PSYC 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Hominidae
15 Jun 2018
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Week 9/Lecture 8: Social Competence
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Introduction: Are nonhuman animals behaviourists or mentalists?
Attributing intentions
Attributing seeing
Attributing false beliefs
The great debate
1 Introduction: Are nonhuman animals behaviourists or mentalists?
HEIDER & SIMMEL (1944)
Animation with triangles and circle
Heider was a social psychologist interested in how we attribute personality traits to
objects
Opinions that people have on the video – they have a drama or story of things about the
video- there are goals, intentions and desires
Mental states are the assumed causes of behavior. The behavior is what we
see/observe, but we attribute a mental state that is hidden – we are inferring a cause of
the behavior that we cannot see. For example, a belief.
e.g. he reached for the sundae because he wanted to eat it
- we see him reach for the sundae but we infer the reason for it (that he wants to eat it)
- we make predictions – he’ll likely eat ice cream again in the future
- Do other species think about mental states?
Social attribution task (kiln,2000)
- Saw the same video as above, but individuals with autism described the videos
by seeing the mechanisms behind the actions of the shapes
- Relates to theory of mind – attributing causations to behavior
Are nonhuman animals behaviourists or mentalists?
- Does the chimpanzee reason solely about behavior or do they reason about the
behavior and the mental states?
- Will be talked about in three different areas: intentions, seeing, false beliefs
[Quick side note on the difference between apes and monkeys]
- Apes are most closely related to apes – humans did not evolve from apes – we
share a common ancestor
- Monkeys are not apes
- The great apes – chimps, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos
- Monkeys are smaller than apes and have tails
- The apes are far more related to humans than they are to monkeys
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2 Intentions
WOODWARD (1998)
When infants are young, we use their looking behavior
In diagram – top picture – we see what the infant sees – person grabs the ball.
These trials go on for a while. We measure their looking time, until their looking
time decreases to a value that seems important.
Old goal new path trial:
- Person still reaches for ball (old goal)
- But switched location (new path)
New goal old path
- Person reaches for bear (new goal)
- But bear is in same position as ball in first trial (old path)
Measured the looking time – if they looked longer at the old goal one – showed
that the infant was more interested in the side of the path. If they looked longer at
the new goal, this shows that they originally encoded that the person reaches for
the ball, but this changes to the bear.
Change in study – used mechanical arm to reach instead of human arm
- Infants paid more attention to what he object grabbed not where the
mechanical had grabbed
Document Summary
Heider was a social psychologist interested in how we attribute personality traits to objects. Opinions that people have on the video they have a drama or story of things about the video- there are goals, intentions and desires. Mental states are the assumed causes of behavior. The behavior is what we see/observe, but we attribute a mental state that is hidden we are inferring a cause of the behavior that we cannot see. For example, a belief. e. g. he reached for the sundae because he wanted to eat it. We see him reach for the sundae but we infer the reason for it (that he wants to eat it) We make predictions he(cid:859)ll likel(cid:455) eat i(cid:272)e (cid:272)rea(cid:373) agai(cid:374) i(cid:374) the future. Saw the same video as above, but individuals with autism described the videos by seeing the mechanisms behind the actions of the shapes. Relates to theory of mind attributing causations to behavior.
