Eun-Sung Chang

The idea that operant responses are influenced by their effects, is what?

Intro to Psych

Exam 2 Review

Exam Date: 4/3/17

**Please do not rely solely on this review for the exam.**

Learning 

• Basic hardware components: responding

o 1. Sensation: ability to discriminate stimuli – notice when there is something  relevant to us (food/predator/etc.) using our senses (eyes/ears/etc.)

o 2. Reflex: hardwired stimulus-response circuits – born with something without  learning it

o 3. Habituation: circuit breaker – tendency to stop reflex in response to stimulus,  knows to stop and mitigate reflex

What is variable ratio reinforcement?

• Ability to predict environment: critical for survival because if you predict something will  happen, it will increase your chances of success Don't forget about the age old question of The lion-human is made of what?

• Concepts of Prediction: Pavlovian software

o Learn associations: prediction – predicting something will happen based on  associating that event with another change in environment

▪ Ex.) Rat salivates when it sees cheese – if a light lights up every time rat  gets cheese ???? rat will associate light with cheese and start to salivate at  light before it sees the cheese Don't forget about the age old question of dunkin donuts demographic segmentation
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• US – cheese

• UR – rat salivates

• CS – light

• CR – rat salivates

What are the types of memory?

o Learn sloppily: generalization – applying basic knowledge to various situations ▪ Ex.) It would be helpful if rat could learn to generalize all cats/bells ???? if a  neighbor’s cat that is slightly different looking with a different bell comes,  rat could still know to run

o Learn sparingly: blocking – learning patterns of relationships that only benefit  you

▪ Ex.) If you add sound to light, rat will not salivate to sound ???? rat will  think it already has a good predictor (light) and sound is doing what light  already was doing so it is unnecessary

o Learn slowly: latent inhibition – learn patterns that are only there a number of  times

▪ Ex.) If there is a light first and nothing happens for a while, and then the  light starts cueing food ???? rat will take a longer time/lot more exposure  to associate light with food We also discuss several other topics like What is the definition of karma?

o Unlearn slowly: extinction

▪ Ex.) If rat continues to see light without food ???? rat will unlearn to  associate light with food

o Relearn quickly: spontaneous recovery

▪ Ex.) Rat could relearn very quickly that light predicts food after extinction • Stimulus/response in classical conditioning:

o Unconditioned stimulus: elicits and unconditioned response without any  training/teaching

▪ Ex.) dog food in Pavlov’s experiment

o Conditioned stimulus: signal that has no importance until it is paired with  something that has importance Don't forget about the age old question of find people msu
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▪ Ex.) bell in Pavlov’s experiment

o Unconditioned response: natural/instinctual reaction to an unconditioned stimulus

▪ Ex.) dog salivating to food in Pavlov’s experiment

o Conditioned response: almost always the same as unconditioned response,  reaction to conditioned stimulus

▪ Ex.) dog salivating to bell in Pavlov’s experiment

• Real world example of classical conditioning:

o US – cat

o CS – cat’s bell

o UR – rat running away from cat

o CR – rat running away from sound of cat’s bell

• Little Albert: experiment by John Watson – baby Albert has no fear in the beginning ???? Watson shows him a white rat and then makes a loud clanging noise, so Albert gets  scared ???? Watson repeats over and over ???? Albert gets scared of noise/rat and  generalizes fear to all small furry animals (like a bunny)

o Example of overgeneralization – overgeneralized fear of rat to all small animals o Example of behaviorism – fears are learned, not inherited

o US – loud clanging noise

o CS – rat

o UR – crying because of the loud noise

o CR – crying because of the rat

• Overgeneralization: not helpful to our survival

o Ex.) If rats overgeneralized all cats ???? it would fear stuffed animal cats

• Classical vs. operant conditioning

o Classical/Pavlovian conditioning: procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus  (conditioned stimulus) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus ???? result is that  CS begins to elicit a conditioned response

▪ Ex.) Ivan Pavlov’s dog experiment – rang a bell and gave dog food ???? dog  started salivating at bell sound and treated the bell as a signal for food o Operant/instrumental conditioning: process in which animals learn about the  relationship between their behaviors and their consequences; studies how  effects of a behavior influence probability that behavior will occur again ▪ Ex.) B. F. Skinner box – pigeon kept in a box ???? pigeon was fed every time  it turned so it learned to keep turning

