The Social Context of Adapted Cognition   The “social brain hypothesis.” Social groups and social cognition. Implications for learning. (Learned associations between faces and fear.) Implications for memory. (Recognition memory for faces.)

Readings for today… Dawkins, Chapter 5 The concept of an “evolutionarily stable strategy” Aggression Other people as a fundamental part of the EEA Dunbar, R. I. M. (2014). The social brain: Psychological underpinnings and implications for the structure of organizations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 109–114.

“To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own child or another close relative) is part of its environment, like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is something that gets in the way or something that can be exploited.” “Natural selection favours genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines.”

  The “social brain hypothesis.”

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The “social brain hypothesis” “The social-brain hypothesis is an explanation for the fact that monkeys and apes have unusually large brains compared with all other mammals and birds. [It] claims that primates need large brains because they live in unusually complex societies that involve many interdependent relationships that change dynamically through time: To be able to make decisions about how to act, animals need to be able to manipulate and manage information about the changing state of the social group…and this is computationally demanding.” (Dunbar, 2014).

The “social brain hypothesis” Group Size Social Complexity Cognitive Resources Required Brain Size Brain Size Cognitive Resources Available Social Complexity Group Size

[Different version of figure in Dunbar, 2014]

“Dunbar’s number”

Social groups and social cognition Background: Ancestral interactions within groups and between groups.

Lots of mostly cooperative interactions Fewer, more dangerous interactions

Especially efficient learning of a fear response?

+ + Implications for learning: Learning and resistance-to-unlearning of fearful response to in-group and out-group faces. “Acquisition” phase: Opportunity to learn fear responses to faces “Extinction” phase: Opportunity to unlearn those fear responses + + (Olsson et al., 2005)

Results: Skin conductance measure indicating fearful response to faces: (Olsson et al., 2005)

Additional implications and additional research: Fearful responses to male vs. female members of out-groups

Results from another study: “Extinction” phase: Skin conductance measure indicating fearful response to faces: (Navarrete et al., 2009)

Implications for memory: Recognition memory for in-group and out-group faces.

Ingroup  “Relevant”  Encode  Accurate Member Features Recognition Outgroup  “Irrelevant”  Minimal  Poor Member Encoding Recognition

Research shows: In general: Better recognition memory for in-group faces. Also: This effect is exaggerated when people are especially concerned about fitting in with and belonging to their in-group. But: This effect disappears when perceiving angry faces.

Ingroup  “Relevant!”  Encode  Accurate Member Features Recognition Outgroup  “Relevant!”  Encode  Accurate Member Features Recognition

Research results: Recognition memory for in-group and out-group faces. (Ackerman et al., 2006)