BioPsych Quiz 4

Automatic Empathy

A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person's expressive behavior and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.

Mimicry

A subtle, automatic form of imitation is called mimicry, and when people mutually mimic one another they can reach a state of synchrony. Have you ever noticed when two people in conversation take on similar gestures, body positions, even tone of voice? They "synchronize" their behaviors by way of (largely) unconscious imitation.

Theory of Mind Tools:

Agents, Goals, and Intentionality

Which of the following statements has the lowest level of agreement among scholars in their respective fields?

Agree that the effects of digital games on aggression are a problem for society. Clinicians who work with youth who agree that violent video games cause youth violence.

Basic Human Emotions from the text:

Desire, "Liking" pleasure and enjoyment, Fear: Freezing and Fleeing, Rage: anger and attack Love: care and attachment Grief: loneliness and panic Plasticity: experiences can alter the brain

Which of the following are examples of relational aggression.

Examples of relational aggression include gossiping, spreading rumors, withdrawing affection to get what you want, excluding someone from your circle of friends, and giving someone the "silent treatment."

he neural networks involved in infant attachment are different from those that are sensitive to separation.

False

Emotions can described on two dimensions, Arousal Level and Valence. Please match the following emotions with their combinations of Arousal and Valence

Fear: Aroused / Unpleasant Happy: Not Aroused / pleasant Calmness: Not Aroused / Pleasant Disgust: Not Aroused / Pleasant

Nora has decided to visit the new community recreation center for a swim. As she enters the change room she notices both of the two other people present put their shoes into a locker. Before she walks out to the pool she does the same. What concept helps explain her actions?

Informational influence

In Asch's classic study of conformity, what were research participants asked to do?

Judge the sizes of lines that were on a card held a few feet away from them.

Which historical event led directly to Milgram's research on obedience?

NAzis

When Surita sees a man walking around the shopping mall in December and notices that he is very robust, has a long white beard, and wears thin rimmed eyeglasses, she immediately assumes that he is a Santa Claus actor taking a break; she is engaging in a(n) _________ process

Not Empirical: Possibly Automatic Process??

Simulation

One tool to understand the other's thoughts or feelings is simulation—using one's own mental states as a model for others' mental states: "What would it feel like sitting across from the stern interrogator? I would feel scared . . ." An

Bettie and Verona used to be best friends, but Bettie got angry when Verona didn't come to her birthday party. Since then, Bettie has been spreading rumors about Verona. Bettie is engaging in ________ aggression.

Relational Aggression. Relational aggression or alternative aggression[1] is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status

Attempting to make inferences about others thoughts by using the strategy of imagining what our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors would be in a similar situation is known as ________________.

Simulation

Young Lilah is taken to a family dinner and she meets an uncle who she has never met before. As he reaches to her for a hug, Lilah looks to her mother with an uncertain look on her face. As she sees her mother nodding and smiling, Lilah looks back to the uncle and gives him a warm hug. Lilah has used ________ to determine how to act in this situation.

Social Referencing

Social Interactions that rely on Theory of Mind

Teaching another person new actions or rules by taking into account what the learner knows or doesn't know and how one might best make him understand. • Learning the words of a language by monitoring what other people attend to and are trying to do when they use certain words. • Figuring out our social standing by trying to guess what others think and feel about us. • Sharing experiences by telling a friend how much we liked a movie or by showing her something beautiful. • Collaborating on a task by signaling to one another that we share a goal and understand and trust the other's intention to pursue this joint goal.

Mental Process for Theory of Mind

The first thing to note is that "theory of mind" is not a single thing. What underlies people's capacity to recognize and understand mental states is a whole host of components—a toolbox, as it were, for many different but related tasks in the social world (Malle, 2008).

Recognizing Goals

The process of recognizing goals builds on this agent category, because agents are characteristically directed toward goal objects, which means they seek out, track, and often physically contact said objects.

Intentionality

Through learning to recognize the many ways by which agents pursue goals, humans learn to pick out behaviors that are intentional. The concept of intentionality is more sophisticated than the goal concept. For one thing, human perceivers recognize that some behaviors can be unintentional even if they were goal-directed—such as when you unintentionally make a fool of yourself even though you had the earnest goal of impressing your date. To act intentionally you need, aside from a goal, the right kinds of beliefs about how to achieve the Figure 1. Some of the major tools of theory of mind, with the bottom showing simple, automatic, early developing, and evolutionarily old processes, and the top showing complex, more deliberate, late developing, and evolutionarily recent processes. Theory of Mind 197 goal. Moreover, the adult concept of intentionality requires that an agent have the skill to perform the intentional action in question: If I am flipping a coin, trying to make it land on heads, and if I get it to land on heads on my first try, you would not judge my action of making it land on heads as intentional—you would say it was luck (Malle & Knobe, 1997).

Facial Interpretation

Training the ability to read microexpressions of emotion improves emotional competence on the job. Motivation & Emotion. ... Spontaneous facial expressions of emotion of congenitally and non-congenitally blind individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Slight stimulation of the fear-related areas in the brain causes animals to freeze, whereas intense stimulation causes them to flee.

True

According to the Charlie Rose episode on Aggression and Violence there are four brain regions that are highly involved in aggression and violence.

[WATCH VIDEO GOT HALF WRONG] Hypothalamus -> aggression and sexuality Amygdala -> reinforcement, recruited in addiction and certain kinds of aggression Ventral Striatum -> Executive functions, decision making, character formation - damage or defects here increases aggression Prefrontal Cortex -> Executive functions, decision making, character formation - damage or defects here increases aggression

Which of the the following are true with regard to the relationship between violent media, aggression and/or violence.

[WRONG] Research has not been able to demonstrate a conclusive relationship between violent media and actual violence.

According to one model, stress is the result of systemic activation of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the ________. The result of these series of activations is the release of a hormone called ________.

adrenal gland; coritsol from the HPA Axis

Agents

category allows humans to identify those moving objects in the world that can act on their own. Features that even very young children take to be indicators of being an agent include being self-propelled, having eyes, and reacting systematically to the interaction partner's behavior, such as following gaze or imitating (Johnson, 2000; Premack, 1990).

When you drink spoiled milk or put a rancid piece of cheese in your mouth, you may spit it out before you have any cognitive awareness of why you are feeling disgusted. From an evolutionary perspective, this demonstrates which concept?

emotions help us act with minimally conscious awareness OR emotions are linked to our survival in all circumstances

Psychophysiology is the study of:

interrelationships between the physiological and psychological aspects of behavior.

Social Categorization

is the act of mentally classifying someone as belonging in a group.

Wesley is at a bar and has had far too much to drink. He now focuses his attention on a man sitting across the bar, and for no particular reason decides he doesn't like the man. Wesley pays attention only to the fact that the man is smaller than he, and neglects the fact that the man is sitting with 3 larger buddies. If Wesley provokes a fight, it may be in part due to alcohol _______.

myopia

Social Referencing

social referencing (Klinnert, Campos, & Sorce, 1983); that is, the process whereby infants seek out information from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act.