
expectations and reality occurs we engage in active
processing of deliberate thought where we try to
make sense of the world and use this information to
enrich our prediction generator system (novel
insights make predictions more accurate;
comparator updates predictions and adjusts
plans/new future).
• The world = experience
• This theory is interesting for an evolutionary stance,
where consciousness has an evolutionary advantage
in adjusting to changes in the environment,
uncertainty and unexpected outcomes occur.
• Our implicit predictions are not always accurate and
conscious awareness allows us to adapt to changing
environments.

Question 29

Soul Music

Answer 29

• Awareness & minds as an evolutionary tool to deal
with uncertainty. Talking about the mind/psyche
involves talks about the soul.
• Do rocks have souls? No. It sparks the question to
whom do we attribute mind and soul to?
• The first Greek philosopher: Thales of Miletus who
said that a soul is a motive force where they’re able
to change the environment around them. Magnets
and rocks must have souls because they have
desires to change the world around them (agency).
• This work highlights that what we attribute the mind
to is not a fixed as we like to think.
• What a soul (mind and agency) can be attributed is
dominant discourse within philosophy (aristole &
Phaedo).
• A discourse that has perpetuated from ancient
Greece to modern day. For example, in 1457 the
mother left her child alone, the pigs ate the child, this
was perceived as an act of murder and the pig was
put on trial. The pig has legal representation and was
prosecuted as guilty; knowingly committed murder
and was sent to death via hanging. The younger
piglets were perceived as not to blame because they
were too young. They were put on probation to see if
their child eating tendencies would go away.
• How much mind and consciousness do non-human
animals have? How much agency and rights do they
have?

Question 30

What do you have in mind?

Theory of Mind Definition:
Tsoukalas, 2017

Answer 30

Theory of Mind Definition:
Tsoukalas, 2017
• Having a theory of mind (ToM) implies the ability to
see others as intentional beings; to see their actions
as motivated by mental states. It also entails the
realization that the mental states of others may differ
from one’s own.
• Elements:
o Be able to differentiate the self from others.
o Others have agency.
o They have a mind that is different from ours.

Question 31

Theory of Mind vs Empathy

Answer 31

Theory of Mind vs Empathy
• TOM (cognitive empathy; aware of people’s beliefs,
desires, emotions) is different from Empathy
(affective empathy; I feel your sadness).
• Being aware that you are sad is different from
feeling sad with you!

Question 32

What Evolutionary Function does TOM have?

Answer 32

• Example,
o Friends come home from work and pull out a knife
has one of two outcomes, they hurt me or they are
making a meal. As social agents we need to be able
to infer the intentions of others to be able to predict
their behaviour and have successful social
interactions. I can infer they are hungry after work
and pulled out a knife to make food. TOM is crucial
because making poor social predictions can be very
costly (over cautious impairs social relationships,
under cautious can lead to physical harm).
• In ancestral times, the expansion of group sizes from
hunter-gatherers to walled societies increase the
social stratification of social groups which requires
TOM to be able to rack alliances within groups.

Question 33

The Building Blocks of TOM:

Answer 33

1. Self-other distinction
2. Agency detection
3. Mind perception
4. Strategic social thinking

Question 34

1. Self-Other Distinction

Answer 34

1. Self-Other Distinction
   • TOM I can understand my internal states are
   different from others the self is distinguishable from
   the environment and others.
   • The easiest way to test for self-other distinctions is
   being able to recognize yourself in a mirror with the
   “rouge mark” test.
   • Recognizing yourself in a mirror is not innate; 1 1/2 to
   2 years old it develops.
   • Infants have a mark placed on their face and the test
   is whether they recognize the person in the mirror is
   me and try to rub it off.
   • Self-recognition test was done on primates
   (orangutangs) they found that they passed the test
   and rubbed off the mark.
   • Autism = lack of theory of mind (not empathy).
   • The self-other distinction is found in humans and
   animals (social) is on a spectrum. Highest includes
   humans, great apes, elephants, dolphins and
   magpies. Lowest are canines, felines, birds, fish,
   monkeys, most other species. It may be that they just
   don’t care; why is vanity a good marker of TOM?
   Therefore, TOM should be viewed as a spectrum
   rather than something you have or don’t have.
   • Are we actually measuring self awareness or are we
   imposing human terms onto non-human animals?
   Another critique to the rouge test.

