The Social Mind-set Model potentially explains varying societies’ responses to social and criminal behavior

Many countries face similar social issues, but adopt dramatically different solutions. This variation could be because countries have different social mind-sets (SMS), which explain why a certain policy response is adopted. The Social Mind-set Model (“SMS Model”) is a modest addition to the frameworks of Blumer (1971) and Kingdon (2003), who explain how and when the policy process begins. The SMS Model proposes six factors that influence the SMS of a society, which in turn shapes policy processes described by Blumer and Kingdon. These include society’s: 1) high-profile events and social movements, 2) economic-political-legal situation, 3) cultural beliefs and practices, 4) use of research, 5) preference for justice principles, and 6) attributions for behavior. This cross-cultural analysis uses examples from multiple countries. We conclude with a challenge for researchers to continue this line of research, to test the model, to find more model factors and directly test the model’s assumptions.

The ageing of the social mind: replicating the preservation of socio-affective and the decline of socio-cognitive processes in old age

Anticipating population ageing to reach a historically unprecedented level in this century and considering the public goal of promoting well-being until old age, research in many fields has started to focus on processes and factors that contribute to healthy ageing. Since human interactions have a tremendous impact on our mental and physical well-being, scientists are increasingly investigating the basic processes that enable successful social interactions such as social affect (empathy, compassion) and social cognition (Theory of Mind). However, regarding the replication crisis in psychological science it is crucial to probe the reproducibility of findings revealed by each specific method. To this end, we aimed to replicate the effect of age on empathy, compassion and Theory of Mind observed in Reiter and colleagues' study (Reiter et al. 2017 Sci. Rep. 7 , 11046 ( doi:10.1038/s41598-017-10669-4 )) by using the same ecologically valid paradigm in an independent sample with similar age ranges. We were able to replicate the previously observed results of a preservation or even enhancement in socio-affective processes, but a decline in socio-cognitive processes for older adults. Our findings add to the understanding of how social affect and cognition change across the adult lifespan and may suggest targets for intervention studies aiming to foster successful social interactions and well-being until advanced old age.

A Study of Embodiment and Its Relations with Body Awareness and Empathy

Objective: The embodiment theories have been an increasingly important perspective to understand the social mind, and the current study aims to demonstrate how embodiment is built up from the interoceptive states of the body and how it contributes to human empathy. Method: Forty-two participants with normal vision or corrected-to-normal vision completed the hand Laterality Judgement Task (LJT) and questionnaires on body awareness and empathy. Response accuracies and reaction times in LJT and self-report scores from body awareness and empathy quotient questionnaires were collected. Results: A Pearson’s correlation analysis revealed that body awareness scores correlated positively with empathy scores and a paired samples t-test showed that people who were self-described as having a white skin tone responded to hand stimuli of black skin tone more accurately than to hand stimuli of white skin tone. Conclusions: These findings suggest the important role of the awareness of internal body states in higher order social cognition, and that higher-level action simulation is a bidirectional process, as other mental representations. Limitations are discussed for the improvements in future studies.

Transcranial electric stimulation as a neural interface to gain insight on human brain functions: current knowledge and future perspective

The use of brain stimulation approaches in social and affective science has greatly increased over the last two decades. The interest in social factors has grown along with technological advances in brain research. Transcranial electric stimulation (tES) is a research tool that allows scientists to establish contributory causality between brain functioning and social behaviour, therefore deepening our understanding of the social mind. Preliminary evidence is also starting to demonstrate that tES, either alone or in combination with pharmacological or behavioural interventions, can alleviate the symptomatology of individuals with affective or social cognition disorders. This review offers an overview of the application of tES in the field of social and affective neuroscience. We discuss the issues and challenges related to this application and suggest an avenue for future basic and translational research.

Conclusion

The final chapter summarizes the results from the study and presents directions for future research. The study has illustrated that speech, writing, and thought presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction works in a variety of modes and plays a crucial role in establishing, reflecting, and construing a social mind in action. This construal affects both intra- and intertextual dimensions, including readers and their processing as well as theoretical concerns of interpretation and methodological issues of analysis. The study has done pioneer work in the way it uses the analysis of keywords and repetitive patterns as basis for a tool that automatically annotates speech, writing, and thought presentation in digitized corpora. It has furthermore shown how repetitive patterns on all levels of discourse contribute to characterization and function as a means of narrative progression.