Rational learners and parochial norms

Partington, S. Nichols, S., & Kushnir, T.

Cognition

Volume 233, April 2023, 105366

Abstract

Parochial norms are narrow in social scope, meaning they apply to certain groups but not to others. Accounts of norm acquisition typically invoke tribal biases: from an early age, people assume a group's behavioral regularities are prescribed and bounded by mere group membership. However, another possibility is rational learning: given the available evidence, people infer the social scope of norms in statistically appropriate ways. With this paper, we introduce a rational learning account of parochial norm acquisition and test a unique prediction that it makes. In one study with adults (N = 480) and one study with children ages 5- to 8-years-old (N = 120), participants viewed violations of a novel rule sampled from one of two unfamiliar social groups. We found that adults judgments of social scope – whether the rule applied only to the sampled group (parochial scope), or other groups (inclusive scope) – were appropriately sensitive to the relevant features of their statistical evidence (Study 1). In children (Study 2) we found an age difference: 7- to 8-year-olds used statistical evidence to infer that norms were parochial or inclusive, whereas 5- to 6-year olds were overall inclusive regardless of statistical evidence. A Bayesian analysis shows a possible inclusivity bias: adults and children inferred inclusive rules more frequently than predicted by a naïve Bayesian model with unbiased priors. This work highlights that tribalist biases in social cognition are not necessary to explain the acquisition of parochial norms.

From the General discussion

The widespread prevalence of parochial norms across history and cultures have led some to suggest parochialism is itself a human universal (Clark et al., 2019; Greene, 2013) in part owing to evolved, group-based biases in social norm acquisition (Chalik & Rhodes, 2020; Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Roberts et al., 2017). In this paper, we investigated whether a rational learning process can also explain this phenomenon. In Study 1, we found that adults can acquire distinctions of social scope in a statistically appropriate manner, and this finding was robust across two forms of measurement (rule judgments and open response). In Study 2, older children displayed the adult-like statistical sensitivity in their rule judgments, and even younger children did so in their open responses. Computational analyses suggests that rule judgments were inclusively biased: compared to an unbiased Bayesian learner, children tended to assume that novel rules apply to everyone in a candidate population. Adults also displayed an inclusive bias, albeit to a lesser extent than children.

Broadly, these findings suggest that rational learning processes can indeed explain the acquisition of parochial norms and highlight an important sense in which children's norm learning can be biased in the opposite direction of tribalism. At the least, the finding that children and adults are inclusively biased serves as an existence proof that deep-rooted tribal biases in social learning are not necessary to explain the acquisition of parochial norms. Rather, if children and adults are rational learners, they can acquire a parochial norm when presented with evidence that is consistent with parochialism. However, tribalism can still play a role in norm acquisition, for example, by influencing the sort of evidence that adults seek out, or the evidence to which children are exposed.

The research is here.

Social Neuro AI: Social Interaction As the "Dark Matter" of AI

S. Bolotta & G. Dumas

arxiv.org

Originally published 4 JAN 22

Abstract

We are making the case that empirical results from social psychology and social neuroscience along with the framework of dynamics can be of inspiration to the development of more intelligent artificial agents. We specifically argue that the complex human cognitive architecture owes a large portion of its expressive power to its ability to engage in social and cultural learning. In the first section, we aim at demonstrating that social learning plays a key role in the development of intelligence. We do so by discussing social and cultural learning theories and investigating the abilities that various animals have at learning from others; we also explore findings from social neuroscience that examine human brains during social interaction and learning. Then, we discuss three proposed lines of research that fall under the umbrella of Social NeuroAI and can contribute to developing socially intelligent embodied agents in complex environments. First, neuroscientific theories of cognitive architecture, such as the global workspace theory and the attention schema theory, can enhance biological plausibility and help us understand how we could bridge individual and social theories of intelligence. Second, intelligence occurs in time as opposed to over time, and this is naturally incorporated by the powerful framework offered by dynamics. Third, social embodiment has been demonstrated to provide social interactions between virtual agents and humans with a more sophisticated array of communicative signals. To conclude, we provide a new perspective on the field of multiagent robot systems, exploring how it can advance by following the aforementioned three axes.

Conclusion

At the crossroads of robotics, computer science, and psychology, one of the main challenges for humans is to build autonomous agents capable of participating in cooperative social interactions. This is important not only because AI will play a crucial role in our daily life, but also because, as demonstrated by results in social neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, intrapersonal intelligence is tightly connected with interpersonal intelligence, especially in humans Dumas et al. [2014a]. In this opinion article, we have attempted to unify the lines of research that, at the moment, are separated from each other; in particular, we have proposed three research directions that are expected to enhance efficient exchange of information between agents and, as a consequence, individual intelligence (especially in out-of-distribution generalization: OOD). This would contribute to creating agents that not only do have humanlike OOD skills, but are also able to exhibit such skills in extremely complex and realistic environments Dennis et al.

[2021], while interacting with other embodied agents and with humans.

A pdf is here.

