Social, cognitive and computational approaches to person perception and interaction

rich-ramsey.github.io/talks/uni-leeds-25/

Richard Ramsey
www.rich-ramsey.com

Today

  • Past research interests
  • Motivating context
  • New projects

Past research interests

Person perception


Imitation

Loneliness

Observational learning

Neuroaesthetics

Behaviour

fMRI

Metascience

Theoretical work

Computational modelling

Motivating context

  • Problems
  • Towards a cumulative science

Problems

(Open Science Collaboration 2015)

Wheel of death

(Munafò et al. 2017)

Towards a cumulative science?

(Munafò et al. 2017; Ramsey 2020, 2021)

New projects

Social: Discrimination and group biases

Deschrijver & Ramsey, 2025, PNAS

Cognitive: Event history analysis

Panis & Ramsey, In revision [Tutorial paper]

Computational: Evidence accumulation models

Parker & Ramsey, 2023, QJEP [Review paper]

Discrimination and group biases



Minimal groups




(Tajfel 1970, 1974)

The minimal group paradigm

  • Assign values to two other specific people (not yourself).
  • Select one option (two values).
  • Measure so-called “pull” scores.

(Tajfel 1970, 1974)

Pull scores


Three types of “pull” score are of interest.

  1. FAV vs MJP
  2. MD vs MIP/MJP
  3. FAV vs P

Each compares a discriminatory strategy against a more pro-social strategy.

Minimal group findings

(Schmidt and Drake 2023)

Minimal group tasks

Significance of the work


  • Ingroup benefit and outgroup punishment was evident, even in arbitrary or “minimal” conditions.
  • Meaningful social categories, such as race, gender, age etc., are not required to discriminate against others.

Groups and social identity theory


… explicit references to group membership are logically necessary for operationalizing in these minimal situations the major independent variable—that is, social categorization per se.


(Tajfel and Turner 1979 [p. 39])

Citation count: 41,343

Groups and social identity theory


This requires not merely that the subjects perceive themselves as similar to or different from others as individuals, but that they are members of discrete and discontinuous categories—that is, “groups”.


(Tajfel and Turner 1979 [p. 39]) [emphasis in the original]

Citation count: 41,343

Groups and social identity theory


It was as if that, just by inserting the word ‘group’ into the experimental instructions, the s’s definition of the situation was radically altered.


(Billig and Tajfel 1973 [p. 48])

Citation count: 2,538

Confound

A similarity or difference between individuals covaries with group assignment.


Conflict signals

  • Why might a similarity or difference between individuals matter?
  • Cognitive neuroscience research shows that conflict in general is an aversive stimulus that guides behaviour.
task congruent incongruent
flanker HHHHH HHSHH
Stroop RED RED

(Botvinick and Braver 2015; Dreisbach and Fischer 2015)

Conflict signals and groups

  • Could sensitivity to conflict between individuals play a role in the minimal group paradigm?

(Deschrijver and Palmer 2020)

Deschrijver & Ramsey (2025)


Research question

Are group division and social identity required to treat people differently?


Hypothesis

Resources will be allocated in favour of similar (versus dissimilar) individuals, in the absence of group division or social identity.

Comparing research designs

Original design

Deschrijver & Ramsey (2025)

Arbitrary choices/coin flip

Group division / categorisation

Money allocation / matrices

Arbitrary choices/coin flip

Group division / categorisation

✗

Money allocation / matrices

Group manipulation

No group manipulation

Comparing response wording


Group manipulation

No group manipulation

Descrijver & Ramsey (2025)

UK-based Prolific online sample. N=238 per experiment.

Raw data: minimal group dots

(Deschrijver and Ramsey 2025)

Regression parameters: minimal group

(Deschrijver and Ramsey 2025)

Individual vs group manipulation


  • Between groups design.

    • individual vs classic group manipulation

  • Coins task (random outcome).

  • N=238 per group (N=476 in total).

  • UK-based online Prolific sample.

