SOCIAL PSYCH MIDTERM LECTURE NOTES
What's an example of how emotions are kind of like fixed action patterns?
(anger=stimulus response routine resulting from someone/something upsetting you) -much more abstract but still seems to be designed by natural selection
Explain choice blindness
(aspect of confabulation) when people choose one card over another but then are tricked into thinking they chose the wrong card they STILL come up with an explanation for why they chose it even though they did not
What is the major histocompatibility complex and why does it relate to a mechanistic level of analysis?
(seen in non-humans and possibly humans): it is a transporter designed to bring the distinct proteins (distinct to the species and also ones that are distinct to you in particular) from the middle of your cell out to the surface and present them to your immune system to determine what it is -this determination goes better if the cells are diverse -Relevance to the incest example through a mechanistic lens: if you share almost all the same pieces in your major histocompatibility complex then you could end up with kids with duplicate pieces (less of a fine grained fingerprint and weakened immune system) which is why we don't like incest and explains this behavior through a mechanistic lens (neural mechanism)
What does marshmallow/cookie tests tell us about willpower and when its easier to exert it?
we successfully exert willpower when we keep the reward out of our minds entirely (those with no cookies in front of them were the most patient because they thought about them the least)
What was Descartes vs Spinoza's belief about effortful disbelief/belief
-Descartes believed: First: you comprehend Second: you decide to believe it or not believe (both using control) -VS Spinoza believed: First=you comprehend and automatically believe it Second=you will either not belief which takes effort/control otherwise you will believe in every case (Spinoza proved hypothesis)
What does "correlation doesn't imply causation" mean?
(this isn't necessarily accurate 100% of time) BUT cant imply causation because correlation can't necessarily tell u which causal model out of these 3 models: (A →B) (A ←B) (X→A&B) and we can't legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association
Consequences of Compliance experiment/cognitive dissonance
-(festinger & carlsmith) -gives participants very boring task to put pegs into holes (then asking people to do recruitment for others to join the task/study-one group didnt get money for this / one got 1$ / one got 20$) - $1 people were only ones who said they enjoyed the survey (reasoned that money incentive was too small but they still did recruitment for some reason aka bc it was fun
When was social psychology founded? why?
-70-80 years ago (took off after 1940s) -People were trying to understand worldly events (what was going on inside the minds of people contributing to violent worldly events but also conformity to white picket fence life in 50s/collective rebelling in 60s etc)
What is willpower?
-A competition between what is happening Now vs. Later -Now (in terms of killer karaoke example)=stimulus in front of her is the snakes and is driving the immediate/habitual response to scream and try to get out -Later: if she can suppress those responses then she will win and get money in the future (endogenous representation)
How can we analyze incest aversion through an adaptive lens?
-Adaptation is about why various mutations were useful/why did they evolve? What were the selective pressures favoring them? -This process contributes to Incest Aversion idea bc: really dangerous/negative mutations can form overtime due to interbreeding so we avoid it
What are examples of signaling commitment?
-Culture of honor ex: if the person whose cattle you wanted to steal didn't want to fight you back for stealing then you would steal but if you knew they would want to hunt you down and kill you then you wouldn't do it (mutually assured destruction fear) -Ex: us having nuclear power to launch back at Russia if they launch is not actually productive because we'll already be screwed but its important because it signals irrationality to someone -Ex: falling in love; signaling your irrational commitment to be their life partner (if someone feels that then they will do the same for you and the bond is formed)
How do we experience confabulation with regard to automatic behavior?