• The law of effect: formed by Edward Thorndike – idea that operant responses are  influenced by their effects ???? when a behavior has positive effect, it is likely to be  repeated in the future; when a behavior has negative effect, it is less likely to be  repeated in the future

• Examples of operant condition:

o Ex.) Edward Thorndike – developed a box and put cats inside ???? cats would not  like it ???? reward selects behavioral “mutations”

▪ Cats would scratch, push, dig, meow, then press button

▪ Behavior that led to bad outcome – do something (scratch, push, dig,  meow) and floor would shock cat

▪ Behavior that led to good outcome – press button and be let out ???? cat  learned to go straight to pressing button next time it went into box

o Ex.) B.F. Skinner – dancing pigeon ???? pigeon learned to keep turning if it wanted  to be fed

o Ex.) Professor pigeon – class paid attention only when professor stood on left  side of the stage

• “Schedules of reinforcement”:

o Continuous reinforcement: every time you do a certain behavior, you get a  reward

▪ Ex.) Every time your dog sits when you tell it to, you give it a treat

o Fixed ratio reinforcement: rewarded every 3rd/5th/10th/etc. time a person does  something

▪ Ex.) Buy 3, get 1 free! sales

o Fixed interval reinforcement: pensioner

▪ Ex.) Pigeon gets rewarded every 2 minutes no matter how many times it  pushes button

o Variable ratio reinforcement: gambler, randomized reward schedule

▪ Ex.) Slot machine

o Variable interval reinforcement: rewarded a specific time during a span of time ▪ Ex.) Radio gives concert tickets away to lucky caller sometime in the next  hour ???? you don’t know when in the hour so you keep calling

• Radical behaviorism: all behavior is a result of its reinforcement history; John Watson – everything is about the environment in which you grew up in ???? idea of “it doesn’t  matter how rich/smart you are, as long as you try you can do it”

• Blank slate hypothesis: people come into the world knowing nothing ???? anyone can be  anything

• Phenomena not well explained by behaviorism: behaviorism is not the only thing the  mind does

o Ex.) Some things we don’t learn ???? babies are born knowing things/having  preferences of certain facial structures over others (not likely that a baby saw a  bunch of faces and picked which ones it liked)

o Ex.) Biological preparedness hypothesis ???? babies have a natural threat detector  to spiders before having any experience with spiders

o Ex.) Some things we can’t learn via conditioning ???? language is not learned  through conditioning

Memory 1 

• Types of memory:

o Sensory: ability to retain impressions of sensory information

▪ Iconic: short term visual memory

▪ Echoic: short term auditory memory

o Working: memory you bring to mind and hold while performing operations o Long term: when information is stored in memory for long periods of time ▪ Explicit: distributed representation refers to “brain cells fire in patterns”  in a way that corresponds to memory

• Semantic: “meaning” ???? refers to factual information of the  

world, knowledge of names of things

• Episodic: considered the “classic version” of memory ???? memory  

of events/episodes of your life

▪ Implicit: memory known beforehand that is already in the brain

• Procedural: ability to learn/remember how to do things

• Priming: create retrieval cues so it’s easier to remember memory  

later on

• Purpose of iconic/echoic memory: visual/auditory memory helps monitor our daily lives

• Distributed representation: system of information processing where separate  components carry the units of knowledge, same/different/overlapping representations • Semantic memory: refers to factual information of the world/meanings of words in a  language

o Ex.) Remembering cats vs. dogs ???? same brain cells fired (both are furry 4-legged  house pets) and different brain cells fired (cats are independent, dogs are social)  ???? overlapping/distributed representation

• Lexical decision task: patient’s task is to identify words quickly while researcher  measures time it takes ???? quick reactions to word “scalpel” when it came after “doctor”  (overlap between words) and slower reactions when it came after “teacher” (no  overlap) ???? shows brain cells fire quicker after activated

• Distributed representations in encoding/retrieval for episodic memory: o Encoding: when the brain processes the experience at the time it is experienced o Retrieval: consists of re-instantiating the distributed representation creating at  

encoding ???? retrieval cue can serve as a “seed” for such re-instantiation and can  cause cascading effect (causing rest of the representation to fire)