Regression parameters: individual vs group

(Deschrijver and Ramsey 2025)

Interim summary

  • Qualitatively similar minimal group paradigm effects are obtained without group assignment.

  • But the results so far are all tied to one task.

  • We wanted to investigate the same type of question with a different task? Maybe a simpler dependent measure?

  • We setup a conflict/congruency task based on work in cognitive psychology / neuroscience.

Conflict task manipulation

self/other judgment condition
same congruent
different incongruent

Conflict task response

Congruency trial structure

Descrijver & Ramsey (2025)

UK-based Prolific online sample. N=75 per experiment.

Congruency hypothesis


Research question

Are group division and social identity required to treat people differently?


Hypothesis

More money will be allocated to others on congruent than incongruent trials, in the absence of group division or social identity.

Raw data: congruency

(Deschrijver and Ramsey 2025)

Regression parameters: congruency

(Deschrijver and Ramsey 2025)

Combined results


  • Qualitatively similar minimal group paradigm effects are obtained without group assignment.
  • Conflict tasks show that 43.1 % more money (in relative terms) is given to individuals based on arbitrary sameness versus difference outcomes, in the absence of group assignment.

Conclusion

  • Is group division required to treat people differently?

    • No

  • Sameness versus difference between individuals is important to consider theoretically and empirically.

Caution! Constraints on generality

  • We are not claiming that group division and social identity are unimportant
  • We are not claiming that differences between individuals can tell the whole story

Implications

  • Empirical: Sameness vs difference between individuals needs separating from group-based manipulations.

  • Theoretical: Social Identity Theory needs updating.

    • Other cognitive and neural mechanisms are likely to be at play, such as the affective consequences of domain-general conflict detection and resolution.

New projects

Social: Discrimination and group biases

Deschrijver & Ramsey, 2025, PNAS

Cognitive: Event history analysis

Panis & Ramsey, In revision [Tutorial paper]

Computational: Evidence accumulation models

Parker & Ramsey, 2023, QJEP [Review paper]

Mean average performance

Event history analysis

(Panis and Ramsey 2024; Singer and Willett 2003)

Event history analysis

(Panis and Ramsey 2024; Singer and Willett 2003)

How and why is it useful?

  • You can ask questions about “temporal states” of cognition
    • e.g., When does a psychological state start and finish? How does it evolve with increased waiting time? Is it time-locked to other events?
  • Theory
  • Psychophysiology
  • Individual differences

(Panis and Ramsey 2024)

A tutorial

  • We have written a tutorial paper aimed at those interested in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. It covers:

    • Data wrangling.
    • Multi-level regression modelling (Bayesian & frequentist).
    • Inference.
    • Planning via data simulation.

  • All of the materials and tutorials are available on GitHub.

(Panis and Ramsey 2024)

New projects

Social: Discrimination and group biases

Deschrijver & Ramsey, 2025, PNAS

Cognitive: Event history analysis

Panis & Ramsey, In revision [Tutorial paper]

Computational: Evidence accumulation models

Parker & Ramsey, 2023, QJEP [Review paper]

A problem in theory?


Narrative models

Formal models

(Hintzman 1991; Yarkoni 2022)

Evidence accumulation models


Integrate RT and accuracy as a function of model parameters (e.g., Linear Ballistic Accumulator model).

(Parker and Ramsey 2023a; Heathcote et al. 2019; Ratcliff et al. 2016)

Mapping psychological constructs

  • Model parameters map onto latent psychological constructs.
Parameter Label Construct
Start point A response bias
Drift rate v signal-to-noise ratio
Threshold b response caution
Non-decision time t0 stimulus encoding and motor response

Intuition

(Myers, Interian, and Moustafa 2022)

Recent projects

Attention cueing via eye gaze

(Parker and Ramsey 2023a)

Observational learning

(Parker, Cross, and Ramsey 2025)

Face perception memory

(Fournier, Downing & Ramsey, in prep.)