-Dan Wegner argued that things we think we choose free willingly are actually products of automaticity -he had brain surgery and got alien hand syndrome (when he makes a salad he is aware of being on autopilot and understanding that he is not doing it based on will BUT everyone uses confabulation to falsely believe we are using will to complete these tasks)
Descriptive vs inferential statistics and an example
-Descriptive statistic: summarizing all data findings -Inferential statistics: broader inference from data (Ex: testing whether men or women are taller at harvard: descriptive would just be stating the numbers found in the data VS inferential would be making blanket statement that in general-based on data -we know that men are taller at harvard and we could figure this out by asking "how often does chance produce a difference of 6' between groups?" and looking at the data of sampling heights based on repeating random divisions of people in the lecture hall shows that it is very unlikely to have happened by chance (so it must reflect a true causal relationship in the world and is statistically significant)
Self deception example in anosognosia patients and coin flip
-EX 1 anosognosia: stroke and can't use part of their body but they INSIST that they can use it but they choose not to; deceiving oneself internally/deeply believes that they can still use the part of their body -EX 2: experiment on calculus OR taste test brownies (decide by flipping a coin: most people won't flip the coin and give themselves brownies AND people who flip almost always get brownies which is a result of them finding ways to fit their ideal mental model but still playing the game (ex: playing '2 out of 3') but these people believe they're being fair and moral even though they manipulated the situation for themselves
Experimental examples of availability heuristic?
-EX: for how many words is K the first vs the 3rd letter in a word? (People will say more for 1st letter because they are able to come up with these words easier) -EX: participants asked describe a certain # of times when they felt assertive: if they're asked to give 2 examples they will believe they're pretty assertive but if they're asked for 12 then they'll start running out of answers (but still give more than 2) and think they must be less assertive (people are less confident in their responses if they're asked to give more reasons/responses)
Confirmation Bias examples
-Ex: lisa simpson says that the rock keeps bears away and there are no bears in sight so homer believes that the rock works because given what he was told the reality is consistent with the data (not thinking about the fact that bears don't live there though)
What are Implementation Intentions and examples of using it? When is it effective?
-Ex: one group of participants in the study signed up because they want to exercise more (they only started exercising a bit more) VS the second group of participants were given lots of literature to show them the benefits of exercise (they did slightly more exercising) VS the 3rd group had implementation intention in which they formulated a definite plan to carry out the exercise at certain time and place (building retrievable response routine/using controlled cognition) and these people succeeded the MOST -It works when self-control is difficult (helps schizophrenics) and when plans are very specific
Explain how Action vs. Omission shows our use of controlled processing for "if not X→then Y)
-Ex: someone has a terminal illness and either they can choose to live without any medical intervention for 2 months then die by lethal injection of morphine and requesting to be killed (KILLING/Action) VS on the other hand: they are hooked up to machines for those 2 months and ask for doctor to help them die by unplugging the machine and letting nature take its course (ALLOWING THEM TO DIE/Omission) -in a sense these are the same situations but the doctor in the first scenario is almost always not allowed to help the patient die with morphine but if the patient requests to be unhooked then they must abide by their wish (the law views 'killing' vs 'allowing them to die' as incredibly dif) -thought about in terms of X and Y scenario: killing them is like X → Y, we have automatic ability to process this whereas we have to use controlled cognition to understand that when we allow someone to die we are still playing the same role as if we were killing them like the first option (the more you engage cognitive control you realize how similar action and omission are)
What are examples of how expressions are connected to behavior modification?
-Ex:people bowling will smile more when they have a partner/people they're playing with vs alone even if they are doing badly -A subordinate chimp will grimace/smile at a more powerful figure the same way that we use a smile as a "social lubricant" -infants will cry and activate the parent's amygdala and mid cingulate
How can we view our aversion to incest through an ontogenetic lens (specifically looking at fiery's study and liebermann's)
-Fiery found: having a sibling makes you believe incest is more morally wrong -Deb Liebermann conducted studies on Israeli kibbutz kids (raised in communes/the kids are brought up from different families but are raised as siblings)...there is no moral issue with them marrying but they tend to be disgusted by the concept because of growing up together as 'siblings' -Liebermann hypothesized that theres a part of our minds trying to estimate how closely related you are to the people around you -(she determined for a younger sibling: the more years you spend being reared by the same parents/household then the more averse you are to incest with them) -(Older siblings are also averse to incest because of Maternal Perinatal Association: AKA they understand the biological connection to a younger sib more because they see their mom get preg and give birth to them)
What did Niko Tinbergen believe/study/uncover
-He was an Ethology (studying animal behavior) founder -began by studying stickleback fish/shorebirds and at the time animal behavior was studied by isolating subject in a lab and only using one stimulus you're interested in -Tinbergen understood that if you strip away a natural context its difficult to study the true animal behavior/ he believed we have to put them in the context they evolved in because their behavior isn't only about neurons its about history/adaptation
What were Locke and Kant's respective beliefs about how much of our minds is innate and how much is learned from the outside world?