• Retrieval cues: something that can trigger your whole memory to reactivate (richer  memory is easier to reactivate because so many things can serve as retrieval cues) • Consequences of distributed representations:

o Levels of processing: memory is better when encoding emphasizes “deep”  aspects of a stimulus (such as meaning) rather than “shallow” aspects (such as  typeface/rhymes) ???? the bigger the distributed representation of the memory,  the easier it will be to remember it

▪ Deep encoding: leads to highly distributed representation with wide  number of retrieval cues

• Ex.) Think of word “dog” by associating it with childhood  

memories of your dog ???? more likely to remember “dog” next day

▪ Shallow encoding: leads to sparse distributed representation with small  number of retrieval cues

• Ex.) Think of word “dog” by associating it with fact that it rhymes  

with “fog” ???? hard retrieval cue

o Encoding specificity: memory is better when a retrieval cue overlaps with those  available during encoding

▪ Ex.) Rhyme (if words rhyme) vs. association (if words are semantically  related) for words ???? if retrieval cue overlaps with association, then  

memory will be better for items encoded as part of association

o Context dependence: memory varies depending on context of setting ???? more  likely to remember if you are in same state during encoding

▪ Ex.) Scuba divers retain information learned in water better in water and  vice versa on land

• Hippocampus: “convergence zone” ???? where distributed representations live/where  forming of new memories go into long term memory

• Patient H.M.:

o What happened: had bike accident at 7 years old ???? had epileptic seizures  coming from hippocampus ???? had it removed ???? got anterograde amnesia and  could not form new memories

o Why this is important: proof of consolidation which allows memories to be  stamped/stored outside of hippocampus

o Nature of deficits:

▪ List of study words and asked to recall/recognize words after studying ???? could not recall when asked “what words did you see?”, 50/50 chance of  being correct in recognition when asked “which word did you see?” in  

given choices of 2 similar words ???? not a problem with retrieval, only  

since the accident

o Nature of abilities:

▪ Famous faces test ???? could remember celebrities from his childhood but  not recent celebrities

▪ Word-stem completion task after list of study words ???? could complete  words when given stem with some sort of implicit memory and asked  

“complete with first word that comes to mind” (helped that it was not  

framed with a memory task)

▪ Procedural memory task ????does not remember performing the action  but will get better at task as he practices

o Evidence of distinction between implicit/explicit memory: H.M. had implicit but  no explicit memory

▪ Explicit: memory you consciously work to remember

▪ Implicit: memory you remember unconsciously/effortlessly

Memory 2 

• Patient S:

o What condition: remembered everything (everything served as retrieval cue for  everything else), did not have good control over what he was thinking about, had  no way of shutting memories off

o What peculiar behavior it produced: became very stressful/debilitating ???? became very overwhelmed/isolated from society

o His case illustrates: perfect memory is not useful because brain would become  too crowded ???? ability to forget is very important because if we didn’t forget,  our minds would be flooded with useless information

• Seven sins of memory: functional to a limited degree, become problematic when they  go haywire

o Absent-mindedness: when you are distracted/not paying attention ▪ Ex.) Sensory – someone comes up to you and introduces herself as Amy  ???? working – you remember/rehearse her name as you understand what  she is saying ???? long term – connect “Amy” to another Amy you know • If you are distracted ???? won’t go into working memory ???? will not  remember name

o Transience: when an outside factor interrupts  

▪ Ex.) Someone comes up to you and introduces herself as Amy ????

someone else comes up and starts talking ???? rehearsal/elaboration is  interrupted ???? the name “Amy” never goes into long term memory

o Blocking: problem with retrieval

▪ Ex.) Someone comes up to you and introduces herself as ANNIE right  after Amy comes up ???? won’t remember name Amy next time you see  her ???? activation of “Annie” inhibits other names like Amy

o Bias: we fill in the gist of what we already know in our memories, events are  “pre-processed” or “filtered” before reaching hippocampus ???? some filtering  occurs in prefrontal cortex which contributes to understanding meaning of  information

