Academic literature on the topic 'Collective cognition'

Das Zusammenleben in Gruppen ist im Tierreich ein weit verbreitetes Phänomen. Einer der Vorteile des Gruppenlebens könnte die sogenannte „Schwarmintelligenz“ sein, das heißt die Fähigkeit von Gruppen kognitive Probleme zu lösen, die die Problemlösekompetenz einzelner Individuen übersteigt. In der vorliegenden Dissertation untersuchte ich, ob die Gruppengröße beim Menschen und bei Fischen mit einer verbesserten Entscheidungsfindung einhergeht. Beim Menschen analysierte ich zunächst das Abschneiden von Einzelpersonen, die später als Teil einer Gruppe getestet wurden, in einfachen Einschätzungsaufgaben sowie komplizierteren Satz-Rekonstruktionstests. Meine Frage war, ob es Individuen in Gruppen gelingt bessere Entscheidungen zutreffen als das einem durchschnittlichen Individuum der Gruppe alleine möglich wäre und ob Gruppen sogar die Leistung ihres besten Mitglieds in den individuellen Tests überbieten könnten. Tatsächlich konnte ich zeigen, dass Gruppen die Leistung des besten Mitglieds übertreffen, wenn die Problemstellung für Einzelpersonen zu komplex ist oder sich häufig wiederholt. Weiterhin gelang mir zu zeigen, dass Gruppen von Menschen bei einer simulierten Prädationssituation, ähnlich wie es bereits für andere Tierarten beschrieben wurde, anhand von so genannten „Quorum“-Regeln durch non-verbale Kommunikation entscheiden, ob sie bleiben oder flüchten. Dabei dienen einfache Bewegungsmuster als Schlüsselreiz. Individuen einer Gruppe erhöhen durch diesen Mechanismus gleichzeitig ihre echt positiven und verringern ihre falsch positiven Entscheidungen. Beim Guppy, einem Süßwasserfisch aus Trinidad, untersuchte ich in deren natürlichem Habitat, ob die Fähigkeit einzelner Individuen zwischen einer genießbaren und einer ungenießbaren Futterquelle zu unterscheiden, mit der Gruppengröße ansteigt. Meine Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Guppys mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit eine genießbare Futterquelle identifizierten, sobald sie Teil einer größeren Gruppe waren.<br>Group living is a widespread phenomenon. One of its assumed advantages is collective cognition, the ability of groups to solve cognitive problems that are beyond single individuals’ abilities. In this thesis, I investigated whether decision-making improves with group size in both humans and fish, thus using the strengths of each system. In humans, I tested individual performance in simple quantity estimation tasks and a more difficult sentence reconstruction task first alone and then as part of a group. My question was whether groups were able to improve not only on average individual decisions, but also to beat their best members. Indeed, when a given problem is recurrent or too complex for individuals, groups were able to outperform their best members in different contexts. Furthermore, I showed that in a simulated predation experiment, groups of humans decided to stay or to escape using quorum thresholds based on movement behaviour without verbal communication, as has been shown in other animals. This simple movement mechanism allowed individuals in groups to simultaneously increase true positives and decrease false positives. In the guppy, a freshwater fish from Trinidad, I tested in their natural environment whether individuals’ ability to distinguish between an edible and a non-edible food item increases with group size. My results indicate that guppies had better chances to identify the edible food item when part of bigger groups. By investigating several populations with different ecological backgrounds, in particular differing in predation levels, I found that, despite a lower sampling activity in high predation habitats, predation did not affect the improvement of decisions in groups.

