psyc 309 final

The study of the spatial separation individuals naturally maintain in social and interpersonal situations, and how this seperation relates to various environmental, personal, social, and cultural factors.

Public Space, Social Space, Personal Space, and Intimate Space.

One's closeness/how well you know them

• (a) males
• (b) females

• (a) Venezualans
• (b) Americans
• (c) Japanese

• (a) expected in that Japanese prefered IPD to be considerably greater then the Venezualans
• (b) less of a difference in that the Venezualans showed a greater IPD then expected and Japanese showed a smaller IPD

• (a) Gender Identity
• (b) sex

(a) & (b) eye contact

• (a) tolerate
• (b) not tolerate

pt will demonstrate a lack of discomfort at close distances.

A runaway trolley is headed for 5 people, who will get killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save them is to flip a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate set of tracks where it will kill one person instead. Should you flip the switch?

Trolley threatens to kill five people. The only way to save them is to push a stranger off a bridge onto the tracks. He will die if you do this but his body will stop the trolley from reaching the others. Should you push the stranger?

Emotional response

Ppl with damage to emotional processing system (i.e. Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex) tend to take a more utilitarian approach to the judgement. (e.g. they will favor believe that killing one person to save 5 is always better and not be influenced by emotional

Amygdala

Intensity is greater with direct gaze. The higher the direct-gaze is with approach oriented emotions, the greater the intensity of those  emotions.

happiness, anger, joy

comfort with  closer distance

comfort with  further distance

Moral Judgments are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotional processing parts of the brain. i.e. we often can't explain to ourselves why something feels wrong

• (1)emphasizes social nature of moral intuition
• (2)warmer view of human nature
• (3)explains the haphazard way that most people lead their lives without destroying dignity and choice

• (a) ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC)
• (b) ‘utilitarian’
• (c)  high-conflict

shame, fear, sadness

 Intensity is greater with averted gaze. The lower the direct-gaze with avoidance-oriented emotions the greater the intensity of those emotions

with anger face, there is low ambiguity with  the threat.

low amygdala activation

high amygdala activatione

the deep, often hostile resentment that one feels toward someone who has something that they want.

taking pleasure when those who you envy are brought down.

parts of brain associated with pain become active.

parts of brain associated with pleasure become active

• (a) anterior cingulate cortex
• (b) striatum

nonliteral language that makes obvious a discrepancy between expectations and reality

• increased range and amplitude of voice frequency
• higher emphatic stress
• caricatured lengthening of syllables

• (a) right parahippocampal gyrus
• (b)  semantic dementia
• (c) social context

irony can be  detected only after the literal meaning has been processed and rejected.

cues are processed rapidly and in parallel and an ironic interpretations is considered as soon as there is sufficient evidence that it might be supported i.e. multiple cues for irony are considered in parallel

(1) children are taught to associate a smiling duck with “nice person” and a snarling shark with “mean person”. (2) children were presented with ironic and literal remarks.(3) after each remark, children were asked if speaker was like the shark or the duck and eye movement of children was recorded. (4) contrary to literal-first account, no evidence was found that children looked first at the “literal” response object. Instead children looked at the “ironic” response object supporting parallel-constraint-satisfaction model

• (1) Social-perceptual processes
• (2) Social-cognitive processes

using nonverbal cues like eyes and bodily posture as a way of “decoding” ones mental state

abstract reasoning about another’s mental state, such as goals & motives

• (a) deception
• (b)cooperation

culture/ethnicity

a french term meaning a “false step,”, and refers to a social blunder or indiscretion (behavior or speech that is indiscreet or displays a lack of good judgment)

 mentalize

• (1) did someone say something he should not have said?
• (2) who said something he should not have said?
• (3) why should he not have said it?
• (4) why did he say it? what was his intentions?
• (control) what was the basic gist of the story?

 medial frontal cortex 

an Inability to read cues to intuit what other people are thinking and Difficulty navigating basic social interactions

all have defining trait of being mind blind

The awareness that other people have beliefs and desires different from our own and that their behavior can be explained by these beliefs and desires

mentalizing

compute what another person will do on the basis of false belief. the Sally-Anne task. Anne knows where ball is but does sally? if  you can mentalize, you can separate your own knowledge from sally’s and will say sally will think the ball is in basket instead of box.

• autism → unable to understand the concept of false belief
• e.g. unable to correctly answer sally-anne test into teens

• (a)  mental states
• (b) other abilities
• (c) high levels of education
• (d) mentalization

• (a) sabotage
• (b)  deception

• (1) superior temporal sulcus for detection of the behavior of agents and analysis of the goals and outcomes of this behavior
• (2) inferior frontal regions for representations of actions and goals
• (3) Anterior cingulate cortex/ medial prefrontal regions for representations of mental states and the self

• (1) ability to distinguish between animate and inanimate
• (2) ability to share attention by following the  gaze of another agent
• (3) ability to represent goal directed action
• (4) ability to distinguish between actions of the self and others.