The Cognitive Science of Technology

D. Stout

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Available online 4 August 2021

Abstract

Technology is central to human life but hard to define and study. This review synthesizes advances in fields from anthropology to evolutionary biology and neuroscience to propose an interdisciplinary cognitive science of technology. The foundation of this effort is an evolutionarily motivated definition of technology that highlights three key features: material production, social collaboration, and cultural reproduction. This broad scope respects the complexity of the subject but poses a challenge for theoretical unification. Addressing this challenge requires a comparative approach to reduce the diversity of real-world technological cognition to a smaller number of recurring processes and relationships. To this end, a synthetic perceptual-motor hypothesis (PMH) for the evolutionary–developmental–cultural construction of technological cognition is advanced as an initial target for investigation.

Highlights

• Evolutionary theory and paleoanthropological/archaeological evidence motivate a theoretical definition of technology as socially reproduced and elaborated behavior involving the manipulation and modification of objects to enact changes in the physical environment.

• This definition helps to resolve or obviate ongoing controversies in the anthropological, neuroscientific, and psychological literature relevant to technology.

• A review of evidence from across these disciplines reveals that real-world technologies are diverse in detail but unified by the underlying demands and dynamics of material production. This creates opportunities for meaningful synthesis using a comparative method.

• A ‘perceptual‐motor hypothesis’ proposes that technological cognition is constructed on biocultural evolutionary and developmental time scales from ancient primate systems for sensorimotor prediction and control.

The information is here.

Decision making can be improved through observational learning

Yoon, H., Scopelliti, I. & Morewedge, C.

Organizational Behavior and 

Human Decision Processes

Volume 162, January 2021, 

Pages 155-188

Abstract

Observational learning can debias judgment and decision making. One-shot observational learning-based training interventions (akin to “hot seating”) can produce reductions in cognitive biases in the laboratory (i.e., anchoring, representativeness, and social projection), and successfully teach a decision rule that increases advice taking in a weight on advice paradigm (i.e., the averaging principle). These interventions improve judgment, rule learning, and advice taking more than practice. We find observational learning-based interventions can be as effective as information-based interventions. Their effects are additive for advice taking, and for accuracy when advice is algorithmically optimized. As found in the organizational learning literature, explicit knowledge transferred through information appears to reduce the stickiness of tacit knowledge transferred through observational learning. Moreover, observational learning appears to be a unique debiasing training strategy, an addition to the four proposed by Fischhoff (1982). We also report new scales measuring individual differences in anchoring, representativeness heuristics, and social projection.

Highlights

• Observational learning training interventions improved judgment and decision making.

• OL interventions reduced anchoring bias, representativeness, and social projection.

• Observational learning training interventions increased advice taking.

• Observational learning and information complementarily taught a decision rule.

• We provide new bias scales for anchoring, representativeness, and social projection.

The research is here.

(Peer) group influence on children's prosocial and antisocial behavior

A. Misch & Y. Dunham

OSFHOME

Abstract 

This study investigates the influence of moral in- vs. outgroup behavior on 5-6 and 8-9-year-olds' own moral behavior (N=296). After minimal group assignment, children in Experiment 1 observed adult ingroup or outgroup members engaging in prosocial sharing or antisocial stealing, before they themselves had the opportunity to privately donate stickers or take away stickers from others. Older children shared more than younger children, and prosocial models elicited higher sharing. Surprisingly, group membership had no effect. Experiment 2 investigated the same question using peer models. Children in the younger age group were significantly influenced by ingroup behavior, while older children were not affected by group membership. Additional measures reveal interesting insights into how moral in- and outgroup behavior affects intergroup attitudes, evaluations and choices.

From the Discussion

Thus, while results of our main measure generally support the hypothesis that children are susceptible to social influence, we found that children are not blindly conformist; rather, in contrast to previous research (Wilks et al., 2019) we found that conformity to antisocial behavior was low in general and restricted to younger children watching peer models.  Vulnerability to peer group influence in younger children has also been reported in previous studies on conformity (Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Engelmann et al., 2016) as well as research demonstrating a primacy of group interests over moral concerns (Misch et al., 2018). Thus, our study highlights the younger age group as a time in children’s development in which they seem to be particularly sensitive to peer influences, for better or worse, perhaps indicating a sort of “sensitive period” in which children are working to extract the norms embedded in peer behavior. 

The research is here.

Rationalization is rational

Fiery Cushman
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, E28.
(2020)
doi:10.1017/S0140525X19001730

Abstract

Rationalization occurs when a person has performed an action and then concocts the beliefs and desires that would have made it rational. Then, people often adjust their own beliefs and desires to match the concocted ones. While many studies demonstrate rationalization, and a few theories describe its underlying cognitive mechanisms, we have little understanding of its function. Why is the mind designed to construct post hoc rationalizations of its behavior, and then to adopt them? This may accomplish an important task: transferring information between the different kinds of processes and representations that influence our behavior. Human decision making does not rely on a single process; it is influenced by reason, habit, instinct, norms, and so on. Several of these influences are not organized according to rational choice (i.e., computing and maximizing expected value). Rationalization extracts implicit information – true beliefs and useful desires – from the influence of these non-rational systems on behavior. This is a useful fiction – fiction, because it imputes reason to non-rational psychological processes; useful, because it can improve subsequent reasoning. More generally, rationalization belongs to the broader class of representational exchange mechanisms, which transfer information between many different kinds of psychological representations that guide our behavior. Representational exchange enables us to represent any information in the manner best suited to the particular tasks that require it, balancing accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility in thought. The theory of representational exchange reveals connections between rationalization and theory of mind, inverse reinforcement learning, thought experiments, and reflective equilibrium.

