Abstract
In a companion piece to this paper (Faucher 2012), I adopted John Bickle’s “new wave meta-scientific” stance (i.e. a bottom-up philosophy of science that tries to capture the sense of some concepts — like the concept of reduction — as it emerges from the sciences, “independent of any pre-theoretic or ‘philosophical’ account of these concepts” (Bickle 2003, 31)) and argued that reductionism does not capture the relationships between domains or theories in cognitive neuroscience. More precisely, I argued against the notion that classical reductionism as well as “meta-scientific reductionism” should apply across the board in neuroscience, and defended the idea that relations between fields (and theories inside them) in some parts of social cognitive neurosciences are integrative but in a non-reductive way. In this paper, I will illustrate this idea with an example drawn from social cognitive neuroscience (SCN henceforth) of racial prejudice. As I will demonstrate, in this field the nature of relationships between the disciplines that form the core of SCN has evolved over the years, without giving way to reduction. More precisely, I will show how establishing links between social psychology and cognitive neuroscience has allowed the formulation of a new hypothesis about the nature of implicit representations. In light of this, I will also propose that SCN of racial prejudice should consider some theoretical resources from a related field — that of “embodied” or “situated” cognition.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
Amodio, D.M. (2008). The Social Neuroscience of Intergroup Relations. European Review of Social Psychology, 19, 1–54.
Amodio, D.M. (2010). Can Neuroscience Advance Social Psychological Theory? Social Neuroscience for the Behavioral Social Psychologist. Social Cognition, 28(6), 695–716.
Amodio, D.M. & P.G. Devine. (2006). Stereotyping and Evaluation in Implicit Race Bias: Evidence for Independent Constructs and Unique Effects on Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 652–661.
Amodio, D.M., E. Harmon-Jones, & P.G. Devine. (2003). Individual Differences in the Activation and Control of Affective Race Bias as Assessed by Startle Eyeblink Responses and Self-Report. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 738–753.
Amodio, D.M. & S.A. Mendoza. (2010). Implicit Intergroup Bias: Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Underpinnings. In B. Gawronski & K. Payne (eds), Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition (pp. 353–374), New York: Guilford.
Amodio, D.M. & K.G. Ratner. (2011). A Memory Systems Model of Implicit Social Cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 143–148.
Barsalou, L. (2008). Situating Concepts. In P. Robbins and M. Ayede (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (pp. 236–263). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bickle, J. (2003). Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Bickle, J. (2012). A Brief History of Neurosciences’s Actual Influences on Mind-Brain Reductionism. In S. Gozzano & C. Hill (eds), New Perspectives on Type Identity Theory (pp. 88–109). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Cacioppo, J.T. & G.G. Berntson. (2005). Analyses of the Social Brain through the Lens of Human Brain Imaging. In J.T. Cacioppo & G.G. Berntson (eds), Social Neuroscience (pp. 1–17), New York: Psychology Press.
Cacioppo, J.T. & G.G. Berntson. (2006). A Bridge Linking Social Psychology and the Neuroscience. In P.A.M. Van Lange (Ed.), Bridging Social Psychology: The Benefits of Transdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 92–96), Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Carlston, D. (1994). Associated Systems Theory: A Systematic Approach to Cognitive Representations of Persons. In R.S. Wyer and T.K. Srull (eds), Advances in Social Cognition, vol. 7, pp. 1–78. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Chen, M. & J. Bargh. (1999). Nonconscious Approach and Avoidance Behavioral Consequences of the Automatic Evaluation Effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 215–224.
Contreras, J.M., M.R. Banaji, & J.P. Mitchell. (2012). Dissociable Neural Correlates of Stereotypes and Other Forms of Semantic Knowledge. SCAN, 7, 764–770.
Dasgupta, N. (2010). Implicit Measures of Social Cognition: Common Themes and Unresolved Questions. Journal of Psychology, 218(1), 54–57.
Dasgupta, N., D. DeSteno, L.A. Williams, & M. Hunsinger. (2009). Fanning the Flames of Prejudice: The Influence of Specific Incidental Emotions on Implicit Prejudice. Emotion, 9(4), 585–591.
Devine, P. (1989). Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5–18.
Eisenberg, N.I. & M.D. Lieberman. (2004). Why Rejection Hurts: A Common Neural Alarm System for Physical and Social Pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294–300.
Faucher, L. (2012). Unity of Science and Pluralism: Cognitive Neuroscience of Racial Prejudice as a Case Study. In O. Pombo, J.M. Torres, J. Symons, & S. Rahman (eds), Special Sciences and the Unity of Science (pp. 177–204), Dordrecht: Springer.
Faucher, L. & P. Poirier. 2013. Le nouveau réductionnisme “nouvelle vague” de John Bickle. In M. Silberstein (Ed.), Matériaux Philosophiques et Scientifiques pour un Matérialisme Contemporain (271–317), Paris: Éditions Matériologiques.
Fiske, S. (2000). Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination at the Seam between the Centuries: Evolution, Culture, Mind, and Brain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 299–322.
Fazio, R.H., J.R. Jackson, B.C. Dunton, & C.J. Williams. (1995). Variability in Automatic Activation as an Unobtrusive Measure of Racial Attitudes: A Bona Fide Pipeline? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 1013–1027.
Grantham, T. (2004). Conceptualizing the (Dis)Unity of Science. Philosophy of Science, 71, 133–155.
Green, J.D., R.B. Sommerville, L.E. Nystrom, J.M. Darley, & J.D. Cohen. (2001). An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment. Science, 293, 2105–2108.
Greenwald, A.G. & M.R. Banaji, (1995). Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4–27.