• (a) another agent's behavior
• (b) the representation of our own mental states
• (c) dorsal action system

the computational demands of living in large, complex, societies led to selection for larger amounts of cortex in primates. i.e. more social interaction pushes evolution to increase brain processing size

• (1) knowing when to talk and when to listen
• (2) knowing when to be honest and when not to be
• (3) knowing what bodily behaviors are ok in public and what ones aren't
• (4) knowing what questions may be awkward or inappropriate to ask
• (5) inferring people’s moods by their facial expressions and body language

people with aspergers can learn social cues consciously. these people can understand mental states such as desire and belief in others despite impairments

that normal people have spontaneous/natural ability to mentalize  however people with aspergers do not have this abilityi.e. aspergers patients do not attribute mental states naturally, but they may be able to do so in explicit tasks through compensatory learning. test indicates that aspergers patients go through different mental steps when mentalizing. aspergers patients will look at box where ball was hidden

A study asked subjects if body position is fearful or neutral while in brain scanner. Results are that neurotypicals showed much more activation in fear detecting regions of the brain then their asperger counterparts

they were recording the neurons that would fire when monkey would reach out and grab foodAccidentally discovered that neurons also responded to similar actions observed in others → mirror neuron system

a system of neurons that respond to similar actions observed in others

chameleon effect

• the nonconscious mimicry of:
• postures
• mannerisms
• facial expressions
• i.e. one’s behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that  of the other’s in ones current social environment

the mechanism responsible for the idea that the mere perception of another’s behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself

• participants were more likely to shake foot when confederate shakes foot.
• Participants were more likely to smile when their partner smiled, relative to when their partner maintained a neutral expression.
• more generally, participants were less likely to mimic, when their partner smiled, relative to when their partner maintained a neutral expression

there is a consensus among researchers that behavior matching is related to greater liking and rapport between the interactants. And it promotes "pro-socail" bahavior. i.e. Mimicry occurs unintentionally and even among strangers.

• (a) did they like the confederate? → mimic group(6.62) > no mimic group(5.91). 
• (b) did the interaction go “smoothly” → mimic group(6.76) > no mimic group(6.02)

• (a)  more helpful
• (b) generous

• (a)  the mimicker,
• (b) people not directly involved in the mimicry situation

mimic group(100%) > no mimic group (33%)

mimic group (84%) > no mimic group (48%)

mimic group (76%) > no mimic group (43%)

mimic group (.79 €) > no mimic group (.38 €)

an individual’s capacity to modify others’ states by providing or withholding resources or administering punishments. This capacity is the product of the actual resources and punishments the individual can deliver to others.

• material i.e. food, money, economic opportunity, physical harm, or job termination
• Soical i.e. knowledge, affection, friendship, decision-making opportunities, verbal abuse, or ostracism

• individual variables → personality traits, physical characteristics
• Dyadic Variables → Interest in relationship, relative commitment
• Within-Group Variables → Authority/position/role, status
• Between-Group variables → Ethnicity, gender, class, ideology, majority/minority

Reduced power, we propose, involves issues of threat, punishment, and social constraint. As a consequence, it triggers what we can call “inhibition-oriented”responses: things like negative affect, vigilance, attention to punishments, and inhibited behavior.

Elevated power, we propose, involves reward-rich environments and freedom As a consequence, it triggers what are called “approach-oriented”responses: things like positive affect, attention to rewards, and disinhibited behavior.

Four participants are put in a group situation, with one randomly chosen to be the group “leader.” While the meet, they are given a small plate of cookies to share. Does the “leader” eat more?

Unfamiliar male-female pairs interacted as either equals or in a “power”condition where one of the pair had control over the extra credit points. Does power increase the amount of disinhibited flirting?

power only increased cookie eating in the female participants.

In this case, power only increased disinhibited flirting in the male participants.

Laughter is partly a result of evaluating some stimulus as funny, but that explanation is at best incomplete. Some people laugh when things are not funny, and the amount of laughter can vary widely even in response to a funny stimulus. The central hypothesis is that low power makes people inclined to laugh, possibly because laughter may generally serve to increase the chances of gaining social support and allies.

Participants are brought into a room and individually interviewed. As part of the interview, jokes are told by the “interviewer”; some jokes are designed to be funny, some are designed not to be funny. In one condition, participants are told the the interviewer will award a cash prize to one of the days’many participants. This is considered the “low power” condition, in that the interviewer is in a position to confer money on the participant. In the control condition, participants are interviewed in exactly the same manner, and the same jokes are told, but the partcipants aren’t told about the prize. The big question: Does knowing about the prize affect how much people laugh during the interview?

For both kinds of jokes, people laughed more in the low power condition. i.e. Low power people laugh more.

Participants were asked to watch a videotaped introduction of someone they were told they would later be working with. As part of the introduction, the introducer made jokes; like the “low power” study, some were designed to be funny and some were designed to not be funny. Prior to watching the introduction, participants were told either that they would be the boss of the person being introduced (the “high power” condition), the underlying of the person being introduced (the “low power” condition), or the co-worker of the person being introduced (the “equal power” condition). The big question: Does your power relationship to the person being introduced affect how much you laugh at the jokes?

For both kinds of jokes, bosses laughed less. i.e. Bosses laugh less at jokes.

• (a) potential rewards
• (b) costs

• (a) highpower
• (b) low power

• (a) high-power
• (b) low-power
• (c) their privileged knowledge

• (a) high-power
• (b) control participants
• (c) emotion expressions

• (a) see
• (b) think
• (c) feel

suggests that power increases goal-directed activity. As a result, the powerful act more and with greater variability than the nonpowerful.

 a psychological state that makes perspective taking less likely.

• (a) High-power
• (b) low-power

• (a) high power
• (b) control

• (a) convergent
• (b) divergent

the ability to give the "correct" answer to standard questions that do not require significant creativity, for instance in most tasks in school and on standardized multiple-choice tests for intelligence.

 a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.

• (a) convergent
• (b)  divergent