Special Topics: Social Animals

Readings

SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
2	Altruism and cooperation	Required Lehnmann, L., K. R. Foster, E. Borenstein, and M. W. Feldman. “Social and Individual Learning of Helping in Humans and Other Species.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23, no. 12 (2008): 664-71. Tomasello, M. “Born (and Bred) to Help.” In Why We Cooperate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780262013598. Henrich, J., and N. Henrich. “Evolutionary Theory and the Social Psychology of Human Cooperation.” In Why Humans Cooperate. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780195300680. Optional: Punishment and maintaining altruism Ratnieks, F. L. W., and T. Wenseleers. “Altruism in Insect Societies and Beyond: Voluntary or Enforced?” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23, no. 1 (2006): 45-52. Field, J., A. Cronin, and C. Bridge. “Future Fitness and Helping in Social Queues.” Nature 411 (2006): 214-7. Henrich, J., et al. “Costly Punishment Across Human Societies.” Science 312 (2006): 1767-70. Marlow, F. W., et al. “More Altruistic Punishment in Larger Societies.” Proc R Soc B 275 (2008): 587-90. Jensen, K., J. Call, and M. Tomasello. “Chimpanzees are Rational Maximizers in an Ultimatum Game.” Science 318 (2007): 107-9. de Quervain, et al. “The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment.” Science 305 (2004): 1254-8. Harbaugh, W. T., U. Mayr, and D. R. Burghart. “Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motivations for Charitable Donations.” Science 316 (2007): 622-5.
3	Morality and norms	Required Mikhail, J. “Universal Moral Grammer: Theory, Evidence and the Future.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 4 (2007): 143-52. Haidt, J. “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology.” Science 316 (2007): 998-1002. Tetlock, P. E. “Thinking the Unthinkable: Sacred Values and Taboo Cognitions.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 7 (2003): 320-4. Optional: Moral development Smetana, J. “Preschool Children’s Conceptions of Moral and Social Rules.” Child Development 52, no. 4 (1981): 1333-6. Blair, R. J. R. “A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath.” Cognition 57 (1995): 1-29. Anderson, S. W., et al. “Impairment of Social and Moral Behavior Related to Early Damage in Human Prefrontal Cortex.” Nature Neuroscience 2, no. 11 (1999): 1032-6. Koenigs, M., and L. Young, et al. “Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgements.” Nature 446, no. 7138 (2007): 908-11. Fehr, E., H. Berhard, and B. Rockenback. “Egalitarianism in Young Children.” Nature 454 (2008): 1079-84. Rakoczy, H., F. Warneken, and M. Tomasello. “The Sources of Normativity: Young Children’s Awareness of the Normative Structure of Games.” Developmental Psychology 44, no. 3 (2008): 875-81.
4	Empathy and helping	Required Tomasello, M. “Born (and Bred) to Help.” In Why We Cooperate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780262013598. Decety, J., and W. Ickes. “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena.” In The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780262012973. Leppanen, J. M., and C. A. Nelson. “Tuning the Developing Brain to Social Signals of Emotion.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10 (2009): 37-47. Singer, T., and C. Lamm. “The Social Neuroscience of Empathy.” The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience 2009: Ann NY Acad Sci 1156 (2009): 81-96. Optional: Limits of automatic empathy Danziger, N., I. Faillenot, and R. Peyron. “Can We Share a Pain We Never Felt? Neural Correlates of Empathy in Patients with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain.” Neuron 61 (2009): 203-12. Langford, D. J., et al. “Social Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice.” Science 312 (2006): 1967-70. Lanzetta, J. T., and B. G. Englis. “Expectations of Cooperation and Competition and their Effects on Observers’ Vicarious Emotional Responses.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56, no. 4 (1989): 543-54. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., et al. “Intranasal Administration of Oxytocin Increases Envy and Schadenfreude (Gloating).” Biological Psychiatry (2009). (in press). Latane, B., and S. Nida. “Ten Years of Research on Group Size and Helping.” Psychological Bulletin 89, no. 2 (1981): 308-324. Shaw, L. L., C. D. Batson, and R. M. Todd. “Empathy Avoidance: Forestalling Feeling for Another in Order to Escape the Motivational Consequences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 5 (1994): 879-87.