Question 35

2. Agency Detection

Answer 35

• Threat detection systems; change in location; active
movers.
• We have systems preference to detecting change I
state or location of animals and humans rather than
inanimate objects.
• Hypersensitive agency detection device (Barret,
2000) a general process where our attention is
drawn to unexpected sensory inputs and that we
expect agency behind it.
• For example, we attribute rustling in bushes to
animals. The options is that there either is or is not a
predator in the bushes. The two actions we can
choose between are staying or fleeing. The possible
outcomes are: flee-no predator = survives, predator
absent-stay = survive, flee-predator – survive for
now, stay-predator = dead.
• It is theorized that this system evolved on the
principle that it is better to be safe than sorry. It is
better to assume agency than not to. This has been
attributed to agency being attributed to supernatural
beings when a physical agent is not present.
• Is all movement the same? We attribute agency to
inanimate objects in a dynamic sequences. We can
judge which of the three examples show shapes with
more agency (even though we know they don’t have
any; its intuition). People with autism struggle with
this. Not all movement or patterns show equal levels
of agency. People look longer at tringle which
demonstrate agency or minds. Something that has
more TM is a more complex agent which requires
more time to obtain knowledge to make better
predictions, it is very hard to predict autonomous
social beings (an arms race; I think about how you
think I think you think).

Question 36

Challenges to the Idea:

The Question of Ecology

Answer 36

Challenges to the Idea:
Researchers have challenged the idea that when things occur without an agent presence is attributed to supernatural beings. BUT what if people know nothing about spirits (no cultural knowledge of it). People who are higher in supernatural beliefs are more likely to attribute non-agentic events to supernatural causes relative to people who have no cultural knowledge on supernatural beings.

The Question of Ecology
We do not need to have exposure to snakes to be able to elicit a fear response to them. It is an evolved cognitive function which makes people scared of snakes-this is innate. However, a fear of supernatural beings is not innate. Its about context. Does everyone have agency?

Question 37

Does everyone have agency?

Answer 37

• Does everyone have agency? Researchers asked
people to label things that could have a mind on
their level of agency (enact on the environment) and
experience.
• Agents are not equal; some are high in experience
and low on agency (babies, dogs and chimps; its
morally wrong to harm them because they can
experience it and not stop it; morality is imposed on
it because it has a mind).
• A robot is moderate in agency and low in experience
(is less concerned about hurting it because it can’t
feel pain).
• Dead people have some level of agency and
experience; we attribute remanence to their past
personality.
• PVS people (vegetables; attribute agency to them,
more than an unborn child). God (supernatural
agent) is viewed high in agency but low in
experience (doesn’t feel emotions like us).

Question 38

We make judgments of morality based on judgments of their mind:

Answer 38

• High in agency and low in experience as moral
agents (responsible for what they do). Low agency
but high empathy (moral patients, high moral rights-
people who harm moral patients as bad people).
• High agency and no experience depend on the
ecological environment. People’s morality judgments
are influenced by the gods they believe in.

Question 39

3. Mind Perception:

Answer 39

• What is it like to be a bat? It helps us understand
what are our limits of understanding other people’s
experiences? I may know things about bat’s but I will
never truly know what the experience of being a bat
is. It’s a subjective experience I have no access to
experiencing myself because I am not a bat.
Perceptual features they have that shape their
experiences and construction of reality (echo
location or seeing UV spectrum).
• This is the same for other human beings, we have
limited access to understanding the experience of
other human beings. How do we construct their
minds?
• How can I infer things about a bats mind? Their
thoughts (every second is agony or flying is cool).
The key point is how do we make judgements about
other beings behaviour based on their inferred
mental state, something I can not see?

Question 40

How do we infer their mental states?

