Andrews Jack L, Grunewald Karina, Schweizer Susanne
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2024 Dec;291(2036):20241930. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1930. Epub 2024 Dec 11.
As a social species, humans live in complexly bounded social groups. In order to navigate these networks, humans rely on a set of social-cognitive processes, including social working memory. Here, we designed a novel network memory task to study working memory for social versus non-social network information across 241 participants (18-65 years) in a tightly controlled, preregistered study. We show that humans demonstrate a working memory advantage for social, relative to non-social, network information. We also observed a self-relevant positivity bias, but an 'other' negativity bias. These findings are interpreted in the context of an evolutionary need to belong to one's social group, to identify risks to one's social safety and to appropriately track one's social status within a complex network of social relationships.
作为一种社会物种，人类生活在界限复杂的社会群体中。为了在这些网络中穿梭，人类依赖于一系列社会认知过程，包括社会工作记忆。在此，我们设计了一项新颖的网络记忆任务，在一项严格控制、预先注册的研究中，对241名参与者（18至65岁）进行社会与非社会网络信息的工作记忆研究。我们发现，相对于非社会网络信息，人类在社会网络信息方面表现出工作记忆优势。我们还观察到一种自我相关的积极偏差，但存在“他人”消极偏差。这些发现是在一种进化需求的背景下进行解释的，即需要归属于自己的社会群体、识别对自身社会安全的风险，并在复杂的社会关系网络中适当地追踪自己的社会地位。
