Social Norms and Sanctions

Vampire bats...share blood...don't share then get punished by others.

reciprocal altruism... positive sum game...

sanctioning eliminates free riders...


accept drinks but don't pay. cheaters in the short run outperform non-cheaters

cheat detectors...  watch for cheaters
A vampire bat strikes it big but doesn't share. Later other vampire bats who strike it big starve the selfish bats...



Social emotions and the prisoners dilemma
•We feel GRATITUDE and LIKING for people who cooperate with us. This motivates us to be nice to them in the future
•We feel ANGER and DISTRUST toward those who betray us. This motivates us to betray or avoid them in the future
•We feel GUILT when we betray someone who cooperates with us. This motivates us to behave better in the future


irrationality in relationship makes it last longer. Rational:"You are the best person I've met so far. I will stay with you as long as that is true."

Levels of rationality differs from culture to culture.
Culture of honor

Genetic doesn't mean inevitable, and cultural doesn't mean easy to fix.

More testosterone, less social.

Problems of empathy and problems of social cognition are more prevalent among male than female.

The pain of others is even aversive to babies.

Chimpanzees are empathetic to other chimpanzees, but not other animals, like rabbits.

The Robbers Cave study: common goal, common fate to rebuild a larger group from separated groups.

minimal groups: Henri Tajfel

Moral Judgments: evaluation; obligation; sanctions
Three frameworks of moral thought: ethics of autonomy (rights, equality, freedom), ethics of community (duty, status, hierarchy, interdependence), ethics of divinity (purity, sanctity, pollution, sin)

acquaintances matter.



You THINK everyone notices you.
1. Spotlight effect.
2. Transparency effect: people systematically overestimate the extent to which other people notice their secrets. We constantly overestimate how much other people know.

Positive enhancement effect...we feel good about ourselves.

Festinger cognitive dissonance... we act to reduce dissonance...
can also be explained by status quo bias? Not in this case.
people who get paid $1 reported to enjoy the task more than those who get paid $20.
People who are in a bad relationship for quite a long time tend to convince themselves that they are in love with their partners, even their partners are jerks.
"haze" in fraternity, get people to like the group.
"If you don't pay people, they are more committed to the cause."
Therapy for free are more likely to be ineffective.
Cognitive Dissonance... vs. intrinsic motivation...
We adjust our beliefs to make ourselves look more moral and rational than we are.

Three findings about yourself:
You THINK everyone notices you.
You believe that you are terrific
What you do makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, or if something you do is foolish or make you look manipulative or cheap, you will distort it in your head so that it does make sense.


"mere exposure effect"
People tend to like something they see often or they see before. People like their mirror image more, while their friends will like their image more.
familiarity is itself a force for liking.

couples become more and more similar during the course of the relationship.

"Matthew effect" developmental psychology term. the rich get richer...

stereotype...

Other people's expectations are important for people's behavior.
People are full of potentials. But people's stereotyping makes them ignorant of the evidence that is against their stereotyping. We other people believe that you cannot do well, they tend to ignore the evidence that you are doing well. So if most people believe that you cannot do well, it doesn't help that much if you do well, because they are unlikely to notice anyway. You then may get discouraged and don't try at all to do well. People's low expectation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not that high expectations increase people's performance, but rather that low expectations extremely limit people's potentials.

Why people tend to ignore evidence that is against their theories and beliefs? To reduce cognitive dissonance.

being chased is the most common dream.
memory consolidates during a dream


Laughter is social and communicative. involuntary noise-making.

Most laughter is inspired by some degree of aggression, but it's attenuated and not real. A laughter is a signal that it's not real. Mock aggression; collective aggression.
"Laughter is a form of bonding against a common enemy. a sound of group cohesion against common enemy."



Schemas are frameworks that develop to help organize knowledge.

•Assimilation -process of taking new information or a new experience and fitting it into an already existing schema
•Accommodation -process by which existing schemas are changed or new schemas are created in order to fit new information