A second look

Answer 40

How do we infer their mental states?

• The concepts of mentality vary across cultures!there are some minds that are completely inaccessible to us, extra terrestrial life, that have different versions of reality than us. It is incomprehensible to humans to understand what the artifacts from aliens found were because they have no frame of reference about their version of reality and what they could be used for.

A second look
We label others mind in terms of agency and experience it has. Two-dimensional structure we used last lecture is not universal cross-culturally. Different cultures beliefs about the contents of the mind and how they can be inferred differs across cultures. Rita (Fijian- opacity of the mind; the mental states are hidden from others and should remain private-they focus on observable behaviours; social experience, basic experience and agency are the criteria used by Fijians relative to Americans).
The concepts of mentality vary across cultures!

Question 41

The Theory-Theory
How do we construct idea about others minds?

Theory-Theory Steps:

Answer 41

The Theory-Theory
How do we construct idea about others minds?
• TOM false belief task where infants are shown two
dolls, one with big feet and which are small, mom
spilled flour on the floor but mum says they can’t eat
the muffins. Muffins go missing and the evidence is.
the size of the footprints; Katie wears johns larger
shoes, to blame john.
• Who ate the muffins? Katie, Who does mum think ate
the muffins? (Katie-fail; john-pass). Younger infants
assume that what they think everyone else thinks so
they think mum knows what he knows.
• This child can formulate their own mind but has not
yet understood that others people’s minds differ
from our own beliefs. They have the cognitive
abilities to follow the logic of the story but still
answer it wrong.
• This theory proposes that infants act like scientists;
they apply their own understandings of beliefs onto
others; notice that others hold false beliefs and will
try to figure out how they come to be and results in
theories of others minds. They are bad at deception.

Theory-Theory Steps:
1. Initial Information about the Target Other
• There is beer in the cupboard
• The target thinks there is beer in the cupboard
• Target wants the beer
2. General OM Principles (overtime they learn)
• People seek things they desire
• People act according to their beliefs, desires and not
on objective reality
• People are unhappy when their desires are not
fulfilled
3. Prediction about other Targets (can predict what others
will do and their internal mental states are)
• Targets will go to the fridge
• Target will be disappointed

Question 42

The Question of Age

Considering Limits

Answer 42

The Question of Age
What stage of development are they? How does this impact children’s self-other mentality? Mean monkey study tests whether infants are able to understand that they can deceive the monkey by implanting a false belief on which sticker is your favorite so you get the one you want (18-months; rapid shift in their TOM ability to understand that they can implant false beliefs onto other actors; deception). Over their lifespan their TOM theories of self-other become more elaborate. Is this biological (gene) or learning (cultural) or both?

Considering Limits
We are actually quite limited in our understandings of the mind. Research on cross-cultural perceptions on whether the mind and body are separate find that eastern countries separate them more than western countries.

This cultural effect is present in False Belief tasks which requires an understanding of the self-other’s minds are separate.

The trends (slope) are similar across cultures gets bigger with age (indicates that biological maturation is present) but where they intercept the y-axis differs which indicates the effect of (culture).

Question 43

Non-Verbal & False Beliefs

Answer 43

• Non-verbal sign language cohorts compare their ability to pass false belief tasks. Younger cohorts passed false belief tasks better than older cohorts. This is due to the development of language which occurred overtime and new more signs about mental states; which indicates that understanding other’s minds requires language ability of mental states. Older cohorts which had learn mental states signs were then able to pass false belief tasks (shows it can be learnt and developed in adulthood).

*indicates language is key to construct other’s versions of
reality.

Question 44

Two competing beliefs of theories of consciousness:
(A) Dualism
(B) Monism

Answer 44

Two competing beliefs of theories of consciousness:
(A) Dualism
• Substance Dualism: made from different stuff
• Property Dualism: they’re made from different
properties
(B) Monism
• Mind and body is made from one thing
• Idealism: everything is made of mind stuff
• Materialism: everything is made of body stuff
Whether you think the mid and body as one
(monism) or separate (dualism) should influence how
you infer others mental states.

