Behaviour & Environment 3 Aantekeningen 1
Why do people behave the way they do?
Intrapersonal psychological processes that underlie behaviour
Situational factors play in and interaction with personal factors
Theme 1: Thinking before doing?: Impulsive and reflective processes in behavioural control
- Mental representations
- How is knowledge stored in our mind?
- Impulsive versus reflective behaviour
- Understanding priming effects
Thinking before doing?
Environment Mental representations Behaviour
Mental representations
The environment can be everything. We have mental representations that can be accessible.
Behaviour is what is being activated by thew mental representations
Mental representations: “Any mental content or operation that stands for something else in
the world” (Payne & Cameron, 2013)
Examples of mental representations: categories, exemplas, symbols, mental images,
memories, truth values, probabilites, schemas etc.
Function mental representations: “For the most part we do not first see and
then define, but define first and then see”. Lippmann, (1922).
Function of mental representation
- Classification: you immediately know a glass is a glass unless you haven’t seen it
before. You have information about objects or social objects for predicting the future
- Additional attributes
- Steering attention and interpretation: a glass is bigger when you are thirsty. You see
what you want to see
- Communication
- Thinking
Availability & Accessibility
All the information that is available
You don’t need all these types of information accessible at one time.
What is accessible is the piece of paper that is at hand at a specific moment in time
Accessibility can be defined as the activation potential of available knowledge (Higgins,
1996)
Activation of mental representation (Macrae, Bodenhausen &
Milhne, 1995)
2 videos: a woman doing her make up and a woman with
chopsticks.
,Flashing words, you have to decide if it an existing word or not. Question: how quick can you
recognize it?
You see that people are able to recognize words faster when a mental representation is
activated before. You can also say that it takes longer to recognize non-related words to the
video.
How is knowledge stored?
Associative network models (as a computer)
The different notes about coffee are accessible when you think about
coffee. It is activated like a spreading activation. All kinds of
information that is connected to coffee
Schema models (as a computer)
Perceivers “go beyond the information given”(Bruner, 1957)
Schemas operate as a lens
Directs attention, memory and judgement
You have a schema about the knowledge about the situation. Directing attention about the
situation when you have coffee. The relationships are activated. Not only about notes.
Predictive coding (as a computer)
Beyesian processes:
- Priors affect perception
- Posterior (comparison between perception and prior)
You have a ‘prior’ about how it is like to be. The perception is how the real observation is.
Positive prior: when the expectation is the same as the situation
Negative prior: when the expectation is not the same as the situation
Function: it thinks about the brain as a predicting computer. And this model tests the
predicting computer. When it is not the same, the prediction will be adapted.
Some priors are stronger than others
Connectionist models (as a computer)
Connectionism: parallel distribution processing
- Nodes
- Facilitative and inhibitive links
- Concepts exist by means of dynamic interplay of
distributed elements. They don’t have meaning in their
own, only in the interaction.
- Input, connection weights (hidden), and output elements
Multiple format models
,Related to brain areas and related to different behaviours. You have semantic, affective and
procedural behaviours.
Embodied cognition
Do mental representations extend outside the mind, both to the body and to the external
environment?
Representations are modality-specific
Stored “in the body”
Partial re-experience
Situated cognition
Situated cognition: mental representations result from dynamic interactions between the brain,
body, and environment
We learn form the models about how people think it could be. We could test them, but there is
not 1 way of storing information. Some models are tested better.
Impulsive versus reflective behaviour
Environment mental representations behaviour
Behaviour regulation
- Impulsive versus reflective behaviour
- Understanding priming effects
‘Four horsemen’ of automaticity
- Level of consciousness related to automaticity. The less consciousness, the more
automatic behaviour. Subliminal information can effect your behaviour
- Level of efficiency: getting driving license. More experience more efficient and
automatic
- Level of intentionality: get stuck in old habits.
- Level of controllability: behaviour that is under your control will be less automatic.
Reflective impulsive system
Two systems:
- Impulsive: always active,
associations, activated by
environment
- Reflective: need motivation and
opportunity to be activated.
Makes propositions, based on
associations
Impulsive processes
, Behaviour within the impulsive system is based on spreading activation of knowledge to
motor representations according to ideo-motor processes.
Thinking about behaviour is enough to trigger behavior
“Every representation of movement awakens in some degree the
actual movement which is its object” (William James, 1890).
This is related to mirror neurons
Negations are not completely stored in here.
"Only if there is sufficient processing time, intention
and cognitive capacity to extract meaning of a
negation will at the reflective system be engaged and
the task successfully completed” p.227
Reflective processes
Behaviour in the reflective system is based on
choices.
Choices may, by means of intentions, activate motor representations in the impulsive system.
Choice can be based on:
- full consideration of pros and cons
- intuition (“this option feels good/bad”)
- or anything in between
Choices Intention Motor representation
When processes are in conflict
