PSYC 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Aphelocoma, Social Cognition, Social Group
Spring 2019 PSYC 122: 1
Lecture 18: Social Cognition 1- Function; Phylogeny 05-13-2019
Background
Function
• Monitor others’
actions
• Mental record of
past interactions
• Predict actions
• Plan own actions
• Manipulate social
setting
Phylogeny
• Birds and mammals
• Social group living = interacting with conspecifics on a regular basis
o Need to know
▪ Relationships
▪ Social rules (eg. brother VS rival)
▪ Previous interactions etc
• Social success = being able to manipulate knowledge
• Social cognition = use model to navigate life
o Primates excel in
▪ Ie. humans are physically weak, but have cooperative agreements and
alliances to survive
• Social cognition functions
o Monitor the actions of other → build social network
o Maintain mental record of past interactions with conspecifics
▪ Give descriptions and encode episodes to members of social group
o Predict others’ actions
▪ Use knowledge of people’s past actions and make a better judgment (eg.
attack or be friendly → how will this affect the future)
o Plan own actions based on short and long term social goals
o Manipulate social setting
▪ Eg. wolves manipulate hierarchy for own advantage → support one male
for uprising and wait for that male to get defeated, increasing your own
rank
• Also done by non-human primates
• Monitor the actions of others
o Eg. western scrub jay birds’ seed caching behavior
▪ Find seeds in spring, summer, fall and hide seeds → have to remember
where the seeds are
▪ Other birds will steal the seed cache and hide elsewhere
▪ Original bird will return and re-hide seeds to avoid observers from
stealing (can predict)
• Maintain mental record of past interactions with conspecifics
o Eg. lions
▪ Females stay in same pride
▪ Males enter pride and have to learn dominance hierarchy between males
and females
▪ Constantly evolving process (flexible dominance, leaving pride etc)
o Eg. elephants
▪ Matrilines break into sub-parties to form social group
▪ Herds can be large (100+)
▪ Elephants live for a long time (60-70yrs)
▪ Have to have good memory to keep track of everything
▪ Elephants may mourn (move bones, slow down) → insinuating
recognition of own self