Question 45

In New Zealand, we have monism beliefs.

Answer 45

• This mind-body dualism is important when you are in
places where making judgements of the mind are not
possible.
• For example, Rita did work on the opacity of the
mind norms where it is considered culturally
inappropriate to infer about others mental states and
focus more on outcomes rather than intent.
• In western culture, intentional acts that failed are
perceived worse than accidents with bad outcomes.
In opacity of the mind doctrine areas, they perceive
accidents, intentional acts, failed attempts as all bad
(outcome based).
• In western cultures (murder/manslaughter the
outcome is the same but the intent varies).
• This corresponds to the amount of punishment
people think they deserve is.
• It’s not that they are not capable of thinking about
others minds but it is culturally inappropriate to. If you
prime then to think about the mind their cultural
effect vanishes, and they punish intentional acts more
than accidents.

Question 46

Models of Mind:

Answer 46

(A) Theory-Theory: we learn about others mental beliefs
develop overtime and are incorporated to develop
our models of others minds.
(B) System (simulation) Theory: we watch people get
hurt and wince because we think it would’ve hurt.
This theory poses that we simulate the inputs others
experience into our own to understand what they
might be thinking and feeling, predict what they will
do based on what we would do (own decisions).
(C) Combine two theories: Use aspects of the self
(simulate internally about own bodily states and learn
knowledge about external states ;others) these are
combined in a simulation process to get a more
accurate simulation of others models of minds. This
only works if their minds are like ours. Therefore, it
doesn’t work with non-human animals!

This combined model is consistent with the theory of consciousness. Stored regulators (stored knowledge theory predictors) we add the second model by saying that we use our own experiences and others to build predictions and beliefs about our external world and others internal worlds to make more accurate predictions about the world.

Is it all cultural evolution? Learning about cultural models of the minds, how mental states are inferred, what is right or wrong but what about genetics?

Question 47

Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis:
(Dunbar 2003; Gavrilets & Vose 2006; Pinker 1999; Trivers 2000)
*why TOM develops

Answer 47

This would argue that TOM developed to allow for people to learn how to better exploit others for our own gain. To use them as steppingstones to our own success. Maximize gain and minimize costs. An additional, genetic mechanism which allows us to generate better cost/benefit models.

This is not actually how TOM is used in real life. It is not used to fuck people over but to help us understand others, build better social interactions and facilitate cooperation. Cooperation is more beneficial to defecting in the long run and for groups. We develop skills in English to infer additional skills in understanding the deeper meaning of text, the intentions of the author, beyond the obvious (reading between the lines/symbolism). Language helps cultural knowledge be passed down across generations (tool use, instruct others also requires simulation of others mind). It helps with developing laws; govern societies and how we act in our daily lives to conform to them and guides our actions (in fear of being kicked from group or punished).

Challenging Idea that TOM Developed to Facilitate Cooperation.

We had a start up kit, where genetics gives children foundational skills which are refined over time through cultural knowledge to develop sophisticated TOM (environment and social norms shape create cultural specific TOM skills).

Question 48

The consequences of failed Theory of Mind (Aggression and War)

What happens when TOM fails. It is very important for social living (inter and intra group living). Having accurate representation of others mental states and intentions is key for survival. Problems in intragroup setting include social exclusion for violating norms or creating conflict and intergroup settings can spark intergroup conflict.

Key Points:

Answer 48

§ Inter-personal and inter-group failures of TOM can
lead to aggression and violence
§ Violence is costly both individually and collectively
§ Human societies might have evolved to parochial
altruism

Question 49

Aggression Definition:
Proactive Aggression:
Reactive Aggression:
Individual Violence:

Answer 49

§ “Any behaviour directed toward another individual
that is carried out with the proximate (immediate)
intent to cause harm” (Anderson & Bushman, 2002).
§ This includes physical and psychological harm.
§ This is distinctive from violence which is aggression
with the intent of extreme harm (murder).

