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URL: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/30963
Updated: 46 min 23 sec ago

Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Social and political change in diverse societies: Insights from largescale panel studies

Thu, 18/04/2024 - 09:18
Social and political change in diverse societies: Insights from largescale panel studies

Largescale panel studies, with stratified, random samples of a nation’s population, are relatively rare in the psychological literature. By measuring change at multiple levels over long periods of time, these studies can tell us about the relationship between individuals and the societies in which they live. This includes (1) how features of the social structure, such as inequality or deprivation, affect people and (2) how people affect the social structure (via their policy preferences and political behaviour). I will review recent research on these two key elements of societal functioning – structural effects and structural change – from two panels in very different contexts. The first is a 13-wave longitudinal study of around 20,000 New Zealanders. The second is a 3-wave study of around 160,000 people in India. I will also introduce a new panel from the UK, where we invite 500,000 people randomly sampled from the electoral register to participate in survey of social and political attitudes annually over five years. This research programme demonstrates how largescale panel data can inform theory and policy, by telling us more about how people change, and how they change their societies.

The talk is open to the public.

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Fri 17 May 16:30: The Cognitive Biology of Language The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

Thu, 11/04/2024 - 15:21
The Cognitive Biology of Language

The cognitive revolution in the middle of the last century has transformed the ways in which we study the human mind. Curiously, when it comes to language there is a growing behaviourist trend, where it is regarded as an acquired skill, not unlike the way in which Large Language Models (LLMs) work. In contrast, linguists in the Generative Grammar tradition consider the faculty of language to be a computational system within the mind, part of the human biological endowment. This means that biological aspects of language, in particular evolution, development, and (neural) mechanisms, are open to investigation. I will discuss recent work on ‘comparative linguistics’, particularly the behavioural, neural and cognitive parallels between human language and birdsong, and what we can and cannot conclude from it. The current behaviourist view of language has led to the rapid rise of LLMs, although these AI models are actually not about language at all. Natural language appears to be unique to the human mind, and has no parallels either in animal or artificial intelligence.

The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

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Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Social and political change in diverse societies: Insights from largescale panel studies

Wed, 10/04/2024 - 15:19
Social and political change in diverse societies: Insights from largescale panel studies

Largescale panel studies, with stratified, random samples of a nation’s population, are relatively rare in the psychological literature. By measuring change at multiple levels over long periods of time, these studies can tell us about the relationship between individuals and the societies in which they live. This includes (1) how features of the social structure, such as inequality or deprivation, affect people and (2) how people affect the social structure (via their policy preferences and political behaviour). I will review recent research on these two key elements of societal functioning – structural effects and structural change – from two panels in very different contexts. The first is a 13-wave longitudinal study of around 20,000 New Zealanders. The second is a 3-wave study of around 160,000 people in India. I will also introduce a new panel from the UK, where we invite 500,000 people randomly sampled from the electoral register to participate in survey of social and political attitudes annually over five years. This research programme demonstrates how largescale panel data can inform theory and policy, by telling us more about how people change, and how they change their societies.

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Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 10/04/2024 - 14:14
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 03 Jun 15:00: The evolution of Alzheimer’s disease in the aging brain

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:47
The evolution of Alzheimer’s disease in the aging brain

Abstract not available

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Thu 06 Jun 14:00: The role of reward in language learning

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:15
The role of reward in language learning

Abstract not available

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Thu 30 May 14:00: The problem with mental health awareness

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:14
The problem with mental health awareness

Abstract not available

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Thu 23 May 14:00: How does the human brain recognize faces?

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:14
How does the human brain recognize faces?

Abstract not available

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Thu 16 May 14:00: Sleep to forget unwanted memories

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:13
Sleep to forget unwanted memories

Abstract not available

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Thu 09 May 14:00: Recognition memory, its neural bases, and the role of ‘parietal’ attention allocation in its function

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:12
Recognition memory, its neural bases, and the role of ‘parietal’ attention allocation in its function

Abstract not available

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Thu 02 May 14:00: Paranoia: My life understanding and treating extreme mistrust

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:12
Paranoia: My life understanding and treating extreme mistrust

Abstract not available

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Thu 25 Apr 14:00: Early phase neuroplasticity induced by transcranial ultrasound stimulation

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:11
Early phase neuroplasticity induced by transcranial ultrasound stimulation

Abstract not available

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Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Political Polarization, Social Norms, and Sorting: An Agent-based Social Sampling Model In person only

Mon, 18/03/2024 - 10:18
Political Polarization, Social Norms, and Sorting: An Agent-based Social Sampling Model

I will describe a cognitive model of social influence and apply it to several social network phenomena including polarization, social contagion, and sorting/issue alignment. We use agent-based modelling to link individual-level and network-level effects. Social norms and individuals’ private attitudes are assumed to be represented as distributions rather than single points. People located within a social network observe the behaviour of their network neighbours and hence infer the social distribution of particular attitudes and behaviours. It is assumed that (a) people dislike behaving in ways that are extreme within their neighbourhood social norm (social extremeness aversion assumption), and hence tend to conform and (b) people prefer to behave consistently with their own underlying attitudes (authenticity preference assumption) hence minimizing dissonance. Expressed attitudes and behaviour reflect a utility-maximizing compromise between these opposing principles. A number of polarisation-related social network phenomena emerge in the model. Sorting (increased correlation of attitudes) is shown to emerge only when agents seek to differentiate themselves from an outgroup as well as align with an ingroup.

This talk is in person only and hosted by David Young and Lee De-Wit.