The main goal of this study was to identify some determinants of collective efficacy in small groups. A multilevel approach was used to posit hypotheses and research questions relating individual and shared beliefs of collective efficacy to collective cognition activities, task interdependence, self-efficacy for group work, and collective orientation. A two-phase longitudinal design was employed. The sample comprised 270 university students, enrolled in seven courses and involved in 86 work groups in both phases of the study. All groups were required to perform interdependent academic tasks. The results of multiple regression analysis of aggregated variables provided some evidence that the more group members perceived themselves to be interdependent in the early stages of group work and assigned their tasks interdependently during group processes, the more likely they developed high collective efficacy in the final stages of group work. Collective efficacy was also related to the group average of self-efficacy for group work when task interdependence was high. Multilevel analysis was also used. These results showed that variation at the individual level was considerable, and there was significant but relatively little variation at the group level, with small effect sizes, for a few variables including collective efficacy. Structural equation modelling was used to confirm the theoretical framework at the individual level after accounting for group level variation. The results suggested that integration and constructive evaluation of ideas during group processes and self-efficacy for group work may have been determinants of collective efficacy at the individual level. Moreover, collective efficacy at the individual level was related to an interdependent perception of self in relation to other group members. The results suggest that helping group members learn how to evaluate and integrate each other???s ideas during group activities, and perceive themselves to be interdependent may enhance group capabilities for performing tasks. In addition, improving students??? self-efficacy for group work was identified as a key factor, as it may enhance a sense of interdependence among group members, improve the extent to which group members participate in integrating and evaluating ideas, and increase the whole group???s capabilities for performing tasks.

Navigating the physical world may present only a small fraction of the challenges faced by social animals. Sociality brings with it numerous benefits, including access to important information that may have otherwise been harder to come by. However, almost every aspect of these apparent benefits may also entail additional cognitive challenges, including how to interpret signals from conspecifics, who to attend to, and how to incorporate knowledge about signallers when deciding how to respond. One approach to understanding the cognitive abilities associated with social function is to investigate social species that take part in potentially costly group behaviours, where individual decisions must be made in a social context. In this thesis I explore how jackdaws (Corvus monedula), a highly sociable corvid species, use acoustic information to coordinate collective anti-predator responses. In Chapter Two I showed using playback experiments that the magnitude of collective responses to anti-predator recruitment calls known as “scolding” calls depends on the identity of the caller, with larger responses to familiar colony members than unfamiliar individuals. In Chapter Three I then used habituation-dishabituation experiments to show that this vocal discrimination operates at the level of the individual, with jackdaws discriminating between the calls of different conspecifics, regardless of their level of familiarity. In Chapter Four, I examined whether aspects of call structure conveyed information about threat levels. Here, I found that high rates of scolding calls were associated with elevated threats, and playback experiments suggested that this information might result in larger group responses. The finding that jackdaws are capable of mediating their response to alarm calls based on the identity of the individual caller, and on structural variation in call production, raised the question of whether jackdaws employed similar forms discrimination between acoustic cues made by predators in their environment. I investigated this in Chapter Five, using playback experiments to show that jackdaws responded not only to the vocalisations of resident predators, but that this ability extended to novel predators, and that responsiveness was mediated by the phase of the breeding season in which predators were heard. Together, these findings provide insights in to how discrimination among acoustic cues can mediate group behaviour in species that respond collectively to threats.

According to many philosophers and scientists, human sociality is explained by our unique capacity to ‘share’ the mental states of others and to form collective intentional states. Collective intentionality has been widely debated in the past two decades, focusing especially on the issue of its reducibility to individual intentionality and the place of collective intentions in the natural realm. It is not clear, however, to what extent these two issues are related, and what methodologies of investigation are appropriate in each case. In this thesis I set out a theory of the naturalization of collective intentionality that draws a line between naturalizability arguments and theories of collective intentionality naturalized. The former provide reasons for believing in the naturalness of collective intentional states based on our commonsense understanding of them; the latter offer responses to the ontological question about the existence and identity of collective as distinct from individual intentionality. This model is naturalistic because it holds that the only way to establish the place of mental entities in the order of things is through the theory and practice of science. After reviewing naturalizability arguments in philosophy, I consider an influential research program in the cognitive sciences. On the account that I present, the irreducibility of collective intentionality can be derived from a theory of human development in scientific psychology dealing with phenomena of sociality like communication, recently refined by Michael Tomasello.

