Puzzle Pieces

Group project. Every time I hear that phrase, feelings of dread wash over me as I remember horrible presentations and projects from middle school and high school. Invariably, the girl who no one could get in touch with or the guy who left everything until the last minute would end up in my group. Of course, things would be incredibly stressful and rushed, and at the end, we would somehow find a way to pull it all together. In college, it’s even harder to meet up and work on group projects. Invariably, everyone at Duke has the uncanny ability to fill their schedules with classes and extracurricular activities. And, when finals week approaches, it seems that there isn’t enough hours in a day to get everything done. For this reason, I was worried that this group project experience would be terrible. However, I was pleasantly surprised!  As I had expected, it was difficult to meet one another, especially in the middle of exams, presentations, and projects.  But, when we were together, everyone worked so hard and had such creative ideas to contribute. In the end, we each contributed our own piece to the puzzle, and it was actually fun to see the presentation come together. I am not very creative, so it was also so helpful to hear the suggestions that Mike and Floyd had! In the end, I think we did a great job and enjoyed the final product.

My Fair 'Lady'

'Lady' used to play games with me!

My grandparents have always had dogs. I have many memories of playing fetch using a tennis ball or running through the park with the dogs. Apparently, my grandmother’s very old dog, Lady, used to follow me when I was a toddler, play with me as I put together blocks, sleep beside my bed, and bark at any stranger that came near me. My grandmother always says that we had some deep connection, and she swore that Lady knew what I was thinking and tried to protect me. Evidence is surfacing about animals exhibiting theory of mind in very specific contexts, and one can indeed see some indication of this in dogs. I, unfortunately, have never owned a pet. With multiple family members who are terribly allergic to dog and cat fur, our household has never had animals running through the corridors. However, even with Lady, I remember a sort of understanding of my intentions and goals on her part. She barked when I walked near a stranger.  She played with me and demonstrated joint attention during games. I’m not sure how much of my experiences and understanding of our relationship is due to anthropomorphism or due to her real capacity for theory of mind expectations. For this reason, I would be interested to hear what evolutionary anthropologists and social psychologists have to say on the subject.

Visual Search

I have been a participant in many research studies before, but this was the first time that I participated in one using a neuroscientific approach. 

I participated in a two-part visual search study conducted by the Stephen Mitroff lab. On the first day, I gave my experimenter a saliva sample and answered a series of questionnaires asking about the last time I had drunk caffeine or taken any medications. One can only assume that this was because they were conducting some sort of study analyzing hormones. In addition, I answered a multitude of questions evaluating my personality traits, preferences, emotions and temperament, hobbies and interests, and judgments about society. In the second portion of the study, I had to take an eye test which makes sense given that I had to take part in visual searches. I performed a series of visual search tasks involving colors, direction of lines, math, and letters. The study involved four blocks each of four different tasks, and though it was very long, I was given moments to rest my eyes. Though I am not sure what the actual point of the study was, I had a lot of fun! 

I have been interested in visual perception since I took the “Perception in the Brain” course last spring. As a research project for that class, I created my own visual search task akin to the one in the image above. Participants searched for a target letter 'T' amidst distracting 'L' shapes. However, there are many different kinds of visual searches examining the efficiency of our visual perception system. In this case, the experimenters seemed to be examining visual perception in conjunction with personality. I am eager to see what the results of this experiment will be! 

Dehumanization

Dr. Susan Fiske came to speak at Duke about the treats of stereotyping and its consequences for the evaluation of those around us. She presented her stereotype content model, which describes how humans tend to categorize other groups of people based on race, gender, age, and status in society. In addition, social relationships, cooperation, competition, and power can encourage or discourage forms of discrimination. By asking people to make judgments about social groups using two dimensions, warmth and competence, she was able to point out how society values them. For example, in the video clip below, Dr. Fiske and Ph D candidate Mike North discuss the pity that people feel for older people, who are categorized as having high warmth but low competence. 

I was most intrigued by her thoughts on dehumanization of certain groups. Those who are believed to have low warmth and low competence are evaluated with disgust, like those who are homeless. She noted that fMRI studies have indicated that the MPFC does not activate when we evaluate the homeless. She suggested that almost as if by default, we do not humanize them and think about their points of view. In other words, it seems as though we dehumanize people with our stereotypes of disgust. Going beyond our categories and prejudices to learn about the individual person requires motivation. If we are asked to think about the mental states of members of those groups, then we are more likely to individuate them and humanize them. I found it shocking that universally, our default tendency to form quick judgments about groups of people can involve dehumanizing others. However, it gives me hope that this can be overcome!

Hume's Philosophy

I find David Hume’s philosophy absolutely intriguing. He was a Scottish philosopher and empiricist who believed that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Unlike Descartes and the rationalists before him, he believed that desire rather than reason governs human behavior and examined moral philosophy and free will within that context. He also believed that innate ideas do not exist, arguing that before humans can have impressions of the world, they must first directly experience them and learn from them, akin to the "tabula rasa" philosophy of Locke. For this reason, he felt that in scientific reasoning, we have to be careful about the things we include because they are biased by our perceptions. Our morality and ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract principles inherent in nature. Finally, he noted that we develop our scientific reasoning about the phenomena around us by noting the “constant conjunction” of causes and effects that occur, all based on the proximity of two events occurring in time. I think that this does indeed shed light on how we observe phenomenon in the world and form theories about why and how they occur. We do need to be careful about observing phenomenon in a controlled setting so that we rule out third variables as being the cause for something. Our passions do cause us to see the things we are looking for in the world and do color our perceptions of the things we experience. I look forward to learning more about his thoughts!