-Locke=thought we were a blank slate -Kant=thought there was no way we didnt have innate concepts (correct and EX: food is on other side of treadmill and if the chick walks forward; the treadmill moves backward 3 spots (kant would argue that the chick will still always walk toward the food and not be able to learn to walk backwards whereas locke would say the opposite and kant was right) -THE CHICK STUDY COULD ALSO BE SEEN AS: stimulus→response mechanism (food=stimulus) then mental process led to a motor response (chick moving toward food)
What is the corpus callosum and what did the procedure on it tell us about our brains?
-Michael Gazzaniga (1960s) neuroscience: studied people who had corpus callosotomy surgery due to their epilepsy caused by feedback loop of positive neural signals(seizure cause) -surgery in corpus callosum: which connects right hemisphere of brain to left hemisphere -to stop feedback loops they cut corpus callosum and split hemispheres -(left side of brain=language & right side=art) -found that our brain hemispheres have specific functions, seeing spoon in right side of vision allows us to say its a spoon because left side=language but if we see it in the left side of vision then we can't say what it is)
Brain regions active when we choose immediate vs future reward
-People choosing for present=ventral striatum active (reinforcement learning/builds up habitual response) -VS People choosing for future=dorsolateral prefrontal cortex active (same region carefully thinking about negation/omission) -The hyperbolic curve is actually a competition of both sides (automatic and controlled) and willpower is present in both choices
What is approach VS avoidance behavior (and relation to educational success)?
-Performance goals (entity/fixed): those that want to show others how smart they are: they will approach/lean in when they are succeeding and avoid/withdraw if they are initially failing -Learning goals (incremental/malleable): those that want to grow and increase one's own competence will approach regardless of success/failure -Similar EX: those praised for effort did way better in study because they kept trying and people praised for being smart stopped trying and did worse after
What are 2 other study examples of southerners' tendency toward violence/aggression/culture of honor? How do they relate to ontogeny?
-Study #1: tricking southerners and northerners in this study by applying to jobs across the US with a cover letter detailing the applicants argument-based murder of someone and then sending a different letter detailing the applicants felony-based murder -results: analyzed text from southerners vs northerners and south was much warmer and understanding of argument-based murder/both murders -Study #2: U Mich students were tested on a linebacker guy walking down the hall in their direction and bumping into them and saying "a**hole" -results: northerners were more amused than angered and opposite for southerners who did not want to make room in the hall for the linebacker to pass by after they'd been insulted and more violently shook experimenters hand at the other end of the hall and biologically the southerners had higher hormone increase from the insult -This idea relates to ontogeny because: childrearing/statistically kids exposed to violence early on might engage with the same violence later in life (another study: getting bullied on playground, southern boy is more likely to stand up for himself)
Explain how the models we build can change our preferences through the model of attraction/looking example
-Where you look becomes what you like EX: whichever person the participant was assigned to look at more: they would report finding them more attractive AND if the study is set up so you don't have to move your eyes to look at their faces then it is half and half in terms of attractiveness reported -get people to perform a behavior and make them think it was created by themselves; the result is liking that thing more/behaving in that way more (cognitive dissonance)
What was the experiment conducted to test use of pheromones in humans as a mechanism to avoid incest/determine attraction?
