ch 13 social cognition

Empathy

Ability to understand and share another person’s emotions

Empathetic accuracy

Ability to correctly infer another person’s thoughts and feelings

Experience sharing theory

Empathy arises from internally simulating others’ emotional experiences

False belief task

Test of theory of mind where one predicts behavior based on another person’s incorrect belief

Mental state attribution

Inferring others’ thoughts, intentions, and emotions to predict behavior

Reversal learning

Ability to adapt behavior when reward contingencies change

Simulation theory

Understanding others by mentally simulating their mental states

Social cognitive neuroscience

Study of neural mechanisms underlying social cognition

Theory theory

Idea that we develop rules or theories to predict others’ behavior

Biological motion

Perception of movement patterns that indicate living beings

Animacy perception

Tendency to attribute intention or agency to movement

Mirror neuron system

Neurons that fire during both action execution and observation

Psychopathy / antisocial personality disorder

Condition involving lack of empathy, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior

Utilization behavior

Automatic, inappropriate use of objects due to frontal damage