heider & simmel (1944)

Heider & Simmel (1944)

Dennett (1987)

The Intentional Stance

Default brain activity

Posterior lateral parietal cortex

Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Posterior medial parietal cortex

False Belief test

Where will Sally look for her ball?

False Belief test

Most three year oldsMost Harvard students

Autism

Kanner (1943)

“He seems almost to draw into his shell and live within himself. When taken into a room, he completely disregarded the people and instantly went for objects.

When a hand was held out to him so that he could not possibly ignore it, he played with it briefly as if it were a detached object. He did not respond to being called, and did not look at his mother when she spoke to him. He never looked up at people's faces. When he had any dealings with persons at all, he treated them, or rather parts of them, as if they were objects.

Autism“He would, in playing, butt his head against his mother as at other times he did against a pillow.

On a crowded beach he would walk straight toward his goal irrespective of whether this involved walking over newspapers, hands, feet, or torsos, much to the discomfiture of their owners. His mother was careful to point out that he did not intentionally deviate from his course in order to walk on others, but neither did he make the slightest attempt to avoid them. It was as if he did not distinguish people from things, or at least did not concern himself about the distinction.”

Kanner (1943)

Normally-developing individual

‘‘The bigger triangle was in control, or trying to take control of the smaller triangle and the circle, the rectangular shaped place was similar to like a room with a closed door that um, if you went in there you were safe until that triangle came in. The small triangle and the circle were trying to escape from the large triangle and when they did, the large triangle became very furious and destroyed things.’’

Autistic individual

‘‘OK, so, a rectangle, two triangles, and a small circle. Let’s see, the triangle and the circle went inside the rectangle, and then the other triangle went in, and then the triangle and the circle went out and took off, left one triangle there. And then the two (pause) parts of the rectangle made like a [sic] upside-down V, and that was it.’’

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Normal Down syndrome(IQ = 64)

Autistic (IQ = 82)

Percentage of Ss "passing"

Williams syndrome

Attribution – The process of making inferences about the causes of another person’s behavior

Failures of social cognition

“It has a powerful motor”

Does this toy car have a powerful motor?

Failures of social cognition

“It has a powerful motor”

“Isn't it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?"

Does this person support the war in Iraq?

– Leading Seaman Faye Turney

Failures of social cognition

Internal Cause vs. External Cause

Failures of social cognition

The Correspondence Bias – The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to internal rather than external causes

pro-Castro essay“. . . the people of Cuba now have a share in the government and are demonstrating their approval by their tremendous response to the trials of building a new society from the wreckage left by the exploiters of foreign industry. ”

anti-Castro essay“Castro can and does attempt to take over our neighbors and convert them to communist sattelites by using methods of infiltration sabotage and subversion. ”

Jones & Harris (1967)

Failures of social cognition

The Correspondence Bias – The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to internal rather than external causes

Ratings of the writers’ pro-Castro attitudes

Jones & Harris (1967)

Failures of social cognition

010203040506070

Choice No Choice

"Writer" choice

Pro-Castro Anti-Castro

The Correspondence Bias – The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to internal rather than external causes

Ratings of general intelligence

Ross, Amabile & Steinmetz (1977)

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

of quizmaster of contestant

Target of the evaluation

Observer's evaluation Contestant's evaluation

Failures of social cognition

The Correspondence Bias – The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to internal rather than external causes

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Posterior lateral parietal cortex

Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Posterior medial parietal cortex

Failures of social cognition

Today’s gameplan

The centrality of social cognition

Failures of social cognition

“Social resonance”

Today’s gameplan

The centrality of social cognition

Failures of social cognition

“Social resonance”

Today’s gameplan

The centrality of social cognition

Failures of social cognition

“Social resonance”

– getting others to experience what I experience

– getting myself to experience what others experience

Language

Social resonance me others

Teaching

Social resonance me others

Emotional expression

Social resonance me others

Social resonance makes deception is difficult

Social resonance me others

Social resonance me others

Social resonance makes deception is difficult

Social resonance

Singer et al. (2004)

Your pain = my pain

Social resonance others me

Emotional imitation in infancy

Meltzoff & Moore (1977)

Social resonance others me

Physiological linkage

Levenson & Ruef (1992)

Social resonance others me

Physiological linkage

Levenson & Ruef (1992)

Social resonance others me

Key ideas

• We make sense of each others’ behavior in terms of their psychological states

• Social cognition seems to be a central human function that may have driven the expansion of the human brain

• Despite the importance of understanding the causes of others’ behaviors, humans are not great attributionalists

• Humans have a drive to bring their psychological experience “in register” with that of others and strive to change others’ mental states

• When others’ mental states cannot be changed, we often shift our own experience to be in line with that of others

The centrality of social cognition

Social exclusion is painful

The centrality of social cognition

Social exclusion is painful

Anterior cingulate cortex

The centrality of social cognition

Social exclusion is painful

The centrality of social cognition

Social isolation as a form of torture