-animals use detection of pheromones using smells to determine attraction and in 1990s a biologist conducted an experiment to test this in humans -recruited undergrad men to wear same shirt for 3 days and not shower THEN the shirts were put in bags for undergrad women to smell and they had to determine their attraction to each one -she found that women were usually more attracted to more distinct MHC profiles (pheromones) -it is still debated whether this actually impacts who we date/mate with but women switches to an attraction to similar MHC profiles during pregnancy (bonding with one's own child, relying on MHC)
How can we use the levels of analysis to explain the "Culture of Honor" idea?
-relates to phylogeny through the lens of cultural mutation (its a specific mutation because other people that immigrated to america didn't necessarily leave a culture of violence) -relates to adaptation through: there being scarce resources that are crucial to survival/ resource protection being really difficult with no state (therefore self-help justice used)/ importance of personal reputation (maintaining tough/powerful image of oneself) -relates to mechanistic because the insults to honor result in argument-based violence in the South which contributes to higher homicide rates
Give an example of the perverse effects of praise (guilt vs shame transgression)
-ask kid: if the train goes too fast then push this button so please watch the train the entire time i'm gone (but kids will want to play with other toys in the room and cheat) -when the kid loses attention: train will fall off the track and EITHER 1) Guilt: they tell the kid that they should feel guilty because they let their own self down and knew they had to watch (internal standards) OR 2) Shame: telling them they should feel bad because they got caught (external standards) -RESULT: the kids with the guilt transgression spend more time watching train than those who received shame transgression (back to learning goals vs performance goals idea)
Explain False Confession
-aspect of confabulation -ex: grad student explains to participants that they need to write a dissertation and if the participant hits the 'alt' key on the computer they will lose all their data. Halfway through: participant is tricked into believing they hit alt key because screen starts saying thats what happened -FIRST many signed confessions that they hit alt key (and after a witness told them they did it then they were even more confident in the false confession)
Explain why automaticity supports control
-controlled cognition is flexible ability to put info together but this info is made up of things we learn through automatic processes (slow/incremental learned things) THEREFORE automaticity supports control (ex: the rat in the maze has automatic goal to get to the cheese and then uses control to go through process of getting to the goal)
What is Exogenous vs Endogenous behavior?
-exogenous (bottom-up) =behavior guided by stimulus in front of him -endogenous (top-down) =behavior guided by internal mental representation -exogenous and endogenous=at heart of controlled cognition
What's an example of rhesus macaques showing us that fear is innate?
-experimenters show a mom showing a fear response to an infant (either a reaction to a snake or flowers) and then the infant has to interact with a snake or flower while trying to get food -When they see the moms fear they will be much more afraid to reach for the food if the mom feared the snake and NOT if the mom feared the flowers which shows that the infant is innately afraid of snake
What are examples of exaptation?
-feathers started in dinosaurs as a method of thermoregulation (adaptation) but then they got big enough for certain dinosaurs to fly (exaptation) -in humans: pain; feeling pain for others in an empathetic way is born from neural systems that help us feel our own pain (experiment in a scanner while playing a game tossing a ball between 3 people; when the other 2 people leave you out and start passing among themselves then you will feel pain (exclusion caused the mid cingulate to be activated))
Cognitive dissonance displayed through kid being scolded for playing with a toy
-forbid child from playing with an attractive toy (if the child experiences a severe threat from parents to not do it: they will think they did not play with the toy because of the treat and the toy still looks fun BUT if they were mildly threatened they would rationalize they didn't play with it because the toy sucks anyway)
What is William James' idea of emotion and confabulation?
-he argues that we feel sad because we cry / angry because we strike / and scared because we tremble (AKA he is saying that if you don't have all the bodily responses for an emotion then there is no emotion and emotion=our interpretation of our model of what is going on inside us) -James/Lange theory: you see the bear→you get the bodily responses for this→you interpret it as fear which is OPPOSITE of Central-theory (which puts fear first and bodily response second)
How do experiments go wrong through design artifacts/interpretation and give example
-if experiment is designed poorly then there could be incorrect conclusions drawn -there can be logical fallacies to the way an experimenter links data/interprets -ex of this issue: people could choose between a new dictionary with less words in it or a used dictionary with double the words (people would pay a lot more for used but bigger dictionary if they saw both in person and people would pay a lot more for new dictionary if they only saw one) WHICH shows that an incredibly small dif in experimental design can create completely opposite results
Where/what environment is the culture of honor most prevalent in the south?