▪ Ex.) Stanford study tested people’s opinions on marijuana ???? tested again  20 years later ???? views became more conservative but people would say  their thinking did not change

o Misattribution: when you make a false connection

▪ Ex.) False fame effect ???? calling nonfamous names famous after they  have been read/heard earlier ???? people given a list of famous/old  

nonfamous/new nonfamous names and were asked to identify famous  names ???? old nonfamous were more likely to be called famous than new  nonfamous because people misattributed names and use familiarity to  make their decisions

o Suggestibility: other people’s (false) memories can bias your memories ▪ Ex.) Picture of car next to a stop sign/yield sign ???? will affect people’s  answer to how fast they think the car was going

o Persistence: when you can’t shut a memory off (usually painful memories), when  memory becomes too powerful/deep and more things in environment can  trigger activation of specific memory ???? happens in PTSD

▪ Ex.) Sad tale of Donnie Moore ???? gave up homerun in baseball for Angels  ???? Angels lost ???? could not stop thinking about what happened

• Tip of the tongue: when memory is in long term but you can’t access it ???? activation of a  memory inhibits activation of partially overlapping memory representations • Errors of omission vs. commission:

o Omission: forgetting ???? absent-mindedness, transience, blocking

o Commission: distortion ???? bias, misattribution, suggestibility

Language 

• 2 ways human language is unique:

o Unlimited/infinite, not specific ???? human language has infinite ideas

▪ Ex.) Honey bees have a dance that communicate location of food but  nothing else

o Arbitrary/creative ???? humans produce ideas they have never heard before • Human language is arbitrary: language is conventional, humans produce ideas they  have never heard before

o Challenge for learning meaning of words: you learn new words by interaction  with others who speak the same native language ???? new words come imbedded  in sentences with other words

• Parsing problem: pauses between words when someone else is speaking is not a good  indicator to separate words

• Solution to parsing problem: children use subtle statistical properties of their language • Reference problem: we don’t know exactly what we are referring to when a word  doesn’t make sense/is unknown

• 4 solutions to reference problem:

o Social referencing: guides where you look/pay attention to ???? children will look  at what your eyes are looking at and match it to what you say

o Novelty matching: implies the more words you know, the easier it is to learn  new words ???? children tend to assume things have 1 name

o Intentionality: use speaker’s intentions to guide understanding of new words ???? if someone says “let’s dax Mickey” and then pushes him headfirst down a slide,  children will have no problem understanding what “dax” means even though it is  not a word

o Category assumption: children will assume categories with what they see ???? if  parent says “ball” and associates word with baseball and tennis ball, children will  associate word “ball” with multiple types of balls

• Categorical perception: we perceive slight differences in speech ???? we can tell  difference between “b” and “p” even though voice onset time is the only difference • Babies are “citizens of the world”: newborn babies can hear differences between slight  differences in any given speech sound in any language but lose ability in 10-12 months • Cooing/babbling: cooing is mostly “ah” vowels, babbling is more syllabic chunks ???? babies are trying to piece together language

• Syntax is a critical property of language: many words are put together to make complex  utterances like sentences ???? word order is important because different order produces  different meaning

• Universal grammar: idea by Noam Chomsky ???? ability to learn grammar is innate,  children spontaneously invent grammar

o 2 pieces of evidence:

▪ Pidgin/creole speakers

▪ Nicaraguan sign language

• Language rules (grammar) and words (meaning): separate in the brain ???? sentence can  have grammar but no meaning

o Ex.) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• Parts of the brain support grammar/meaning:

o Broca’s area: frontal lobe, Broca’s aphasia has problem with syntax but not  meaning

o Wernicke’s area: temporal lobe, Wernicke’s aphasia has problem with meaning  but not syntax

• 3 proposals regarding how children learn syntax and evidence against: o Direct instruction: parents do not sit their kids down and teach them ever  possible sentence in the world

o Imitation: children say sentences they have never heard before and apply  grammatical rules to everything even if it’s incorrect

o Reinforcement: parental feedback is not always about grammar, it’s about  semantics most of the time

• Evidence for “sensitive period” for syntax: case of Genie ???? abused by her parents and  never received exposure to language until rescued at 13, learned simple words but  never really developed complex language/grammar

• Pragmatics: way language is actually used in practice, emphasis on different words can  change meaning of a sentence

• Implicatures: (Paul Grice) what the speaker implies with their words/utterances

o Principle of charity: listeners expect speakers to be truthful, informative,  relevant, clear

