Minds, groups, and populations : harnessing the latent structure of social information
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Choices are woven into the fabric of social life: We buy things that have received glowing reviews, watch shows recommended by our friends, and assess a potential date based on their taste in music. Observing others' choices provides valuable insights into both the world and into the person doing the choosing. How do observers extract so much information from everyday, seemingly arbitrary choices? In this dissertation, I propose that observers make rich inferences from others' choices by harnessing structured representations of the physical world, of the contents of others' minds (e.g., their knowledge and preferences), and of the social world (e.g., of relationships and similarities between individuals). Chapters 2--3 examine how adults harness representations of other minds to recover information about the value of unexplored choice options. These studies find that adults do not simply imitate or ignore others' choices, but rather actively infer the latent mental states—such as beliefs and strategy—that gave rise to them. Chapters 4--5 examine how children and adults harness representations of the social world to learn about new individuals. This work finds that preschool-aged children and adults use minimal statistical information about how choices are distributed across individuals to judge their potential compatibility with new individuals (Chapter 4) and make inductive inferences about them (Chapter 5)
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Vélez Alicea, Natalia Andrea |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Gweon, Hyowon |
| Thesis advisor | Gweon, Hyowon |
| Thesis advisor | Goodman, Noah |
| Thesis advisor | Zaki, Jamil, 1980- |
| Degree committee member | Goodman, Noah |
| Degree committee member | Zaki, Jamil, 1980- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Natalia Vélez |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Natalia Andrea Velez Alicea
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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