Does Social Neuroscience Contribute to social cognition ?

1. Does Social Neuroscience Contribute to social cognition? 9.00 Robin Dunbar : Evolution and the social brain 9.50 Cecilia Heyes : Mirror Neurons: From Origins to Function 11.00 Ian Apperly : Controlled and automatic mindreading in children and adults 11.50 Claus Lamm : Empathy, Prosocial and Moral Behavior 13.40 Karin Roelofs : Neuroendocrine mechanisms of social behavior 14.50 Debate

2. Does Social Neuroscience Contribute to social cognition? Debate with all speakers Discussant: Klaus FiedlerModerator: Frank Van Overwalle

3. Social neuroscience integrates ideas from multiple research areas in psychology and neuroscience to address questions about social processes in the mind and brain • New descipline since around 2005 Goal of Social neuroscience

4. ESAN: European Social Affective Neuroscience (2008) • SANS: Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (2008) • S4SN: Society for Social Neuroscience (2010) Dedicated societies

5. Dedicated journals

6. Social Brain Mapping • Where are high-level social psychological processes located in the brain? • By scanning participants’ brains, we study the neural basis of … • romantic love while viewing pictures of significant others > strangers (Aron et al., 2005). • self while judging whether trait adjectives describe the self > another person (Kelley et al., 2002; Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005). • social information processing while judging animate > inanimate objects (Mitchell, Heatherton, & Macrae, 2002). • Question: do we identify the critical processes and brain areas? Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)

7. Social Brain Mapping Mirror / Mentalizing Networks specialized for social processing Approaches

8. Social Brain Mapping • Since processing in the brain creates / requires memory traces, it is legitimate to ask where high-level psychological processes are located (eliminating subsidiary processes) • Motivation: Social Brain Hypothesis • Dedicated methods: • fMRI Adaptation • fMRI Pattern analysis Approaches

9. Social Brain Mapping However, the brain is an economic device, using very similar areas for social and non-social processing, showing some overlap of… • ToM -and- attention reorientation in TPJ • High abstract thinking on people -and- objects in mPFC Very exciting ! Approaches

10. Social Hypothesis Testing • The use of new methods for assessing psychological variables instead of RT or cognitive load manipulations • ERP: event-related potentials • fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging & related methods Approaches (Amodio, Social Cognition, 2010)

11. Social Hypothesis Testing • A single core trait inference system: implicit/spontaneous activations when reading behaviors are extended under explicit/intentional instructions to infer a trait from behaviors Approaches

12. Social Hypothesis Testing • The application of methods from behavioral research is often limited: • RT (because presentation takes longer) • Cognitive load (because secondary task activates other areas of no interest) • Interactions (do not show summation of waves in ERPs) Approaches

13. What are the major contributions (success stories) of social neuroscience to the understanding of social behavior? • What have we discovered anew? • What have neuroimaging methods contributed over and above behavioral methods such as RT? • What are the major disappointments of social neuroscience (and is it possible to do something about it)? • Future: What are threats and critical issues / questions Questions for debate

14. In a first round, • each of the speakers addresses one or more of these three questions in a short contribution (maximum 3-5 minutes) • the discussant focuses on what he considers the most critical points in social neuroscience. He also addresses some of the points raised in the first round (maximum 10 minutes) In a second round, • all speakers may interact and respond to the discussant’s critique, and he may respond as well (later or interactively) • the public may joint in at this point as well. The debate