-in herding/farming communities and small communities (the adaptations above matter more in these communities and homicide rates are higher in small communities and hills and dry plains in South as opposed to moist plains (because hills/dry plains are where herders are)
Why don't siblings have sex? (considering people are attracted to others who are near/similar)
-it's not appealing -we were brought up told not to do that -part of human nature/would lead to genetic disorders so it's not smart for survival
What is an example of how we use controlled cognition to complete something despite the exogenous factors?
-killer karaoke: singing karaoke while lowered into an ice bath full of snakes which induces competition between innate mechanisms and learned mechanisms -innate=wants to scream -VS controlled cognition=rejecting fear and trying to sing anyway)
Linda example of Representative Heuristic
-learned association to women=feminism so therefore a 'feminist bank teller' seems like a better fit for linda
What did Tinbergen study when looking at fixed action patterns?
-looked at how graylog goose will innately roll anything that looks like an egg back into the nest (known as a 'fixed' stimulus response) -even when tinbergen yanked an object that resembles an egg away from goose at the last second the goose would STILL go through the motions of trying to roll the non-existent egg back into the nest
What are the specific features of the "Culture of Honor" idea and cultures that embody it?
-need to maintain honor and defend oneself and fam -it is a well-defined cultural type: very diverse places and people share the culture of honor notion -Features of these cultures of honor: people live in clans / violations of honor result in violence / collective punishment idea / presence of "blood feuds"/eye for an eye
Prefrontal Cortex loops
-neurons in this cortex are arranged in "loops" of info that are useful for working memory because the loop can activate as someone is interpreting a stimulus
What do proximate vs ultimate levels of analysis entail?
-proximate=within someone's lifetime (mechanistic/ontogenetic) -ultimate=about evolutionary history (phylogenetic/adaptive)
Facilitated Communication autism example of confabulation
-severely autistic kids can barely communicate and therapist helps them choose the keys they want to type to communicate with their parents BUT the therapist thinks that it's the kid who is guiding the typing but it really is the therapist guiding
Explain the study of Violence in the American South and what it revealed
-study done by Richard Nisbett and Dave Cohen (1990s) -Q: Why is there more violence in the American South? -FIRST they looked at retreat laws/corporal punishment/hawkish votes/more violence in warmer places/cultural legacy of slavery/poverty BUT their favorite explanation: The "Culture of Honor": to maintain honor as a male is to defend oneself/close fam and friends through the threat of extreme violence (born in Scotch-Irish w/ violent sheep herding issues and THEN came to america and influenced people
How does the A-not-B Task show our use of working memory?
-testing infants; m&ms in one bucket and nothing in the other then asking the infant what they want (tests their working memory) -they cant see this play out again and again to guide their choice so they use working memory (our ability to hold attention on something and remember it) -meditating uses working memory in focusing on breathing/holding onto that one thought
Causal inference
-the process where causes are inferred from data
'Push polling'
-the simple comprehension of a question is enough to convince someone that it is true (used as political strategy) -EX: George Bush was about to lose the vote in south carolina and mysterious polls were conducted asking "would u be more/less likely to vote for John McCain if u knew he fathered an illegitimate black child" and by merely asking this question their attitudes will be changed to think that his opponent is a less viable candidate
Why is amygdala important? what happens when you remove it?
-very important role in processing fear (the process goes: prefrontal cortex → amygdala → hypothalamus → periaqueductal gray → automatic response -Rat experiments showed that removing amygdala removes fear (rat fears robot near its food but not when it doesn't have amygdala)
What is Reversal Learning/how is it used to reverse A-not-B task
-you put m&m in the same bucket every time and the kid can choose it over and over and learn habitual response -then there's a competition between the habitual response and the working memory response (7-9 month old will reach for the m&ms out of habitual response even if you use reversal learning VS a 12 month old its more split evenly between responses) -this shows shift in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
What did Schachter and Singer's experiment show us about appraisal?