In person only

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Fri 15 Mar 16:30: The role of affective relevance in emotion, attention, and memory The host for this talk is Deborah Talmi

Wed, 13/03/2024 - 16:13
The role of affective relevance in emotion, attention, and memory

The talk will start by presenting the approach that we recently called “affectivism”: the idea that the inclusion of affective processes in models of mind, brain and behaviour not only explains affective phenomena but, critically, further enhances the power of such models to explain cognition and behaviour. Consistently with this approach, we will then discuss evidence that “concern relevance” is a potential amygdala-based mechanism allowing to explain several facilitatory effects of emotion on attention, learning and memory.

The host for this talk is Deborah Talmi

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Wed 06 Mar 15:00: Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

Mon, 04/03/2024 - 13:38
Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

This talk is open to the general public.

Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675

Passcode: yKwfhf

Yan Xia (Aalto University):

Title: Integrated or Segregated? User Behavior Change after Cross-Party Interactions on Reddit

Abstract: It is a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbates political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo chambers, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether users will actually become more integrated or instead more segregated following such interactions on real social media platforms. We fill this gap by inspecting how users change their community participation after receiving a cross-party reply in the U.S. politics discussion on Reddit. More specifically, we investigate if their participation increases in communities of the opposing party, or in communities of their own party. We find that receiving a reply is significantly associated with increased user activity in both types of communities; when the reply is a cross-party one, the activity boost in cross-party communities is weaker. Nevertheless, compared with the case of receiving no reply, users are still significantly more likely to increase their participation in cross-party communities after receiving a cross-party reply. Our results therefore hint at a depolarization effect of cross-party interactions that better integrate users into discussions of the opposing side.

James Ackland (Cambridge):

Title: The Geographical Psychology of Ideological Misalignment

Abstract: Political psychologists have debated whether ideology is constructed from the top-down, by national-level parties and elites forming packages of beliefs to “sell” to voters (Downs, 1957); or from the bottom-up, by voters themselves aligning policy preferences with more fundamental social and psychological needs (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). In this work, I assume that both processes coexist, and show how their interaction can explain some of the phenomena that characterise our modern politics. Of particular interest are places where bottom-up preferences are not matched by the top-down political offering. In Western Europe, this often means places where social conservatism exists alongside left-leaning economic preferences, in contrast to the pairing of social conservatism with a free-market ideology at the national level. In such places, I hypothesise that populist politics will be more successful, as measured by voting behaviour and political attitudes.

Nikolay Petrov (Cambridge):

Title: Limited ability of LLMs to simulate human psychological behaviours: an in-depth psychometric analysis

Abstract: The humanlike responses of Large Language Models (LLMs) have prompted social scientists to investigate whether LLMs can be used to simulate human participants in experiments, opinion polls and surveys. Of central interest in this line of research has been mapping out the psychological profile of LLMs by prompting them to respond to standardized questionnaires. The conflicting findings of this research are unsurprising given that going from LLMs’ text responses on surveys to mapping out underlying, or latent, traits is no easy task. To address this, we use psychometrics, the science of psychological measurement. In this study, we prompt OpenAI’s flagship models, GPT -3.5 and GPT -4, by asking them to assume different personas and respond to a range of standardized measures of personality constructs. We used two kinds of persona descriptions: either generic (5 random person descriptions) or specific (mostly demographics of actual humans from a large-scale human dataset). We found that using generic persona descriptions, more powerful models, such as GPT -4, show promising abilities to respond coherently, and similar to human norms, but both models failed miserably in assuming specific personas, described using demographic variables. We conclude that, currently, when LLMs are prompted to simulate specific human(s), they cannot represent latent traits and thus their responses fail to generalize across tasks.

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Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Fri, 01/03/2024 - 16:34
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 29 May 15:00: Cambridge Overcoming Polarisation Initiative

Fri, 01/03/2024 - 16:33
Cambridge Overcoming Polarisation Initiative

Abstract not available

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Fri 17 May 16:30: Language, Mind and Brain The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

Wed, 21/02/2024 - 11:02
Language, Mind and Brain

Abstract not available

The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

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Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Cambridge Overcoming Polarisation Initiative

Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:55
Cambridge Overcoming Polarisation Initiative

Abstract not available

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Wed 21 Feb 15:00: How Can the Behavioral Sciences Inform the Climate Crisis Response?

Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
How Can the Behavioral Sciences Inform the Climate Crisis Response?

The climate crisis is one of humanity’s most consequential and challenging threats, and addressing it requires massive behavioral and structural changes. As such, the behavioral sciences can play a critical role in this effort, through large-scale interventions and policy innovations. Following a unifying theoretical framework and leveraging a large array of methods, I investigate avenues in which the behavioral sciences can inform the climate crisis response, by changing false beliefs and stimulating climate action at the individual, collective, and system level. At the individual level, I use behavioral experiments to explore belief change strategies leveraging cognitive processes such as mnemonic accessibility, prediction errors, and emotional arousal, that can be used to decrease the prevalence of climate misinformation. At the collective level, I use social network analysis to investigate emergent properties of collective beliefs, such as synchronization and polarization, to maximize the effectiveness of individual interventions deployed in communities. At the system level, I investigate cycles of climate denialism propagation between society and artificial intelligence algorithms. Finally, to link conceptual processes to their behavioral signatures, I take a global megastudy approach to empirically test the relative effectiveness of the main theoretically informed behavioral interventions at stimulating collective climate action in 63 countries. Together, these theoretical insights spanning individual, collective, and systemic levels of analyses aim to inform policy and streamline the behavioral sciences’ response to the climate crisis.

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