Option #2

Comment:

What do we mean by the social mind? In what ways is thinking 'inside your head' also social thinking? How do community and culture shape learning?

In social cognitivism, the idea of the "mind" is a social-cognitive skill that involves thinking about our own mental states as well as those of others. According to Forgas, Joseph P., et al., in their published journal, “The Social Mind: Cognitive and Motivational Aspects of Interpersonal Behavior," they state that "Human beings are an intrinsically gregarious species. Much of our remarkable evolutionary success is probably due to our highly developed ability to cooperate and interact with each other." Social cognitivism, as mentioned in this module's videos, allows for diversity across cultures and communities in that, even though we may all communicate and interact differently, all the diverse ways communities learn, think, and interact are all equally as sophisticated.

Thinking "inside your head" can be a means of social thinking if looked at through a Vygotskian lens. Lev Vygotsky posits that we first learn on the social level, within our communities and with others, and then we process those experiences internally. This is called metacognition. Or thinking about our own thoughts. Metacognition is also social thinking because basic to Vygotsky's approach is the assumption that social interaction plays a major role in the origin and development of higher mental (metacognitive) functions. "These functions appear first on the interpsychological (i.e. social) plane and only later on the intrapsychological (i.e. individual) plane" (Papaleontiou).

Community and culture shape learning because, according to social cognitivism, from the way language is used to the social acceptance of others to cultural customs and practices, all of these factors shape the learners' ability to perceive the world and their own experiences. According to Forgas, et al., George Herbert "Mead argued that interpersonal behavior is best understood as both the product and the source of the symbolic representations and expectations of social actors-- their social mind." Mead, a social behaviorist, goes on to say our social mind is partly determined by past experiences and partly "created" (constructed) in the course of interactions/encounters with others. "According to Mead, by internalizing and symbolically representing the social interactions people participate in, the individual acquires social expertise, which lies at the core of the socialized 'me.' However, social interactions are not acted out in a repetitive, determinate, stereotypical fashion in everyday life. It is the role of the unique, creative 'I' to continuously reassess, monitor, and redefine social interactions as they progress, injecting a sense of indeterminacy and openness into our interactions" (Forgas, et. al.). This idea of a social "me" is this construct of self and idea of who we are in relationship to others. Can we really be a self without community or others?

Update:

Make an Update: Suggestions – provide an example of a learning experience that exercises 'the social mind.' How does this expand on learning beyond the individual mind?

According to a panel held by MIT’s Center of Intelligence, called “Brains, Minds, and Machines: Social Cognition and Collective Intelligence” (2011), the panel discussed social cognition or reasoning about what other people are thinking and feeling. There were many speakers from social psychologists to economists discussing their current experiments or theories. One economist and academic, by the name of Andy Lo (author of “Adaptive Markets” and “A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street”), aimed to look at anomalies in the economic paradigm which led him to look into psychology and cognitive neurosciences literature. In that literature, he found several behavioral biases in human behavior-- things like probability matching, loss aversion, overconfidence, overreaction, and so on. He shared a simple story, an example of learning in a community of practice, that yielded a behavioral change in him for years to come. In other words, he was able to optimize his morning routine from negative group feedback. In his own words, Andy Lo relays:

“And how do you know if you haven't done the optimization that the optimal solution is so much better than a satisfactory one that you should go ahead and do the optimization?

And the answer is you don't. The answer about how we find what a satisfactory solution is comes from evolution. It comes from the process of reinforcement learning. And I'll give you a personal anecdote that describes it.

When I was six years old and I was in first grade, at that time, a marketing genius figured out that if you put a Superman label on a jacket, you can get a lot of six-year-old kids to buy it. And so I wanted that jacket desperately. And being from a single-parent household, we didn't have a lot of extra money to spend. So my mother initially said no. And so I nagged her for weeks on end until finally she relented and agreed to get me the jacket.

I still remember to this day the Friday evening we went to Alexander's in Queens, New York, and got the jacket. And for the whole weekend, I spent the entire weekend in that jacket. And come Monday morning when it was time to go to school, I put on my jacket, got in front of the mirror and posed in all sorts of action ways to see how good I looked. And by the time I was done posing, I was late for school. I was late enough that I needed a note from my mother.

And I remember distinctly walking into the classroom half an hour late. Everybody was already seated. I had to bring the note from class to give to my teacher. And all the students were snickering that I was late. And I walked in the back of the room, and I was completely and totally traumatized by that event. And you know that I was traumatized because 45 years later, I still remember that day.

But I'll tell you what-- from that point on, it never, ever took me more than five minutes to get dressed in the morning. My heuristic was indelibly altered through the process of natural selection, through trial and error. That's how we can find out what satisfactory means.”

This experience outlines the “social mind” because Andy was able to glean his “social acceptance” status at this one moment in time and alter his future actions. The snickering of his peers and the embarrassment taught him, on a social level, what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Therefore, “from that point on, it never, ever took [him] more than five minutes to get dressed in the morning.” This social “natural selection” is something humans learn in group settings all the time. We are constantly being judged and critiqued by a jury of our peers and we, then, take stock of our experiences and alter our behavior to what is socially acceptable in a given environment.

Brains, Minds, and Machines: Social Cognition and Collective Intelligence:

https://youtu.be/hlWT7myeh78

Works Cited

Forgas, Joseph P., et al. “The Social Mind: Cognitive and Motivational Aspects of Interpersonal Behavior.” Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 27, https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/00029268.pdf.

Jaušovec, N. “Metacognition.” ScienceDirect, Encyclopedia of Creativity, 6 January 2023, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/metacognition. Accessed 24 March 2024.

Papaleontiou, Eleonora. “Metacognition and Theory of Mind.” Le Demenze in Medicina Generale, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, https://www.demenzemedicinagenerale.net/images/mens-sana/Metacognition_2000.pdf. Accessed 24 March 2024.