-you see the bear → then you feel the bodily response but SIMULTANEOUSLY try to interpret what is going on (appraisal) → then you feel the emotion (fear) -argued that appraisal is part of the process of feeling emotions and that we interpret our emotions
When we face challenges with willpower what do we do?
1. Distract ourselves (michel) 2. (use) Planning in order to reconstruct our environment to resist temptation / our weaknesses / restrict behavior (EX: "tie yourself to the mast" the greek mythology story of Ulysses tying himself to the mast of his ship to remove temptation for the sirens, turning off wifi to be able to get work done) 3. (Implementation intentions) We can change the structure of the focus on "today"
How do experiments go wrong?
1. False positives/negatives 2. Fraud 3. Experimenter bias 4. Participant Bias 5. WEIRD people (white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) 6. Design Artifacts/Interpretation
What are the functional Properties of each emotion/adaptive purposes?
1. Fear=telling us to withdraw 2. surprise=orients us to situation (we have wide eyes and open mouth to be alert and have air in lungs) 3. disgust=telling us to reject something bad for us (protection from pathogens is closing mouth and nostrils) 4. anger=telling us there's a need to aggress 5. happiness=repeat this 6. sadness=don't repeat this -BUT many adaptive emotions don't have facial expressions correlated
How do we combat issues of research ethics?
1. Institutional review board 2. Informed consent 3. Debriefing (telling participants at end of experiment what you're doing)
What are the determinants of statistical significance
1. Magnitude of effect 2. Variability 3. Sample size -ALSO Error bars can help depict something being statistically significant if the top of the lower error bar is still lower than the bottom of the higher error bar
What were Niko Tinbergen's 4 Levels of Analysis (IMPORTANT)
1. Mechanistic: "causation" /looking at mechanistic explanations of why certain aspects of an animal's physiology function and how those aspects of function contribute to our behavior (EX: looking at hormones/neurotransmitters that contribute to our behavior) -Stimulus —-> then traveling to Brain —-> then inducing a Response/behavior 2. Ontogenetic: looking at how behavior develops over a lifetime/develops) 3. Phylogenetic: looking at how a behavior has evolved 4. Adaptive: looking at how a behavior contributes to an animal's lifetime reproductive fitness / the "survival value" of a behavior
Who were the 3 major ethology founders that helped us understand how to study behavior?
1. Niko Tinbergen (studied fish/shorebirds) 2. Karl von Frisch (studied bees) 3. Konrad Lorenz (studied geese)
Why is self understanding fundamental to social psych?
1. Our self-concept is tied to others' perception of oneself 2. We are born as strangers to ourselves (learning to understand ourselves)
Solutions to errors of file drawer effect and fraud
1. Replication (other scientists building on data) 2. Preregistration (to solve the file drawer effect)
What are the brain regions that play important roles in emotion?
1. amygdala (fear) 2. ventral striatum (reward) 3. insula (disgust) 4. mid-cingulate (pain) OVERALL emotional experiences are organized and isolated in specific parts of brain
What are the overall hypotheses about our flexible brains' interactions and how we became flexible
1. in the past, interaction required us to be more flexible thinkers 2. now interaction allows us to be more flexible thinkers (we are more unique)
What are some example studies showing that emotions are innate?
1. innate fear of spiders in infants: will look longer at images that resemble spiders meaning they might innately fear it 2. Paul Ekman/Papua New Guinea (1970s) wanted to find cultural variation in emotional expressions and looked at familiar facial expressions in US and Papua New Guinea (people in the US and people in Papua New Guinea had the same understanding of facial expressions) 3. Congenitally blind study of blind participants in paralympics: when people won gold or bronze (genuine innate duchenne smile) silver winners (a little less smiley non duchenne) 4. Duchenne smile: Duchenne (one of first to study how nerves/neurons in the body convey info through electrical impulses) could make people smile a fake smile stimulating muscles around the mouth BUT also able to produce a real smile if he also stimulated eye muscles (studied all the muscles in the face till he got a practically perfect real smile) 5. Facial Action Coding System: study looking at peoples yearbook photos to see who had genuine duchenne vs non duchenne smile (people who had genuine smile had more happiness later in life at 45 years old)
3 examples of what participant bias could look like
1. placebo effect 2. evaluation apprehension 3. task demand (trying to be a good subject or trying to be a spiteful subject to trick experimenters or an opinionated subject)
How do we combat participant bias?
