Readings

Liberman, Z., Woodward, A. L., & Kinzler, K. D. (2017). The origins of social categorization. Trends in cognitive sciences, 21(7), 556-568.

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5605918/

This is a review paper in "Trends in Cognitive Science" and so discusses the results of many studies to advance a novel argument. Reading it will introduce important results about the current topic, as well as offer an opportunity to apply a pair of LOs together (see study guide).

Rich social categories: helps people navigate the complex social world by allowing them to reason about others’ likely thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions as guided by group membership

Weisel O, Böhm R. "Ingroup love" and "outgroup hate" in intergroup conflict between natural groups. J Exp Soc Psychol. 2015;60:110-120. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2015.04.008

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518042/

This empirical paper introduces the important topic of "ingroup love" vs. "outgroup hate" as well as other important background (e.g., "minimal" vs. "natural" groups). You can engage with the details of this paper more or less depending on your interests, but it should inform how you fill out the table in the pre-class work.

REVIEW PREVIOUS READING: Zaki, J., López, G., & Mitchell, J. P. (2014). Activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex co-varies with revealed social preferences: evidence for person-invariant value. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 9(4), 464-469.

Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/9/4/464/1628861

This reading is from the second day of the course. You should re-read it now, and think about how your understanding of it is improved by applying course concepts and content you have learned since the first time you saw it. In general: they used an advanced method to identify how much a participant valued a target's welfare compared to their own, but the core idea is the same (at what point to you change from preferring you get some amount to another person receiving a larger amount--do you choose 1.00 euro for you or 2.00 euros for another person?)

OPTIONAL: Meslec, N., Aggarwal, I., & Curseu, P. L. (2016). The insensitive ruins it all: Compositional and compilational influences of social sensitivity on collective intelligence in groups. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 676.

Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00676/full

This optional reading introduces the important concept of "group collective intelligence" and highlights positive aspects of groups. The idea that groups have advantages (and that groups function better when people in them are sensitive to each other) should inform your answer to Q2 of the pre-class work.

OPTIONAL (and not open access): Delton, A. W., & Robertson, T. E. (2016). How the mind makes welfare tradeoffs: Evolution, computation, and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology7, 12-16.

This optional reading might provide additional insight into #mechanismsofcognition for this class and many others in the semester (e.g., Figure 1 and the idea of "internal regulatory variables" in general), but it is neither required reading nor open access. If you do read it, you will see the inspiration for Q2 of the pre-class work.

Study Guide