Social and Developmental Psychology: Exploration on the Formation and Evolution Mechanism of Social Group Cognition in Honeycomb Thinking

Course 21: Social and Developmental Psychology: Exploration on the Formation and Evolution Mechanism of Social Group Cognition in Honeycomb Thinking

I. Course Description

Human life is closely dependent on social groups. Everything we depend on, food, shelter, clothing, and protection, is provided through a complex network of human beings. And our self-perception and role establishment are also largely influenced by the mutual correlation. To understand honeycomb thinking, we can think from the organizational structure of bee society. The bee colony is composed of a queen bee and many industrious workers, which are divided into conservation bees, nesting bees and bee-picking bees. Bees transmit information through dancing in the hive and cooperate to complete various tasks. When honeybee nests are at risk, honeybees protect their homes in collective action. At the same time, the nursery bees take care of the queen and young to contribute to the reproduction of the bee family. Although the contribution of each individual bee is small, the power of the whole group is large and coordinated. The bee society shows us an example of high cooperation and collaborative effort, inspiring us to build harmonious and efficient groups of human society and achieve common goals.

This course aims to study the social classification, which divides individuals into different groups according to a certain psychological tendency, in order to divide the social world into different types of people. Some of these groups are related to groups that we belong to, called internal groups; others are related to groups that we do not belong to, and are called external groups. Internal and external: they are important reference points in the social world. But unlike MEN, these reference points change and sway: we may now belong in one group, but may no longer belong; you may in some way be a member of my inner group, but in the other. Somehow, these changes have become an important part of human social life. These are the core mysteries that we will explore in this course.

II. Professor Introduction

Yarrow Dunham – Tenured professor at Yale University

Yarrow Dunham He is currently a tenured associate professor of psychology at Yale University and leads the Yale Social Cognitive Development Laboratory. A graduate of Harvard University, he devoted to the development of social cognition, especially how humans divide society into different groups and develop cognition and prejudice towards these groups. He explored how humans adjust their social cognition according to group affiliation at different stages from children to adults, and showed inner group preferences even under the simplest conditions.

Dunham Professors research team used cross-cultural and experimental methods to deeply analyze the timing and mechanism of group preference generation, and to examine how cultural factors shape group cognition. For his outstanding contributions to social group prejudice and childrens psychological development, Professor Dunham received the Arthur Greer Memorial Award from Yale University. He is also a core member of the American Pediatric Psychological Growth Research Society and serves as the chief advisor of the European Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

III. Syllabus

1. How to study the major findings and problems in psychology
2. Group challenges from the perspective of evolution
3. Non-human groups: the behavioral patterns of fish flocks, hives, and insects
4. Non-human groups: the social organizations of wolves, monkeys, and lions
5. Human groups and society: Our sociability and group bias
6. Groups and rules: the formation of members and prejudices within groups
7. The interaction between groups and norms
8. The manifestation and roots of contemporary prejudice
9. The mechanism of conformity and social influence
10. Summary of social impacts in the digital age