1.'Natural' experiments: Candid experimentation 2. Covert experiment: Manipulate outside awareness/camouflage experimenters motivations with distractors 3. Implicit measures (experiments that are hard to fake because they're more automatic/have fast reaction time (like the test where u say the color of the word not read the word and FMRI tests)
Our "Flexible Brain processes" are split into two parts; what are they?
1.Automatic/unconscious/rapid/probabilistic/inflexible/efficient 2.Controlled/conscious/slow/serial/rule-based/flexible/inefficient
What do experiments allow/what are they constituted as
an intervention because it allows you to diagnose a causal relationship in a way that is very challenging to do by observation alone
Experiment example that helped us identify (genetic) flexibility but not behavioral/human flexibility
Ex: oldfield mouse has complex burrows with escape routes vs deer mouse has simple burrows (the problem is they are finding genetic ways to explain this but not the other contributors to this behavior which is where social psych must come in when studying humans)
What makes us different from other species
Flexibility is what makes us different from other species (we can flexibly create and solve problems) and this flexibility comes from our brains not our bodies
What is an example of why we must consider adaptation when trying to understand certain mechanisms?
In 1940s neuroscientists looked at frogs retinal ganglia (cells in back of frog eye/transmits info to frog brain) -One type of cell fires if something small moves quickly in front of their vision and a different type of cell fires if something larger moves slower in front of them -A student discovered that the two cell firings were a product of frogs only caring about looking for flies as food (quick and small) and also not get eaten by something bigger like a stork (slow and big) and the neuron firings (mechanisms) were a PRODUCT of the frogs adaptive motivations
How do we explain behavior when analyzing experimentally?
In experiments we look at a causal relationship ("A" → "B") and if we can understand causal relationships one by one then we can understand much broader ideas better
An example of the experimenter bias error
half of STUDENT study subjects told rat breed 1 was smarter and other half told rat breed 2 was smarter and when the STUDENTS collected data it was biased toward the hypothesis (Experimenter bias)
What are the 3 main characteristics of emotions?
They are: 1)communicative 2)innate 3)adaptive
How does Controlled Cognition go wrong
heuristics (availability/representativeness/confirmation bias)
Priority Principle
causation is perceived when one event follows another quickly / all causes must precede their effects
What is confabulation?
coming up with an explanation for one's behavior that is disconnected from the true reasons for behaving that way (but not realizing) -EX: if right side of brain is asked to explain choosing the shovel (because it related to the snowy house) it instead cannot articulate this and comes up with a chicken related explanation about farmwork for the shovel because that's what it knows
What is the File Drawer Effect/fraud and examples?
many scientists study results are never published (left in file drawer) especially negative ones so most scientific outputs are not accessible to everyone because they were never published so it misleads the scientific facts -(Ex 1 of file drawer effect: Daryl Bem wrote a paper about people being able to see the future and he published 9 studies that showed statistically significant evidence for this idea BUT he actually had done a ton of experiments that ended up being 'file drawer' experiments because they did not prove this idea) -(Ex 2: experiment conducted to test how disordered contexts (like a dirtier waiting room) can promote stereotyping and discrimination (a white participant sitting further from a black confederate when the room is dirtier) BUT the data was entirely faked/fraud because there is no policing mechanism)
What is cultural ratcheting and when has it increased?
our "uniqueness" has been considered about the same since 200,000BC till enlightenment but the HUGE accelerating change since enlightenment to the present and its continuance is considered cultural ratcheting
What is emotional misattribution?