Collective memory is a socially shared representation of the past. History, contrastingly, strives to be an unbiased, objective, and critical account of the past. Many researchers have argued that the so-called “history” found in school textbooks and curriculums align more with collective memory; however, many individuals do not know of the pervasiveness of collective memory in supposed “history” texts. To examine perceptions of accuracy and preference of American “history” textbook passages, individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n= 404) participated in an online study where they were randomly assigned to read one passage that was either negatively biased, neutral, or positively biased regarding the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Participants rated their emotional valence of the event and their perceptions of accuracy and preference for the passage. The results suggest that individuals perceive negatively biased passages as less accurate and less preferable, even if their emotional valence matches the bias within the text. Individuals also showed the hypothesized interaction for preference; those who perceived the event as not negative preferred the positive text to the neutral and negative texts. The findings support evidence that individuals are motivated to prefer history passages consistent with their attitudes and rate higher accuracy among positive and neutral texts. The results have broader implications on reporting or dismissing human rights violations within collective memory.

Sexual objectification occurs whenever a person is treated like a sexual object, reduced to a body (or sexual body parts) and used for the pleasure and consumption of others (Bartky, 1980; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). According to Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) women are the main targets of sexual objectification, which is mainly associated with the male objectifying gaze in two contexts: the exposure to sexually objectifying mass media (e.g. television, movies, magazines, advertisements in which women are depicted as sexual objects) and during social interactions. According to the objectification theoretical framework, sexually objectifying experiences are not devoid from important negative effects on women’s psychological well-being. Indeed, the theory proposed that the first direct consequence of sexually objectifying experiences is self-objectification, which leads women to internalize the objectifying observer’s perspective on the physical self, thus reducing the self to an object (Bartky, 1980; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). In turn self-objectification has been linked to increased body shame, appearance anxiety, and proclivity to eating, depression, and sexual disorders (Moradi & Hefflick, 2008). We started our work noticing that, although sexually objectifying experiences are the precursors of self-objectification and its subsequent adverse outcomes on women, very few researchers have actually tested this causal chain by directly manipulating the exposure to sexually objectifying experiences. Therefore, the general aim of the present work was to contribute to the objectification theoretical framework by testing the causal role of sexually objectifying experiences on women’s psychological, cognitive and social responses. Therefore, in Chapter 1 we will present a brief introduction and review of previous research conducted within the objectification theoretical framework. In Chapter 2, we will present a set of three studies that have investigated the effects of the objectifying male gaze experienced in interpersonal encounters and the exposure to sexually objectifying visual media on women’s psychological outcomes and cognitive performance. In particular we aimed at overcoming possible limitations in the interpretation of previous research that have studied cognitive performance (i.e. Stereotype Threat); taking into account important moderators (i.e. Internalization of sociocultural beauty standards, Social appearance anxiety), we will provide evidence that supports the notion that the exposure to sexually objectifying experiences indeed affects women’s cognitive resources. In addition, we will also investigate possible mechanisms (i.e. Task Intrusive Thoughts, Flow experience) underlying the decrements in performance. Finally, we will bring novel evidence that sexually objectifying experiences are causally linked with adverse psychological outcomes for women (i.e. self-objectification and body dissatisfaction). Our results generally supported the idea that sexually objectifying experiences are the causal precursor of both adverse psychological and cognitive outcomes for women and that important moderators of such causal chain should be taken into account. In Chapter 3, we will present a final study that has investigated the effects of exposure to sexually objectifying television, as well as a reasoned critique of such media content, on gender collective action inclination and behavioral intentions to participate in activism. The results demonstrate, for the first time, that exposure to a reasoned critique of sexually objectifying television motivates women, but not men, to react and to participate in collective actions that aim at reducing such degrading TV portrayals. The results bring novel evidence that the promotion of a critical view of TV through, for example, sensitizing campaigns, might represent an effective intervention to promote social activism and contrast the sexual objectification vicious cycle. Finally, in Chapter 4 in light of the objectification theoretical framework we will discuss the implications of the present findings and suggest future directions.