How Social Groups are Represented in the Brain: Clues from Neuropsychology

Humans: The Cooking Ape Perhaps the first to suggest that humans were cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago, Richard Wrangham shows through his new research and his imagination how and possibly when cooking changed humans dramatically. Wrangham, Harvard University primatologist and MacArthur Fellow, has been studying the evolution of human cooking. After 25 years of primate research at his site in Kibale, Uganda, Wrangham is best known for explaining the similarity and differences across species of primate social organizations. In Kibale, he has analyzed chimpanzees’ behavior: how it’s changed when they interact with the environment and how their social groups have evolved. In particular, he noticed how food changed their interactions with each other. Like that of chimps, human behavior has been affected by food, especially as they shifted from raw to cooked food. Moving from eating food as it was discovered to collecting edibles and cooking them altered our social relationships. Cooked food has changed Homo sapiens physically by making food more digestible thereby altering jaws, teeth, and guts, and providing more calories for more expensive organs such as the brain. Wrangham discusses when and how humans may have started using fire to cook food, what they cooked, and the transition from cooking in an outdoor fire to hearths and open ovens.

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Neural Correlates of Group Bias During Natural Viewing

Cerebral Cortex ◽

10.1093/cercor/bhy206 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 29 (8) ◽

pp. 3380-3389

Author(s):

Timothy J Andrews ◽

Ryan K Smith ◽

Richard L Hoggart ◽

Philip I N Ulrich ◽

Andre D Gouws

Keyword(s):

Time Course ◽

Social Groups ◽

Sensory Information ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Group Differences ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Brain Responses ◽

The World ◽

High Level ◽

The Brain

Abstract Individuals from different social groups interpret the world in different ways. This study explores the neural basis of these group differences using a paradigm that simulates natural viewing conditions. Our aim was to determine if group differences could be found in sensory regions involved in the perception of the world or were evident in higher-level regions that are important for the interpretation of sensory information. We measured brain responses from 2 groups of football supporters, while they watched a video of matches between their teams. The time-course of response was then compared between individuals supporting the same (within-group) or the different (between-group) team. We found high intersubject correlations in low-level and high-level regions of the visual brain. However, these regions of the brain did not show any group differences. Regions that showed higher correlations for individuals from the same group were found in a network of frontal and subcortical brain regions. The interplay between these regions suggests a range of cognitive processes from motor control to social cognition and reward are important in the establishment of social groups. These results suggest that group differences are primarily reflected in regions involved in the evaluation and interpretation of the sensory input.

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Investigating the science of mind: How does neuroscience fit into society and law?

10.31219/osf.io/qnzag ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chetan Sinha

Keyword(s):

Social Identity ◽

Common Sense ◽

Social Groups ◽

Human Mind ◽

Social Implications ◽

Group Behaviour ◽

Science Of Mind ◽

Legal Domain ◽

The Brain

This article interrogates the limits of integration of neuroscience and law. Brain studies offer substantial support to series of human experiences and behaviour. The intervention based on the understanding of the brain offered an explanation to the concept of mind, individual and group behaviour in society, and offering neurological explanations to the legal domain about the defendant. The brain studies offering technical explanations to the human mind and behaviour may further be used to attribute people from different social groups in a stereotypical way. Neuroscience is not limited to the laboratory and neuroimages but it has wider social implications. Discussing brain and law through the sociocultural and social identity perspective gives better understanding of mind, society and law. Keywords: Brain, common sense, image, social groups, behaviour, society, law

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Anterior Temporal Lobe Tracks the Formation of Prejudice

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01056 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 530-544 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Hugo J. Spiers ◽

Bradley C. Love ◽

Mike E. Le Pelley ◽

Charlotte E. Gibb ◽

Robin A. Murphy

Keyword(s):

Temporal Lobe ◽

Minority Groups ◽

Social Groups ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Brain Structures ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Prediction Errors ◽

Anterior Temporal Lobe ◽

Majority Groups ◽

The Brain

Despite advances in understanding the brain structures involved in the expression of stereotypes and prejudice, little is known about the brain structures involved in their acquisition. Here, we combined fMRI, a task involving learning the valence of different social groups, and modeling of the learning process involved in the development of biases in thinking about social groups that support prejudice. Participants read descriptions of valenced behaviors performed by members of novel social groups, with majority groups being more frequently encountered during learning than minority groups. A model-based fMRI analysis revealed that the anterior temporal lobe tracked the trial-by-trial changes in the valence associated with each group encountered in the task. Descriptions of behavior by group members that deviated from the group average (i.e., prediction errors) were associated with activity in the left lateral PFC, dorsomedial PFC, and lateral anterior temporal cortex. Minority social groups were associated with slower acquisition rates and more activity in the ventral striatum and ACC/dorsomedial PFC compared with majority groups. These findings provide new insights into the brain regions that (a) support the acquisition of prejudice and (b) detect situations in which an individual's behavior deviates from the prejudicial attitude held toward their group.

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John Dewey’s Reconstructed Conception of Growth

Contemporary Pragmatism ◽

10.1163/18758185-01501008 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 165-178

Author(s):

Jerome A. Popp

Keyword(s):

Moral Reasoning ◽

Social Intelligence ◽

Essential Role ◽

Social Groups ◽

Empathic Understanding ◽

Moral Decisions ◽

The Social ◽

The Brain ◽

Secondary Interest

John Dewey’s analysis of the role of emotion in moral reasoning, presented in the later Ethics, led him to conclude that our development of moral reasoning should be less focused on the secondary interest of attention to ourselves or others, and attend to the more complete interests of the welfare and integrity of the social groups in which we participate. In that analysis, Dewey identified the essential role of empathic understanding in moral decisions, referred to by neuroscientists as social intelligence. Dewey’s discussion of the essential role of emotion in these decisions is further supported by research in neuroscience which has established that general intelligence is located in an area of the brain distinct from the area that supports social intelligence, our capacity for empathic experience. These findings suggest that the presence of individuals with developed social intelligence in the groups in which we participate provide increased opportunities for growth.

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The Ritual Animal

10.1093/oso/9780199646364.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Harvey Whitehouse

Keyword(s):

Pacific Islands ◽

Social Groups ◽

Global Scale ◽

Ritual Performance ◽

New Approach ◽

The Social ◽

Violent Extremism ◽

Climate Crisis ◽

The Brain

The ritual animal longs to belong. Rituals are a way of defining the boundaries of social groups and binding their members together. The ritual modes theory set out in this book seeks to unravel the psychology behind these processes, and to explain how ritual behaviour evolved, including how different modes of ritual performance have shaped global history over many millennia. Testing the theory has meant designing experiments run with children in psychology labs and on remote Pacific islands, gathering survey data with armed insurgents in the Middle East and Muslim fundamentalists in Indonesia, monitoring heart rate and stress among football fans in Brazil, and measuring changes in the brain as people observe traditional Chinese rituals in Singapore. The results of all this research point to new ways of addressing cooperation problems: from preventing violent extremism to motivating action on the climate crisis. Although this book is about the role of ritual in the evolution of social complexity, more broadly it models a new approach to the science of the social—an approach that is driven by real-world observation but grounded in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. More ambitiously still, it shows how cumulative theory building can be used to deliver practical benefits for society at large, perhaps even addressing problems on a global scale by harnessing the formidable cohesive and cooperative capacities of the ritual animal.

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