people making a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused (confabulation) -EX 1: misattributing feeling of fear for love/romantic feelings (like survey after crossing high up bridge and adrenaline from fear being mistaken as attraction) -EX 2: people told they are receiving vitamin to help their vision when really it's epinephrine (adrenaline) BUT some people are told that it's really epinephrine and some people are not told that it's epinephrine THEN they expose both of these two groups to either a good reaction (guy with hula hoop having a great time) vs bad reaction (super angry guy thats freaking out about what's been done to him) -EX 3: those who knew they'd been injected w suproxin stole answer key bc their nervousness was explained by drug vs those who weren't told assumed their nervous energy was telling them not to cheat
Affective forecasting
predicting one's future emotion (EX: people will choose to date people in the study that they predict they will like/be happy with regardless of the statistical data from previous people about the person)
Why is the Stroop Effect hard for us?
we are asked to consciously stray away from our habit (to read the word not its color) and instead have to keep the idea of focusing on the ink color in the spotlight in our brains
What does the romeo and juliet romance tell us about our minds
romeo and juliet display internal mental representations (loving each other/seeing a future with each other) and guide their behavior based on this representation (the end is fixed and the path to get there can be changed flexibly)
Example of practicing bad research ethics
syphilis epidemic era and US department of defense worked with researchers to study the Tuskegee population: impoverished and wouldn't get treatment so they could continue to monitor their illness BUT while they were studying they didn't tell the people they had syphilis (kept spreading) and didn't tell them about treatments/cure
What is Temporal Discounting/hyperbolic discounting
tendency to value immediate though smaller rewards more than long-term larger rewards (we are meant to discount the future exponentially but we actually discount the future hyperbolically: future is less important to us even tho it should be most important) -EXs: We choose $10 today vs $11 next week / we set alarm at night but snooze it in the morning / we buy a gym membership but never go / we want to watch shitty rom com now but educational movie in a week / we want people magazine now but a foreign affairs subscription
What is the 'Hot Hand' issue
we determine that steph curry is a great basketball player because he's in the groove / he has a 'hot hand' and if he messes up then it's just a bad day and has nothing to do with his skill set -hot hand concept is born from you trying to build a model from a pattern you're picking up on (finding stability in patterns when there are none) -shows confirmation bias
How can we confidently determine the causes of complicated things (EX: whether alzheimer's patients got better because of a trial drug or other factors) using experimental methods?
the alzheimer's study included: an intervention on a variable / randomization of all other variables / and the results were statistically significant which determines that it was very unlikely random that the drug worked (these features show there's a high probability the drug worked)
What is cognitive load?
the amount of information that working memory can hold at one time and giving people cognitive load in experiments makes them choose stimulus driven response/automatic because they don't have much room left for controlled processing
Why is WEIRD an experimental issue?
the demographic of WEIRD people in experiments conducted can be too high and not reflect global results (culture can be deep influence on data like how mueller lyer illusion is not a universal illusion)
What is the social brain hypothesis and an example in rhesus macaques?
the evolution of our brains may largely be driven by the distinctive demands of mastering social and political life (neocortex ratio/group size) -Ex: rhesus macaques monkeys have an order for eating: alpha eldest female can eat any of the dominant male's food but the dominant males eat before all the others etc (this is because of their social dynamic constructing their reality)
Appraisal theory
the model we build determines the emotion we experience (arousal is situationally interpreted)
How can we understand incest aversion through a phylogenetic lens?
we would have to look at multiple different species and determine for EX if an anglerfish doesnt have an aversion to incest but the next evolved species (frog) did and every species after that THEN we can determine that there was a mutation created between the fish and frog that changed this for all evolved species following on that path in evolution
Why is willpower hard for us?
willpower depends on controlled cognition and we can only use our minds for one thing at a time SO we don't want to waste it on things that are "low stake" THEREFORE we are designed to DISLIKE cognitive control/ focus / our mind is fundamentally lazy