• 2 ways chimpanzee language is different from human language:

o Humans are only ones who have creative language

o Children have vocabulary explosions, very hard to teach chimps vocab

Thinking 

• Thinking about future: uniquely human form of intelligence that enables us to think  about far future events

• Prospecting: thinking about far ahead events, way about thinking about things that are  in the future

o Ex.) skydiving ???? if you have never been, you would imagine what it would be  like to fly through the air, animals probably can’t think this way

• Expected utility theory: designed to maximize good outcomes, emphasis on value o Ex.) trying to maximize calories with food A and food B ???? A has more calories  but harder to get, B has fewer but easier to get ???? people will reach for A/settle  for B depending on how much calories vary

• Errors of odds: error of something happening

o Sample size neglect: we forget smaller sample size has more likelihood ▪ Ex.) 45 babies born in large hospital, 15 babies born in small hospital ???? hospital records days 60% of born babies are boys ???? which hospital  

recorded more days? ???? most people say about the same but correct  

answer is smaller hospital

o Gambler’s fallacy: belief that likelihood of event is influenced by nature of  events that preceded it

▪ Ex.) each coin flip is independent of coin flip before ???? unlikely to get 10  heads in a row

o Conjunction fallacy: when we assume specific conditions are more probable  than a single general condition

▪ Ex.) Sarah is philosophy major concerned with social justice ???? people are  more likely to say she is a bank teller AND activist in feminist movement  than just a bank teller

o Availability bias: people assume things that are easy to bring to mind are more  common

▪ Ex.) more 4 letter words with R in 3rd or 1st place? ???? more words with R  in 3rd but people say more words with R in 1st because they are easier to  think of

o Planning fallacy: we underestimate how long something will take to complete

▪ Ex.) actual time it took students to complete a project took longer than  their worst case scenarios ???? we don’t take into consideration factors  

that may derail/slow down our project

• Errors of valuation: how good something will be if it happens

o Presentism: putting too much weight on present state to predict what you want  in the future

▪ Ex.) type of candy for each week for a month chosen in 1 sitting vs. every  week ???? people who choose in 1 sitting choose variety when in reality  

they would want the same candy every week

o Comparing to the past: we use past information to guide our decisions ▪ Ex.) Job 1 makes more money overall but income decreases from year 1  to year 3, job 2 makes less money overall but income increases from year  1 to year 3 ???? people will choose job 2 because they don’t want income  

to decrease

o Prospect theory: describes way people choose between probabilistic  alternatives that involve risk where probabilities of outcomes are known, loss  looms larger than gains

▪ Ex.) losing $10 feels worse than gaining $10 feels good

o Temporal discounting: tendency of discounting/devaluing something that is  further in the future

▪ Ex.) $10 now or $12 later? ???? $12 has more value but people can choose  $10 depending on amount of time between now and later

• 2 key ways prospect theory differs from rational world:

o Curve steeper for losses than gains: in a rational world, line should be linear, in  reality it is not ???? we care more about losing than gaining equivalent amounts of  money

o Asymptotes of curve: at a certain point, we don’t feel loss as much

▪ Ex.) $250 stereo vs. $150 stereo 2 hour drive away ???? people would drive  2 hours to save $100

▪ Ex.) $30,200 car vs. $30,100 car 2 hour drive away ???? people would not  drive 2 hours to save $100

• Endowment effect: people ascribe more value to something because they own it/it has  sentimental value

o Ex.) Grandmother’s necklace ???? has sentimental value/meaning to you but to  someone else, it’s just a necklace

Sleep 

• Stages of sleep: brain waves measured by EEG

o Awake: up and down, irregular pattern

o Lying down: slightly more slugged down pattern

o Stage 1: waves stretch out a little bit, still irregular, brain slowing down, in  between sleep and wake

o Stage 2: brain slows down more, some spikes

o Stage 3/4: deep sleep, waves are much more stretched out, hard to be woken up • Humans sleep vs. other species:

o Mammals: almost all mammals show REM sleep (25% of total sleep) o Birds: show REM sleep (3-5%)

o Reptiles/amphibians: show deep sleep characteristics but no REM o Insects/fish: show “behavioral sleep” but no identifiable neural sleep o Plants/bacteria: show circadian rhythms (sleep like characteristics) o Amount of sleep: predators usually need more sleep than prey ???? humans need  around 8 hours of sleep (infants sleep more ???? around 16 hours)

