Aggression / Norms & Morality
True or false: alcohol directly causes aggression.
False; alcohol is correlated with aggression because it causes biological disinhibition, attentional narrowing, and has a cultural association to aggression
What do "agents" in computational simulations represent?
People
Define "publication bias"
Tendency for journals to accept papers reporting statistically significant effects more than papers reporting “no effect.”
Would you expect an ape to remember their long-lost friend or long-lost enemy better?
Their long lost-friend
Cultural tightness—strong norms and strict punishment for deviance—is associated with higher levels of this type of agriculture in China.
Rice farming
Would you expect a personal moral dilemma that involves direct harm to activate brain regions associated with emotion OR brain regions associated with cognitive control?
Brain regions associated with emotion/social cognition (e.g. medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyrus)
Is the Resource Allocation Model or Kalick-Hamilton Model more realistic with mate choice simulations?
Resource Allocation Model
What phenomenon explains the study that attempted to show that elderly priming led to slower walking in younger populations?
Social priming
Name a method used in one of the studies discussed in Dr. Lewis's guest lecture.
Eye tracking
Exploratory choice task
Do people in rice-farming regions tend to think analytically or holistically?
Holistically (attending to relationships, patterns, and broader contextual features)
True or false: a participant who is given serotonin will likely react less aggressively to provocation than a participant given a placebo.
True; serotonin is negatively correlated with aggression
What is the Matching Hypothesis?
People tend to choose partners of similar attractiveness to themselves
How does confirmation bias contribute to the Replication Crisis?
Scientists may interpret findings in a way that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses, even if they might not be objectively correct.
What might children/chimpanzees in the Social Curiosity task see in the "social" box?
A video of two agents interacting (e.g. playing together, grooming each other, etc.)
What does the acronym WEIRD stand for?
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
How might someone with a utilitarian moral orientation approach the Trolley Problem?
They would likely choose to divert the trolley so it only kills one person rather than five.
True or false: computational approaches replace rich verbal theories.
False; they sharpen them by moving from theories toward quantitative, predictive accounts of how real people choose, form, and maintain close bonds.
When researchers make many analyses until they find a significant result, it's called _______
What is a major hierarchical difference between chimpanzees and bonobos?
Chimpanzees live in male-dominated societies while bonobos live in female co-dominated societies.
In the Starbucks observational study, people in more individualistic regions were more likely to do this behavior when moving through crowded spaces.
Move things in their way rather than squeeze around them.
What are some of the adaptive roots of aggression?
Aggression can enhance access to resources, help parents protect their young, and support survival in times of intergroup conflict.
Name 2 advantages of the computational approach to relationship science
- Transparency
- Precise predictions
- Rigorous tests
- Applicability at scale
Name one major open science solution that reduces false-positive findings by committing to an analysis plan before viewing data.
Preregistration
What factor explains differences in bonobo and chimpanzee intergroup dynamics?
Environment: bonobos lived in a resource-rich environment that didn't require competition, while chimpanzees had to compete to survive
Why did wheat farming give rise to more individualistic cultures?
Wheat farming is relatively easier, requiring less labor per unit of land and little to no collaboration with neighbors, making people less reliant on others.