Heider & Simmel (1944)

4. Heider & Simmel (1944)

5. The Intentional Stance Dennett (1987)

6. Default brain activity Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex Posterior lateral parietal cortex Ventromedial prefrontal cortex Posterior medial parietal cortex

7. False Belief test

8. Where will Sally look for her ball? False Belief test Most Harvard students Most three year olds

10. “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. Kanner (1943) Autism

11. “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) Autism

12. 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.’’

13. 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.’’

15. Williams syndrome

16. Failures of social cognition Attribution – The process of making inferences about the causes of another person’s behavior

17. Failures of social cognition Does this toy car have a powerful motor? “It has a powerful motor”

18. Failures of social cognition Does this person support the war in Iraq? “Isn't it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?" – Leading Seaman Faye Turney “It has a powerful motor”

19. Failures of social cognition Internal Cause vs. External Cause

20. 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)

21. 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)

22. Failures of social cognition 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)

23. Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex Posterior lateral parietal cortex Ventromedial prefrontal cortex Posterior medial parietal cortex 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

24. Today’s gameplan The centrality of social cognition Failures of social cognition “Social resonance”

25. Today’s gameplan The centrality of social cognition Failures of social cognition “Social resonance”

27. 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

28. Social resonance me  others Language

29. Social resonance me  others Teaching

30. Social resonance me  others Emotional expression

31. Social resonance me  others Social resonance makes deception is difficult

32. Social resonance me  others Social resonance makes deception is difficult

33. Social resonance

34. Social resonance others  me Your pain = my pain Singer et al. (2004)

35. Social resonance others  me Emotional imitation in infancy Meltzoff & Moore (1977)

36. Social resonance others  me Physiological linkage Levenson & Ruef (1992)

37. Social resonance others  me Physiological linkage Levenson & Ruef (1992)

39. 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

40. The centrality of social cognition Social exclusion is painful

41. The centrality of social cognition Social exclusion is painful

42. The centrality of social cognition Social exclusion is painful Anterior cingulate cortex

43. The centrality of social cognition Social isolation as a form of torture