• Dolphin sleep: do not show REM sleep, only 1 part of the brain is asleep while the other  is awake, circle near surface of water so they can breathe

• Thalamus: very busy, connected to every area of the brain

o Non-REM: stops sending signals when you are asleep ???? why you can’t detect  changes in environment when you are asleep

o REM: keeps gating outside information but starts sending new information ???? starts waking up visual/motor areas and emotion/social areas that all play a part  in dreaming, consciousness is not woken up (where you make sense of things)  

• Pons: sends signals to thalamus every 90 minutes, keep regular time o REM: sends inhibitory signal down spinal cord ???? causes sleep paralysis • 2 REM sleep related disorders:

o Narcolepsy: awake and then suddenly go into REM sleep without passing  through other stages of sleep

o Loss of REM-related atonia: when signal from pons does not occur ???? causes  movement during sleep like sleep-walking (most extreme cases happen in men,  precursor to Parkinson’s disease)

• Sleep enhances procedural memory: typing sequence activity with non-dominant hand  ???? subjects were better at typing after a period of sleep

• Sleep enhances episodic memory: people asked to learn a new list of words when they  are well-rested/not well-rested ???? people who were well-rested learned more than  those who were sleep deprived

• Sleep enhances insight: whatever the 5th number is predicts next number in a sequence  ???? 3 groups tested after passage of 8 hours (awake during day, awake during night,

sleeping group) ???? group that got sleep overnight got many more correct compared to  those who were awake during day/night (not about time, about sleep)

• REM sleep changes across development: babies need more sleep (16 hours) than adults  (8 hours), babies go into REM sleep and then deeper sleep because motor parts of brain  are not as developed, babies in utero move chest up and down to practice breathing for  when they are born

• Consequences of sleep deprivation:

o Ex.) rat experiment ???? rat fell into water every time it fell asleep ???? sleep deprivation led to yellowing/clumpy fur and bad health, early death

o Ex.) Radio broadcaster Peter Tripp ???? went just over 8 days without sleep, used  stimulants to keep himself awake, hallucinated, never the same again

o Ex.) High schooler Randy Gardner ???? went 11 days without sleep, did not sue  stimulants, hallucinated, was back to normal/regular sleep schedule after long  sleep

• Freud’s theory of dreams: dreams are guardian of sleep ???? dreams related to  unconscious mind

o Latent: what unconscious is trying to convey

o Manifest content: what we consciously think about

• Hobson’s activation-synthesis model of dreams: dreams happen because they knit  together all of the random firings in our brains into 1 coherent picture

Social Cognition 

• 3 ways about thinking about behavior:

o Physical stance: physical properties of an object

▪ Ex.) Temperature dial is round, there is a knob you turn, friction involved  in turning knob, etc.

o Design stance: purpose of an object

▪ Ex.) Device designed to regulate temperature

o Intentional stance: what person is trying to do/accomplish (mental state/goals) ▪ Ex.) Person is trying to change the temperature of the room

• Ability to engage in “mind-reading”: we read into other people’s minds (thoughts/  emotions/opinions) all the time

• Evidence of centrality of social cognition:

o Heider and Simmel (shape chasing): video of shapes (triangles and a circle)  moving around a rectangular shape – people assume the triangle is angrily  chasing the smaller shapes when in reality shapes are just moving on a screen ???? we attribute goals, personality, emotions/mental states to the shapes

o Perceiving faces everywhere: we perceive faces in everyday objects (like a  power outlet) everywhere ???? we are programmed to see faces in inanimate  objects

o Point-light walkers: actually just dots moving on a screen ???? we perceive them  as people walking

o Data on social-brain evolution: hypothesis that human mind is complicated and  challenging ???? it is hard to keep up with everyone’s relationships (who is related  to who/who is friends with who/etc.)

o Pain of social exclusion: mind reacts very badly to social exclusion ???? anterior  cingulate cortex associates social exclusion with physical pain

▪ Ex.) Cartoon passing a ball ???? cartoon people would pass a ball with you  and then stop passing it to you ???? people felt a sense of exclusion even  though they were fake/cartoon/animated characters

▪ Ex.) Harlow’s monkey experiment ???? monkey chose cloth (comfort/love)  over wire monkey (food)