5	Perception of agents and actions	Required Nummenmaa, L., and A. J. Calder. “Neural Mechanisms of Social Attention.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 3 (2009): 135-43. Sebanz, N., H. Bekkering, and G. Knoblich. “Joint Action: Bodies and Minds Moving Together.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 2 (2006): 70-76. Csibra, G., and G. Gergely. “‘Obsessed with Goals’: Functions and Mechanisms of Teleological Interpretation of Actions in Humans.” Acta Psychologica 124 (2007): 60-78. Optional: Seeing less, infering more Southgate, V., M. H. Johnson, I. El Karoui, and G. Csibra. “Motor System Activation Reveals Infants’ On-line Prediction of Others’ Goals.” Psychological Science (in press). Umilta, M. A., E. Kohler, V. Gallese, L. Fogassi, L. Fadiga, C. Keysers, and G. Rizzolatti. “I Know What You are Doing: A Neurophysiological Study.” Neuron 31 (2001):155-65. Brandone, A. C., and H. M. Wellman. “You can’t Always get What You Want: Infants Understand Failed Goal Directed Actions.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 85-91. Rochat, M. J., E. Serra, L. Fadiga, and V. Gallese. “The Evolution of Social Cognition: Goal Familiarity Shapes Monkey’s Action Understanding.” Current Biology 18 (2008): 227-32. Oosterhof, N. N., and A. Todorov. “The Functional Basis of Face Evaluation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 32 (2008): 11087-92. Amabady, N., and R. Rosenthal. “Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations From thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 3 (1993): 431-41.
6	Theory of mind and attribution	Required Kelley, H. H., and J. L. Michela. “Attribution Theory and Research.” Annual Review of Psychology 31 (1980): 457-501. Platek, S. M., J. P. Keenan, and T. K. Shackelford. “The Evolution of Human Mindreading: How Non-Human Primates can Inform Social Cognitive Nuroscience”. In Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262162418. Banks, W. “Theory of Mind.” In Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780123738646. Optional: Origins of understanding false beliefs Senju, A., V. Southgate, S. White, and U. Frith. “Mindblind Eyes: An Absense of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in the Asperger Syndrome.” Science 325 (209): 883-5. Onishi & Baillargeon. “Do 15-month-old Infants Understand False Beliefs?” Science 308 (2005): 255-8. Kaminski, J., J. Call, and M. Tomasello. “Chimpanzees know What Others know, But not What They Believe.” Cognition 109 (2008): 224-34. Dally, J. M., N. J. Emery, and N. S. Clayton. “Food-Caching Western Scrub Jays Keep Track of Who was Watching When.” Science 312 (2006): 1662-5. Pyers, J. E., and A. Senghas. “Language Promotes False-Belief Understanding: Evidence from Learners of a New Sign Language.” Psychological Science 20, no. 7 (2009): 805-12. Apperly, I. A., D. Samson, N. Carroll, S. Hussain, and G. Humphreys. “Intact First- and Second-order False Belief Reasoning in a Patient with Severely Impaired Grammar.” Social Neuroscience 1, nos. 3-4 (2006): 334-48.
7	Communication and teaching	Required Rendall, D., M. J. Owren, and M. J. Ryan. “What Do Animal Signs Mean?” Animal Behaviour 78 (2009): 233-40. Csibra, G., and G. Gergely. “Natural Pedagogy.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 4 (2009): 148-53. Hoppitt, W. J. E., G. R. Brown, R. Kendal, L. Rendell, A. Thornton, M. M. Webster, and K. N. Laland. “Lessons from Animal Teaching.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23, no. 9 (2008): 486-93. Optional: what’s unique about human communication? Liszkowski, U., M. Schafer, M. Carpenter, and M. Tomasello. “Prelinguistic Infants, But not Chimpanzees, Communicate About Absent Entities.” Psychological Science 20, no. 5 (2009): 654-60. Topal, J., G. Gergely, A. Erdohegyi, G. Csibra, and A. Miklosi. “Differential Sensitivity to Human Communication in Dogs, Wolves and Human Infants.” Science 325, no. 5945 (2009): 1269-72. Hickok, G., U. Bellugi, and E. S. Klima. “The Neurobiology of Sign Language and Its Implications for the Neural Basis of Language.” Nature 381 (1996): 699-702. Sandler, W., I. Meir, C. Padden, and M. Aronoff. “The Emergence of Grammar: Systematic Structure in a New Language.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 102, no. 7 (2005): 2661-2665. Rilling, J. K., M. F. Glasser, T. M. Preuss, X. Ma, T. Zhao, X. Hu, and T. E. J. Behrens. “The Evolution of the Arcuate Fasciculus Revealed With Comparative DTI.” Nature Neuroscience 1, no. 4 (2008): 426-8. Enard, W., M. Przeworski, S. E. Fisher, C. S. L. Lai, V. Wiebe, T. Kitano, A. P. Monaco, and S. Paabo. “Molecular Evolution of FOXP2, a Gene Involved in Speech and Language.” Nature 488 (2002): 869-72.
