by Nuruliawati (Nuy)
When responding to social situations—and ensuring you are not doing something embarrassing or inappropriate—you most often depend on the situation, such as norms (Chung & Rimal, 2016; Ross & Nisbett, 2011). Let’s look at the example from the title; you can dance at most weddings, but not most funerals. Although some ethnicities, such as Bataknese (Indonesia’s ethnic) people, do dance at funerals (Lai, 2021), you know the rule.
In addition, how you act is also influenced by internal factors such as mental states (e.g. moods and motivations) (Frida, 2004). This meme presents another example that tells you more about it. The first type of guy reacts to a girl during the cold weather with some loving motivations, resulting in him offering his jacket to her. Unfortunately, the second type of guy is the opposite, and he reacts as coldly as the weather, which makes you assume that this guy might be a bit upset or not be interested in this girl.
Wait what? You just assume other people’s reactions by simply looking at this meme! How can you do that?
Source: https://id.pinterest.com/pin/159174168064775904/
Thanks to your brain! You automatically learn to predict people’s reactions in most social situations, and this kind of process relies heavily on this little yet powerful machine in your head. But the question is, how does your brain calculate these situations and mental states to produce such actions? Do these factors equally play a role, or does one play a more important role than the other in your brain? A recent study by Thornton and Tamir (2024) proved that both are incorporated as the sum of the representative actions people can afford. Wait, what does it mean?
Why do we love to predict everything?
Your brain is an active predictor machine. Their natural ability is to help you improve your decisions in every situation. To support the survival ability, you can relate why the brain – at some points – actively predicts if something is going wrong and tries to create many contingency plans. This is what the theory of predictive coding explains (Huang & Rao, 2011). The theory also believes that your brain is built to understand others’ mental states, such as emotions, beyond perceiving the physical world and actively predicting the other related emotions that follow. If you see someone happy, your brain predicts the following laughter as the next scene.
Moving beyond the mental state predictions, your brain will also predict the most likely actions others can take when they are in that situation. As a theory of ecological psychology suggests (Gibson, 1977), your brain will associate situations and mental states with the possibility of actions or the actions they afford. For example, if you think or actually feel hungry, your brain will poke you by simulating the related potential actions such as looking for food in your instant delivery apps, cooking, or eating. It tells you, “Okay, you are hungry, now what should you do?”
Source: Exploding Head Meme (animalia-life.club)
If you imagine, there might be thousands of potential next scenes in your mind that could represent the actions you afford toward a single situation, making your brain a crazy busy department. But does your brain really do that, as the theory suggests? Thornton and Tamir (2024) will guide you through the answers.
The neuroscientists’ stuff: rating tasks and brain scanning
The researchers invited 28 participants to be involved in an engaging experiment in the form of a simple task and brain scanning. The participants were asked to rate the likelihood of the co-occurrence between the situation, mental states, and actions while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For example, the participants were asked to rate the likelihood of a person dancing at the funerals to represent the situation (funeral) and the action (dance). They also recruited 1,300 additional online sample participants to provide this information to support the selection of the situation, actions, and mental states presented as the task or the stimulus (Figure 1). They collected this data to support the analysis with the neuroimaging data later. In total, they used 90 combinations of situation-state, situation-action, and state-action stimuli and completed 900 trials of the experiment.
The researchers further used feature selection methodology to identify the brain areas responsible for situations, states, or actions that might overlap each other (or what the researchers mean by “sum of the representative actions they afford”) when assessing the task provided during brain scanning. The researchers also used pattern comparison and representational similarity analysis between the reconstructed brain activity by using the rating data from online participants and the actual brain scan results to see how both are closely matched as representing this sum-up phenomenon in the brain.
That sounds like a lot of work. So, what did they find?
The researchers found that the areas regulating situations, states, or actions actively overlapped, meaning that your brain uses similar neural mechanisms to process a social interaction presented in the task. In this case, all three aspects are interrelated, especially in the area that regulates social connections. However, the neural activity patterns shown in the brains are not only composed of a single action as a response to a situation but multiple actions or the sum of them.
Yes, you read it right. As you already know, the brain will produce multiple potential scenarios in response to a single social situation. Even though it seems that we all naturally think about everything that makes us prone to be a little anxious when responding to such situations, they found this has been proven true. Rating data from online participants also support this finding. After the researcher summated the rating value of all the situation, mental, and action states representing the reconstructed situation, both results are similar (Figure 2).
Which plays an important role, the situation or the mental state, in constructing the associated action to follow as the responses (or action affordance) in the brain? Situations were found to shape the action affordance more. The researchers found that the action affordance is more similar between situation representations than mental state representations. So, when you know you are at a Bataknese funeral – even if you know it is not a celebration, you will likely dance, regardless of whether you are mourning over the person.
But this does not mean your feelings do not matter, as they recognized this as a study limitation. As the first finding says, your brain still considers this mental state the main ingredient. However, the researchers believe there might be room for improvement regarding the rating mechanism for mental states.
A little message from a friend
Scientifically speaking, now you know you cannot simply be separated between external and internal factors when mitigating the social situation. The researchers – and I believe you do –found the findings to bridge the gap between the former study that separates external and internal factors that influence people’s actions and personalities. So, if you think that it might be you as a person who is awkward in such social situations, think again; maybe it is the situation that makes you feel that way. To all the anxious minds out there: Your brain is a powerful predictor, but if it starts impacting your daily life, don’t hesitate to seek professional help. Take care! 😊
Source: 37 Anxiety Memes Because Mental Health Care Is Expensive And Memes Are Free (ruinmyweek.com)
References
Main article: Thornton, M. A., & Tamir, D. I. (2024). Neural representations of situations and mental states are composed of sums of representations of the actions they afford. Nature Communications, 15(1), 620.
Additional articles:
Chung, A. & Rimal, R. N. (2016). Social norms: a review. Rev. Commun. Res. 4, 1–28.
Frijda, N. H. (2004, April). Emotions and action. In Feelings and emotions: The Amsterdam symposium (pp. 158-173).
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. Perceiving, acting, and knowing: toward an ecological psychology. Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology, 67-82.
Huang, Y. & Rao, R. P. (2011). Predictive coding. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Cogn. Sci. 2, 580–593.
Lai, A. N. (2021). The unique batak dance. https://dolanesia.travel/articles/batak-dance. Retrieved 12th April 2024.
Ross, L. & Nisbett, R. E. (2011). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. Pinter & Martin Publishers.
Warwick Neuroeconomics Blog 