Harmon-Jones, E. & P. Winkielman. (2007). A Brief Overview of Social Neuroscience. In E. Harmon-Jones and P. Winkielman (eds), Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior, New York: Guilford, 3–11.
Hellstrom, I.C., S.K. Dhir, J.C. Dioro, & M J. Meaney. (2012). Maternal Licking Regulates Hippocampal Glucocorticoid Receptor Transcription Through a Thyroid Hormone-Serotonin-NGFI-A Signaling Cascade. Philosophical Transactions Royal Society of London B Biological Sciences, 367(1601), 2495–2510.
Insel, T.R. & R.D. Fernald. (2004). How the Brain Processes Social Information: Searching for the Social Brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 697–722.
Ito, T. (2010). Implicit Social Cognition: Insights from Social Neuroscience. In B. Gawronski & K. Payne (eds), Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition (pp. 80–92), New York: Guilford.
Ito, T. & B.D. Bartholow. (2009). The Neural Correlates of Race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 524–531.
Johnson, K.J. & B.L. Fredrickson. (2005). “We All Look the Same to Me”: Positive Emotions Eliminate the Own-Race Bias in Face Recognition. Psychological Science, 16, 875–881.
Judd, C., I.V. Blair, & K.M. Chapleau. (2004). Automatic Stereotypes vs. Automatic Prejudice: Sorting Out the Possibilities in the Payne 2001 Weapon Paradigm. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 75–81.
Kubota, J.T., M.R. Banaji, & E. Phelps. (2012). The Neuroscience of Race. Nature Neuroscience, 15, 940–948.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Levingston, R.W. & B.B. Drwecki. (2007). Why Some Individuals Not Racially Biased? Susceptibility to Affective Conditioning Predicts Nonprejudice Toward Black. Psychological Science, 18(9), 816–823.
Lieberman, M.D. (2000). Intuition: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach. Psychological Bulletin, 126(1), 109–137.
Lieberman, M.D. (2007). Social Cognitive Neuroscience. In R.F. Baumeister & K.D. Vohs (eds), Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Thousand Oaks: Sage Press.
Lindquist, K. (Forthcoming). Emotions Emerge from More Basic Psychological Ingredients: A Modern Psychological Constructionist Model. Emotion Review.
Meyer, M.L., R.P. Spunt, E.T. Berkman, S.E. Taylor, & M.D. Lieberman. (2012). Evidence for Social Working Memory from a Parametric Functional MRI Study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(6):1883–1888.
Mitchell, S. D. (2002). Integrative Pluralism. Biology and Philosophy, 17, 55–70.
Niedenthal, P.M. (2007). Embodying Emotion. Science, 316, 1002–1005.
Niedenthal, P., L. Barsalou, P. Winkielman, S. Krauth-Gruber, & F. Ric. (2005). Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 184–211.
Nosek, B.A., C.B. Hawkins & R.S. Frazier. (2011). Implicit Social Cognition: From Measures to Mechanisms. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 152–159.
Ochsner, K. (2007). Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Historical Development, Core Principles, and Future Promise. In A. Kruglanski & E.T. Higgins (eds), Social Psychology: A Handbook of Basic Principles (pp. 39–66), NY: Guilford Press.
Ochsner, K.N. & M. Lieberman (2001). The Emergence of Social Cognitive Neuroscience. American Psychologist, 56, 717–734.
Olsson, A., J. Ebert, M. Banaji, & E.A. Phelps. (2005). The Role of Social Groups in the Persistence of Learned Fear. Science, 308, 785–797.
Payne, K. & B. Gawronski. (2010). A History of Implicit Social Cognition: Where Is It Coming From? Where Is It Now? Where Is It Going? In B. Gawronski & K. Payne (eds), Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition (pp. 1–15), New York: Guilford.
Phelps, E. et al. (2000). Performance on Indirect Measures of Race Evaluation Predicts Amygdala Activation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(5), 729–738.
Phelps, E.A. & L.A. Thomas. (2003). Race, Behavior and the Brain: The Role of Neuroimaging in Social Behaviors. Political Psychology, 24(4), 747–758.
Schaller, M. & L.G. Conway. (2004). The Substance of Prejudice: Biological- and Social-Evolutionary Perspectives on Cognition, Culture and the Contents of Stereotypical Beliefs. In C.S. Crandall & M. Schaller (eds), The Social Psychology of Prejudice: Historical and Contemporary Issues (pp. 149–164), Lawrence: Lewinian Press.
Semin, G.R. & E.R. Smith. (2002). Interfaces of Social Psychology with Situated and Embodied Cognition. Cognitive System Research, 3, 385–396.
Shurick, A.A et al. (2012). Durable Effects of Cognitive Restructuring on Constructed Fear. Emotion, 12, 1393–1397.
Smith, E.R. & G.R. Semin, (2007). Situated Social Cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 132–135.
Squire, L.R. & J.T. Wixted. (2011). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Memory Since H.M. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 34, 259–288.
Stanley, D., E. Phelps, & M.R. Banaji. (2008). The Neural Basis of Implicit Attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), 164–169.
Stanley, D.A., P. Sokol-Hessner, D.S. Fareri, M.T. Delgado, M.R. Banaji & E.A. Phelps. (2012). Race and Reputation: Perceived Racial Group Trustworthiness Influences the Neural Correlates of Trust Decisions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Biological Sciences, 367, 744–753.
Wheeler, M.E. & S. Fiske. (2005). Controlling Racial Prejudice: Social-Cognitive Goals Affect Amygdala and Stereotype Activation. Psychological Science, 16(1), 56–63.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Luc Faucher
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Faucher, L. (2014). Non-Reductive Integration in Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Multiple Systems Model and Situated Concepts. In: Wolfe, C.T. (eds) Brain Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230369580_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230369580_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35057-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-36958-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)