8	Ingroups and outgroups	Required Mesoudi, A. “How Cultural Evolutionary Theory can inform Social Psychology and Vice Versa.” Psychological Review 116, no. 4 (2009): 929-52. Fiske, S. T., A. J. C. Cuddy, and P. Glick. “Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 2 (2006): 77-83. Choi, J-K., and S. Bowles. “The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War.” Science 318 (2007): 636-40. Optional: inter-group dynamics Bowles, S. “Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” Science 324 (2009): 1293-8. Giraud, T., J. S. Pedersen, and L. Keller. “Evolution of Supercolonies: The Argentine Ants of Southern Europe.” PNAS 99 (2009): 6075-9. Efferson, C., R. Lalive, and E. Fehr. “The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism.” Science 321 (2008): 1844-9. Kinzler, K. D., K. Shutts, J. DeJesus, and E. S. Spelke. “Accent Trumps Race in Guiding Children’s Social Preferences.” Social Cognition 27 (2009): 623-34. Paluck, E. L. “Reducing Intergroup Prejudice and Conflict Using the Media: A Field Experiment in Rwanda.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 3 (2009): 574-87. Czopp, A. M., M. J. Monteith, and A. Y. Mark. “Standing up for a Change: Reducing Bias Through Interpersonal Confrontation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, no. 5 (2006): 784-803.
9	Aggression and dominance	Required Brown, R. “Social Forces in Obedience and Rebellion.” In Social Psychology. New York, NY: Free Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780743253406. Fiske, A. P. “The Four Elementary Forms of Sociality: Framework for a Unified Theory of Social Relations.” Psychological Review 99, no. 4 (1992): 689-723. Nelson, R. J., and B. C. Trainor. “Neural Mechanisms of Aggression.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8 (2007): 536-46. Optional: what “determines” aggression? Brunner, H. G., M. Nelen, X. O. Breakfield, H. H. Ropers, B. A. van Oost. “Abnormal Behavior Associated with a Point Mutation in the Structural Gene for Monoamine Oxidase A.” Science 262 (1993): 578-80. Meyer-Lindberg, A., et al. “Neural Mechanisms of Genetic Risk for Impulsivity and Violence in Humans.” PNAS 103, no. 16 (2006): 6269-74. Maner, J. K., S. I. Miller, N. B. Schmidt, and L. A. Eckel. “Submitting to Defeat: Social Anxiety, Dominance Threat, and Decrements in Testosterone.” Psychological Science 19, no. 8 (2008): 764-8. Issa, F. A., and D. H. Edwards. “Ritualized Submission and the Reduction of Aggression in an Invertebrate.” Current Biology 16 (2006): 2217-21. Toth, M., J. Halasz, E. Mikics, B. Barsy, and J. Haller. “Early Social Deprivation Induces Disturbed Social Communication and Violent Aggression in Adulthood.” Behavioral Neuroscience 122, no. 4 (2008): 849-54. Slotow, R., G. van Dyk, J. Poole, B. Page, and A. Klocke. “Older Bull Elephants Control Young Males.” Nature 408 (2000): 425-6. Sapolsky, R. M. “Social Cultures Among Non-Human Primates.” Current Anthropology 47, no. 4 (2006): 641-56.
10	Mating and parenting	Required Curley, J. P., and E. B. Keverne. “Genes, Brains, and Mammalian Social Bonds.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20, no. 10 (2005): 561-7. Miller, G. F., and P. M. Todd. “Mate Choice Turns Cognitive.” Trends in Cognitive Science 2, no. 5 (1998): 190-8. Dickson, B. J. “Wired for Sex: The Neurobiology of Drosophila Mating Decisions.” Science 322 (2008): 904-9. Optional Insel, T. R., and L. E. Shapiro. “Oxytocin Receptor Distribution Reflects Social Organization in Monogamous and Polygamous Voles.” PNAS 89 (1992): 5981-5. Baumgartner, T., M. Heinrichs, A. Volanthen, U. Fischbacker, and E. Fehr. “Oxytocin Shapes the Neural Circuitry of Trust and Trust Adaptation in Humans.” Neuron 58 (2008): 639-50. Barr, C. S., et al. “Variation At the Mu-opioid Receptor Gene (OPRM1) Influences Attachment Behavior in Infant Primates.” PNAS 105, no. 13 (2008): 5277-81. Johnson, S. C., C. S. Dweck, and F. S. Chen. “Evidence for Infants’ Internal Working Models of Attachment.” Psychological Science 18, no. 6 (2007): 501-2. Hager, R., and R. A. Johnstone. “The Genetic Basis of Family Conflict Resolution in Mice.” Nature 421 (2003): 533-5. Hamilton, L., S. Cheng, and B. Powell. “Adoptive Parents, Adaptive Parents: Evaluating the Importance of Biological Ties for Parental Investment.” American Sociological Review 72 (2007): 95-116.