<br>L’Oggettivazione Sessuale si verifica ogni volta che una persona è trattata come un oggetto sessuale, ridotta ad un corpo (o alle sue parti sessuali) e utilizzata per il piacere e il consumo altrui (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Secondo la Teoria dell’Oggettivazione (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), le donne sono i target principali dell’oggettivazione sessuale, che è principalmente messa in atto attraverso lo sguardo oggettivante maschile soprattutto in due contesti: l’esposizione a mass media sessualmente oggettivanti (e.g. televisione, film, riviste, pubblicità) e durante le interazioni sociali. Secondo il modello teorico dell’oggettivazione, le esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti non sono prive di importanti effetti negativi sul benessere delle donne. La prima conseguenza diretta è l’Auto-Oggettivazione, che porta le donne ad interiorizzare la prospettiva dell'osservatore oggettivante sul sé fisico, riducendo così il sé ad un oggetto (Bartky, 1980; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). L’auto-oggettivazione è stata a sua volta collegata all’aumento di vergogna per il proprio corpo, all’ansia legata all’apparenza e all’insorgenza di disordini alimentari, depressivi e sessuali (Moradi e Hefflick, 2008). Partendo da questo quadro teorico, nella presente dissertazione ho focalizzato l'attenzione sulle conseguenze delle esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti sull’auto-oggettivazione delle donne, sulle loro prestazioni cognitive e sulla loro volontà di partecipare ad attivismo sociale. Pertanto, nel primo capitolo presenterò una breve rassegna dei precedenti lavori che hanno indagato il processo di oggettivazione sessuale e i suoi effetti. Abbiamo iniziato il nostro lavoro notando che, sebbene le esperienze oggettivanti sessualmente siano il precursore dell’auto-oggettivazione e dei suoi successivi risultati negativi sul benessere delle donne, pochissime ricerche hanno effettivamente verificato questa catena causale manipolando direttamente l'esposizione a esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti. Pertanto, l'obiettivo generale del presente lavoro tesi è stato quello di espandere ulteriormente il quadro teorico dell’oggettivazione testando la catena causale tra le esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti e le risposte psicologiche, cognitive e sociali delle donne. Pertanto, nel Capitolo 1 presenteremo una breve introduzione e rassegna delle precedenti ricerche condotte all’interno del quadro teorico dell’oggettivazione. Nel capitolo 2, presenteremo una serie di tre studi che hanno indagato gli effetti dello sguardo maschile oggettivante vissuto in interazioni interpersonali, nonché l'esposizione a media sessualmente oggettivanti sugli esiti psicologici e le prestazioni cognitive delle donne. In particolare, si è cercato di superare i possibili limiti interpretativi delle precedenti ricerche che hanno studiato le prestazioni cognitive (i.e. Stereotype Threat) e, tenendo conto di importanti moderatori (i.e. Internalizzazione del canone di bellezza socio-culturale, Ansia sociale legata all’apparenza), offriremo evidenze a sostegno dell'idea che l'esposizione ad esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti di fatto diminuisce le risorse cognitive delle donne. Inoltre, approfondiremo possibili meccanismi (i.e. Pensieri intrusivi durante il compito, Esperienza di flusso) che stanno alla base dei decrementi della prestazione. Infine, forniremo nuove dimostrazioni del fatto che esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti causano conseguenze psicologiche negative per le donne (i.e. Auto-oggettivazione e Insoddisfazione per il proprio corpo). Più in generale, i risultati sostengono l'idea che le esperienze sessualmente oggettivanti sono il precursore causale di conseguenze sia psicologiche che cognitive sfavorevoli per le donne e che importanti moderatori di tale catena causale devono essere presi in considerazione. Nel Capitolo 3, presenterò un quarto studio che ha indagato gli effetti dell'esposizione alla televisione sessualmente oggettivante, e di una critica ragionata di tali contenuti multimediali, sulla propensione alle azioni collettive e sulle intenzioni comportamentali a partecipare all’attivismo sociale. I risultati dimostrano, per la prima volta, che l'esposizione a una critica ragionata alla televisione sessualmente oggettivante motiva le donne, ma non gli uomini, a reagire e a partecipare ad azioni collettive finalizzate a ridurre le rappresentazioni femminili degradanti della TV. I risultati suggeriscono che la promozione di una visione critica della TV attraverso, per esempio, campagne di sensibilizzazione, potrebbe rappresentare un intervento efficace per promuovere un comportamento di protesta per contrastare il circolo vizioso dell'oggettivazione sessuale. Infine, nel Capitolo 4, alla luce del quadro teorico dell’oggettivazione, si discuteranno le implicazioni dei risultati trovati e le direzioni di ricerca future.

