[Philosophy of Social Cognition] First Meeting Notes

[Martyna Meyer]

Dear all,

I am sharing with you some notes and loose comments from the last meeting, including links to the studies we discussed. 
Perhaps you find it useful. 

Thank you very much to Jonas who prepared the summary!

Have a lovely evening,
Martyna


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A few things that were mentioned during (and afterwards) the last meeting: 
Papers:

Discussed during the meeting: (on Theory of Mind in ravens)
Bugnyar, T., Reber, S. A., & Buckner, C. (2016). Ravens attribute visual access to unseen competitors. Nature Communications, 7(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10506
Access: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10506

And another interesting one that wasn’t mentioned:
Vanhooland, L.-C., Bugnyar, T., & Massen, J. J. M. (2020). Crows (Corvus corone ssp.) check contingency in a mirror yet fail the mirror-mark test. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 134, 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000195
Access: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-59593-001 
That may indicate that ravens do not, after all, have a concept of “self".

A study about affective sharing (re: our discussion on co-feeling emotions vs “mind reading” of propositional states): 
Adriaense, J. E. C., Martin, J. S., Schiestl, M., Lamm, C., & Bugnyar, T. (2019). Negative emotional contagion and cognitive bias in common ravens (Corvus corax). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(23), 11547–11552. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817066116
Access: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31110007/  
Interestingly, the emotional contagion was found only for negative states, not positive ones.


Topics/Ideas: (discussed afterwards)

“individualist” vs "collectivist" cultures (or altruism/egoism)

The idea of a "domestication syndrome”, which proposes that some species (or populations within species) in which selection against aggression was prominent show some similar characteristics.

For example: dogs, compared to wolves, have smaller snouts, brains, and I think are more playful instead of aggressive, etc. Some of these features have been found in domesticated foxes, as well. In bonobos, who are theorised to have "self-domesticated" after finding areas with so much food that competitive aggression was no longer necessary and therefore selected against. There's even talk about humans maybe having self-domesticated as well, showing similar symptoms (less aggression, smaller snout than apes):

Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality | Annual Review of Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 March 2023, from https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044201
Access: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044201
Brian Hare also wrote a book on this topic <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550437/survival-of-the-friendliest-by-brian-hare-and-vanessa-woods/>.

That would of course have implications for social behaviour :)

Researchers:

Thomas Bugnyar <https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/person.html?id=87143> (Google Scholar <https://scholar.google.at/citations?user=T-jAgrMAAAAJ&hl=de>) - Theory of Mind, Ravens

Claus Lamm <https://scan-psy.univie.ac.at/about-us/claus-lamm/> (Google Scholar <https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fVhv-z8AAAAJ&hl=en>) - Social cognition research in humans

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