§ Premeditated aggression (poison, military acts like
ambushes, executions that are sanctioned by the
state).
§ This includes individual, group or society endorsed
and goal directed aggression.

§ E.g., bar fights, reactions to provocation, crimes of
passion.
§ Acts of aggression which arise in response to real or
perceived threat, provocation or frustration.

Individual Violence:
§ Self defence from predators (prey).
§ Predation in order to consume food (predator).

*these are supported by Malfusian Theory on populations
which states that not everyone in a population can
survive due to strain on resources.

Examples of Proactive Aggression in Animals:
§ Birds lay two eggs and when food situations get
strained egg A throws egg B out of the nest; siblings
murder one another and the parents let them.
§ When the male leader of monkey’s is overthrown the
new leader kills all the offspring so they are now
able to mate with all the women and pass on their
own genes.

Question 50

Thinking back to the duality of power:

Hamsters & the Cost of Fighting:

Answer 50

Thinking back to the duality of power:
§ Dominance is something which is gained through
active struggle, fight for power and leadership.
(covert and overt means).
§ An issue which arises from these power struggles is
if you misjudge how the other person will respond,
or your skills vs theirs you may get stuck in a fight
with high stake consequences of your position in the
group.
§ In animals without natural weapons (flies etc. not
animals like lions or aggression) studies find that flies
which fight more often they tend to die earlier.
However, they didn’t have more injuries in the
aggression condition indicating they didn’t die for
physical injuries or battel wounds but rather exerting
all their energy and stress.

Hamsters & the Cost of Fighting:
§ They’re viscous fighters that are extremely territorial.
§ Studies find that when other hamsters intrude on
their territory they act with aggression and results
indicate that an immediate response to seeing
threats (body temperature and O2 consumption
increases). Those in the aggression condition had
substantially higher metabolic rates over time,
reductions in body fat reserves (direct fighting and
indirectly when seeing a threat) which indicates that
they do not replace the exerted energy lost
when preparing for a fight.
§ Therefore, fighting is not a good strategy; its energy
consuming and high-risk situation where death is
possible and demonstrates why TOM is such an
important skill to know if intimidation or aggression
will cause a competitor to back off or start a fight.

Question 51

Is violence or aggression an evolutionary trait inherited via genetics from animals?

Answer 51

§ Daly and Watson would argue that there is evidence in our evolutionary history of adaptations that foster inter and intra group conflict (i.e., sexual selection; group selection).
§ Why do people focus on homicide? The benefit of murder/homicide is that it is one form of violence which is very very unlikely to be unreported or a different definition across cultures.
§ Remember the grey figure of crime is that only 30% of all crime is reported. In terms of assault 60% of all assault is not reported but majority of homicide gets reported.
§ There is evidence of the rates of homicide being variable across cultures. Homicide rates are low in Western Europe (.8) relative to Southern Africa (15.5) which indicates that it is never absent in a population and that environmental factors produce variation.
§ Homicide also varies across time and is reducing overtime; acute spikes occur in reactions to environmental stimuli (fall of the soviet union; life expectancy and wealth dropped; civil war produced increases in homicide rates as well).
§ Homicide is also able to be traced across history (extreme long-term perspectives to the 13th century). We see the nature of homicide has changed; 13-14th period where the victim stays alive for a substantial period (1-7days) after the attempt on their life. Now majority of all homicides in the 21st century only last 24 hours after the attempt on their life (despite all our medical advancements).
§ There are changes in ”how” people commit homicide; 1300’s low shooting rates due to lack of guns available, 1700’s-1849 there is a drastic rise in homicide via guns, gun use has fallen in the 21st century and a rise of sharp object (knife) homicide (= cultural changes in homicide).
§ It is changing in common population (middle class) and in elites. Overall, homicides rates have fallen but we see a wave pattern for elites where it is still going in a downwards trend but is continuously rising and falling on the way down. This is consistent with Turchhin’s elite over population theory where societal wellbeing is low and elites rise there is more coemption between then and increases in homicide rates (to reduce their numbers and remove competition).