From the Conclusion

But human action is also shaped by non-rational forces. In these cases, any answer to the question Why did I do that? that invokes belief, desire, and reason is at best a useful fiction.  Whether or not we realize it, the question we are actually answering is: What facts would have made that worth doing? Like an amnesic government agent, we are trying to divine our programmer’s intent – to understand the nature of the world we inhabit and our purpose in it. In these cases, rationalization implements a kind of rational inference. Specifically, we infer an adaptive set of representations that guide subsequent reasoning, based on the behavioral prescriptions of non-rational systems. This inference is valid because reasoning, like non-rational processes, is ultimately designed to maximize biological fitness. It is akin to IRL as well as to Bayesian models of theory of mind, and thus it offers a new interpretation of the function of these processes.

The target article is here, along with expert commentary.

Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality

Diane Sunar
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
(2009): 447–474

Abstract

To prepare a basis for a new model of morality, theories in the psychology of morality are reviewed, comparing those put forward before and after the emergence of evolutionary psychology in the last quarter of the 20th century. Concepts of embodied sociality and reciprocal moral emotions are introduced. Three ‘morality clusters’ consisting of relational models (Fiske, 1991), moral domains (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997) and reciprocal sets of other-blaming and selfconscious emotions are linked to three evolutionary bases for morality (kin selection, social hierarchy, and reciprocal altruism). Evidence regarding these concepts is marshaled to support the model. The ‘morality clusters’ are compared with classifications based on Haidt’s moral foundations (Haidt & Graham 2007). Further evidence regarding hierarchy based on sexual selection, exchange and
reciprocity, moral development, cultural differences and universals, and neurological discoveries, especially mirror neurons, is also discussed.

An Alternative Model

Alternative combinations of these elements have been suggested, most notably by Haidt and his colleagues (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, forthcoming; Haidt & Joseph, 2008), mapping Shweder’s three ethics or moral domains, and Fiske’s relational models, onto Haidt’s moral foundations. As described above, these authors match community with ingroup/loyalty and authority; autonomy with harm/care and fairness/reciprocity; and divinity with purity/sanctity. In addition, they suggest that three of the foundations can be matched with three of Fiske’s relational models (leaving out MP). In this scheme, fairness/reciprocity is linked with EM, care and ingroup morality with CS, and authority/respect with AR. Harm and purity as moral foundations are not linked with relational models, as they argue that these two foundations ‘are not primarily modes of interpersonal relationship (Haidt & Joseph, 2008; p. 386). Similar to my proposed clusters, they also link the morality of harm and care to kin selection and that of fairness to evolved mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, but in contrast see purity as a derivative of disgust mechanisms without a specific social basis.

The paper is here.

Learning Others’ Political Views Reduces the Ability to Assess and Use Their Expertise in Nonpolitical Domains

Marks, Joseph and Copland, Eloise and Loh, Eleanor and Sunstein, Cass R. and Sharot, Tali.
Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 18-22. (April 13, 2018).

Abstract

On political questions, many people are especially likely to consult and learn from those whose political views are similar to their own, thus creating a risk of echo chambers or information cocoons. Here, we test whether the tendency to prefer knowledge from the politically like-minded generalizes to domains that have nothing to do with politics, even when evidence indicates that person is less skilled in that domain than someone with dissimilar political views. Participants had multiple opportunities to learn about others’ (1) political opinions and (2) ability to categorize geometric shapes. They then decided to whom to turn for advice when solving an incentivized shape categorization task. We find that participants falsely concluded that politically like-minded others were better at categorizing shapes and thus chose to hear from them. Participants were also more influenced by politically like-minded others, even when they had good reason not to be. The results demonstrate that knowing about others’ political views interferes with the ability to learn about their competency in unrelated tasks, leading to suboptimal information-seeking decisions and errors in judgement. Our findings have implications for political polarization and social learning in the midst of political divisions.

You can download the paper here.

Probably a good resource to contemplate before discussing politics in psychotherapy.

Does children's moral compass waver under social pressure?

Kim EB, Chen C, Smetana J, Greenberger E
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 150:241-251 · June 2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.06.006

Abstract

The current study tested whether preschoolers' moral and social-conventional judgments change under social pressure using Asch's conformity paradigm. A sample of 132 preschoolers (Mage=3.83years, SD=0.85) rated the acceptability of moral and social-conventional events and also completed a visual judgment task (i.e., comparing line length) both independently and after having viewed two peers who consistently made immoral, unconventional, or visually inaccurate judgments. Results showed evidence of conformity on all three tasks, but conformity was stronger on the social-conventional task than on the moral and visual tasks. Older children were less susceptible to pressure for social conformity for the moral and visual tasks but not for the conventional task.

The article is here.