Cette étude s'appuie sur des méthodes d'analyse acoustique pour éclairer le lien entre la qualité de la négociation dynamique au cours de l'interaction mère-bébé et le sentiment d'identité de la mère. Nous montrons que l'expressivité et la contingence de l'interaction vocale mère-bébé sont particulièrement affectées lorsqu'une mère qui a émigré n'a plus la même perception de soi ni la même confiance en soi qu'avant. Soixante enregistrements d'interactions spontanées mère-bébé ont été effectués en Inde, en France et aux Etats-Unis avec des bébés âgés entre 2 et 6 mois. Leur analyse a révélé une hiérarchie rythmique universelle : toutes les dyades mère-bébé s'appuient sur une pulsation et sur des sensibilités musicales innées pour exprimer conjointement des narrations dans le temps. D'importantes différences culturelles ont également été observées entre les dyades françaises, indiennes et américaines concernant des règles culturelles spécifiques de la négociation dans le dialogue. Ces différences nous ont amenée à proposer que dès l'âge de 2 mois le bébé commence à incorporer les rythmes et styles expressifs qui constituent sa "culture primaire". La comparaison entre 30 dyades migrantes et 30 dyades autochtones a montré que les migrantes sont, de manière générale, moins expressives et moins harmonieuses, ou moins "musicales", dans la coordination rythmique de leurs interactions. Des études de cas et des analyses qualitatives éclairent les résultats quantitatifs. L'effet de la migration n'est cependant pas uniforme et un sous-groupe de mères migrantes présentant des facteurs de risque à été identifié. L'analyse acoustique éclaire, au niveau micro, la manière dont le sens est partagé dans un espace intersubjectif entre la mère et le bébé grâce à un équilibre subtil entre régularité rythmique et variation expressive. Nous explorons la façon dont, comme dans la musique de jazz, le succès du partage intersubjectif significatif dépend des qualités spontanées dynamiques d'expressions négociées. Ainsi, le processus de l'appartenance dépend peut-être d'une négociation musicale sensible au cours d'interactions vives. Ce travail souligne l'importance de la prise en charge précoce et de la prévention parmi les populations migrantes et propose d'employer la "musicalité" comme critère diagnostique<br>This study uses acoustic analysis methods to shed light on the relationship between the dynamics of negotiation in mother-infant interaction and the mother's sense of identity. We show that the expressiveness and contingency of vocal interaction is particularly affected when the mother's sense of self lacks clarity and confidence. This study focuses, in particular, on the effects of immigration on the mother's sense of self. Sixty recordings of spontaneous mother-infant interaction were made in India, France and the United States with infants aged between 2 and 6 months. Our analysis revealed universal hierarchies of rhythm : all of the mothers and infants relied on a beat and on innate musical sensitivities to express jointly created narratives in time. (. . . )