Question 52

Collective Violence:

Answer 52

§ Violence enacted by groups against other groups.
§ Video [two groups of birds fighting]
§ All birds are committed to the fight, in formation and
directed to a goal. The other group of birds were
less cohesive, fought with one another, some stood
at the back and screamed, others flew away leave
the front liners to fend for themselves.
§ Birds at the front have the highest fight load relative
to those who stay at the back live to tell stories
about the fight. This also indicates that there is
variation in the birds on how punishment averse
they are.

Question 53

Are humans evolutionary predisposed to war?

Answer 53

§ We begin by looking at violence/war in other non-
human species with phylogenetic trees.
§ Authors documented collective violence in
chimpanzees where over time a larger group splits
into two distinct groups, due to two males fighting
for dominance, that become weakly connected to
one another and their foraging areas diverged from
one another.
§ This led to the “goumbe four-year war” where these
two groups engaged in war (group forming,
ambushing, planned raids, massacres) and one
group outcompeted the other and replaced the
other [like what we se in humans] to obtain their
mates and resources. Required organization and are
prone to cannibalism of those they over powered.

Question 54

The problem of foraging:

Answer 54

§ If we have two equal groups that are foraging 6 vs 6. There is no benefit of attacking another group that’s the same size as you because the risk is too high. When people forage their group sizes split off into smaller ones for more effective foraging; an observant chimp will notice that the fight is now 6 against 3 and the odds are now in their favour.
§ Attention and playing have adaptive benefits.
§ When comparing rates of intergroup homicide between chimps, hunter-gatherers and farmers we see that there is very little difference in rates of violence between these three groups (equally violent as chimps).
§ This effect is true if we are looking at the whole population but the variation in human populations are huge and who conducts wars in humans is different (males and females in humans vs only males in chimps). The percentage of death of males in a population due to war vary across cultures; its high in Jivaro or the Yanomano people but relatively low in Europe and the US.
§ War & intergroup violence has played a huge role in mortality in human populations over human evolution and we underestimate the costs of it on small scale societies. For comparison in large scale societies like US World War Two only contributed to 5.43% of deaths but in small scales societies the cost is much higher
§ The cost of war is not limited to mean and can affect women as well but is mostly men.
§ Evolutionary psychologists want to know why is war predominately costly to men? They produced the male-warrior hypothesis that they are more likely than women to focus on group level cooperation rather than individual level cooperation [coalitions & raids; group level cooperation and commitment to the fight rather than cooperation to a specific individual). Men are sensitive to group cohesion and have an innate tendency to evaluate outgroup men as more dangerous in outgroup conflict. Some argue that this is because men are larger (sexual dimorphism) and more expendable in group because of their low investment to offspring, relative to women.
§ Most studies show that the presence of a mother increases offspring survival chances but there is no effect of a male presence (father and grandfather).

Question 55

Why do we sometimes have this weird excitement about going to war? Why do so many young men enlist to war?

Answer 55

§ When we look at the age characteristics of who
commits homicide, we see that majority are
committed by young male offenders.
§ This is consistent with studies on risk-taking
behaviour, young men take substantially more risks
than young women. This is the time period where
they want to maximize their resources and still have
physical power to support taking more risky
behaviour.
§ This is a robust pattern found where males are more
prone to risks than women between 2—40 years of
age; from there after the gender difference is null.

Question 56

If you are not with us you’re against us:

Answer 56

§ How we replace others.
§ In group selection theory of cooperation, we see as
the number of competitor groups increases the
cooperation within groups increases.
§ The coevolution of parochial altruism (ingroup
altruism) and war (outgroup hostility) these studies
demonstrate that individual’s contribution to their
groups during war they put in enough to still get
benefits back (without punishment). When the ability
to punish ingroup member who are not contributing
enough is added we see a shift were people
contribute more to the group then they get back.
§ Other studies show that without punishment in the
prisoner’s dilemma economic game defectors
(egoists) put less in than prosocial (cooperators) with
punishment we see all most equal levels of
contribution by egoists and prosocial.
§ = the power of internal punishment structures for
facilitating cooperation