• False belief understanding: children see only the reality of a situation o Sally-Anne task: Sally puts ball in basket. Sally goes away. Anne moves ball into  her box. Where will Sally look for her ball? ???? Adults will say basket, 3 year olds  will say box

o Basic developmental finding: children do not think about context of situation ???? bases answers off of reality, not minds

• Social cognition in Autistic individuals: most Autistic individuals never develop skills/  take a lot of thinking to assume contexts

o Heider and Simmel video: Autistic individuals do NOT assume personality to  shapes, describe shapes as they move

o Sally-Anne task: Autistic individuals do NOT pass this task (even if they have  higher IQs than other children)

o False photograph test: Autistic individuals have no problem with this task  because it doesn’t require other people’s mental states

• Social cognition as “mind-melding”: getting other people to experience what I  experience (me ???? others)

o Language: 70-80% of conversation is about other people  

o Emotion: emotional display is how people expressing what they are feeling to  others

o Teaching: only humans teach for someone else’s benefit ???? demonstrate  something for the sole purpose of a child to learn while animals may imitate  without the purpose of benefitting others

• Evidence of “mind-melding”:

o Emotion-sharing: you pain = my pain ???? physical pain of another person as  physical pain to ourselves; your fear = my fear ???? amygdala activated to same  degree if you see someone else in fear

o Chameleon effect: people spontaneously mimic the actions of other people ???? less effective if you do not like the other person

o Fundamental attribution error: breaks down “mind-melding” ???? blame others’  failures/mistakes on them while you blame external attributions for your own  failures/mistakes

Groups 

• “Distributed know-how”: everyone has their own area of expertise ???? one person does  not have to know everything (groups = cooperation expertise)

• “Ratchet” of culture: subsequent generations can build on past expertise, if we want to  learn something we just pick up where last generations left off

• Norms of fairness: ultimatum game ???? vast majority of offers are 50/50, people are  unlikely to accept offer if its anything less like 80/20

o Norms of reciprocity: we should benefit those who benefit us ???? door in face  technique when you ask a huge favor 1st and follow up with a smaller but still big  favor, people are likely to accept 2nd favor because it doesn’t seem as big as the  1st vs. if you just asked the 2nd without the 1st, people would reject

• Culture of honor: culture of Southern United States ???? people avoid offending each  other and get more offended when someone else offends them

• Intragroup competition: difference in opinion among the same group • Group size for tracking social relationships: bigger the group, the more relationships to  keep track of and the more your neocortex grows, big number we usually have is 150 • Cheater detection:

o What it is: mechanism to see who is trustworthy, hard to rely on general  knowledge

▪ Ex.) waste and selection task ???? 4 cards with E, D, 4, 7, if card has vowel  on 1 side, even number is on the other side ???? correct cards to choose  

are E and 7 (but most people choose E and 4)

o “Specialized mechanism”: social rules are easier to apply because they make  sense to people ???? beyond general logistical abilities

▪ Ex.) must be at least 21 to drink alcohol ???? 4 cards with beer, coke, 25, 16  ???? correct cards to choose are beer and 16

• Conformity:  

o Asch experiment: go along with crowd ???? set of 3 different length lines and  choose which one matches exhibit 1, everyone says the wrong answer matches

the first line, 70% go along with group’s answer/uncomfortable going against the  group

o Milgram experiment: obedient to authority ???? learner and teacher and guy in  lab coat, learner gets shocked by teacher every time he is wrong as lab coat guy  tells teachers to go on, 61-66% administer strongest “fatal” shock

o Stanford prison experiment: conform to expected roles ???? roles of guard and  prisoners assigned to students randomly ???? guards took roles very seriously and  treated prisoners very cruelly even though it was an experiment, lost sense of  perspectives

• Diffusion of responsibility: when no one takes action/responsibility o Kitty Genovese case: woman stabbed to death, everyone heard her screams but  no one called the police because they assumed someone else would

• How to get rid of diffusion of responsibility: create a sense of personal responsibility o Ex.) Leaving your stuff on the beach ???? if you leave your stuff and someone else  comes to take it, other people won’t say anything; if you leave your stuff and ask  someone else to watch it, watcher will feel responsible and will tell taker “no” • “Banality of evil”: evil can exist in everyone’s mind ???? way to change evil is to take  action/responsibility in situations