A review paper for social cognition

(Parker and Ramsey 2023b)

Summary

  • Social: Discrimination and group biases.
  • Cognitive: Event history analysis.
  • Computational: Evidence accumulation models.

Acknowledgements

  • Inez Greven
  • Emily Butler
  • Andrew Wildman
  • Ionela Bara
  • Chris Byrne
  • Kohinoor Darda
  • Dace Apšvalka
  • Kohinoor Darda
  • Raphaël Fournier
  • Paul Downing
  • Emily Cross
  • Rudi Coetzer
  • Eliane Deschrijver
  • Rob Ward
  • Richard Binney
  • Dave Kaplan
  • Sam Parker
  • Sven Panis

And here’s my stuff


References

Billig, Michael, and Henri Tajfel. 1973. “Social Categorization and Similarity in Intergroup Behaviour.” European Journal of Social Psychology 3 (1): 27–52. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420030103.
Botvinick, Matthew, and Todd Braver. 2015. “Motivation and Cognitive Control: From Behavior to Neural Mechanism.” Annual Review of Psychology 66 (1): 83–113. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015044.
Deschrijver, Eliane, and Colin Palmer. 2020. “Reframing Social Cognition: Relational Versus Representational Mentalizing.” Psychological Bulletin 146 (11): 941–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000302.
Deschrijver, Eliane, and Richard Ramsey. 2025. “Unequal Resource Division Occurs in the Absence of Group Division and Identity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (7): e2413797122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2413797122.
Dreisbach, Gesine, and Rico Fischer. 2015. “Conflicts as Aversive Signals for Control Adaptation.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 24 (4): 255–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415569569.
Heathcote, Andrew, Yi-Shin Lin, Angus Reynolds, Luke Strickland, Matthew Gretton, and Dora Matzke. 2019. “Dynamic Models of Choice.” Behavior Research Methods 51 (2): 961–85. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1067-y.
Hintzman, Douglas L. 1991. “Why Are Formal Models Useful in Psychology?” In Relating Theory and Data: Essays on Human Memory in Honor of Bennet B. Murdock., 39–56. Hillsdale, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Munafò, Marcus R., Brian A. Nosek, Dorothy V. M. Bishop, Katherine S. Button, Christopher D. Chambers, Nathalie Percie du Sert, Uri Simonsohn, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Jennifer J. Ware, and John P. A. Ioannidis. 2017. “A Manifesto for Reproducible Science.” Nature Human Behaviour 1: 0021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0021.
Myers, Catherine E., Alejandro Interian, and Ahmed A. Moustafa. 2022. “A Practical Introduction to Using the Drift Diffusion Model of Decision-Making in Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, and Health Sciences.” Frontiers in Psychology 13. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1039172.
Open Science Collaboration. 2015. “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science.” Science 349 (6251). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716.
Panis, Sven, and Richard Ramsey. 2024. “Event History Analysis for Psychological Time-to-Event Data: A Tutorial in R with Examples in Bayesian and Frequentist Workflows.” December 17, 2024. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/57bh6.
Parker, Samantha, Emily S. Cross, and Richard Ramsey. 2025. “Evidence Accumulation Modelling Offers New Insights into the Cognitive Mechanisms That Underlie Linguistic and Action-Based Training.” February 4, 2025. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tqn6g_v2.
Parker, Samantha, and Richard Ramsey. 2023a. “Exploring the Relationship Between Oculomotor Preparation and Gaze-Cued Covert Shifts in Attention.” Journal of Vision 23 (3): 18. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.23.3.18.
———. 2023b. “What Can Evidence Accumulation Modelling Tell Us about Human Social Cognition?” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 77 (3): 17470218231176950. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231176950.
Ramsey, Richard. 2020. “Advocating for the Credibility Revolution.” Cognitive Psychology Bulletin 5. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpscog.2020.1.5.70.
———. 2021. “A Call for Greater Modesty in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.” Collabra: Psychology 7 (1): 24091. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.24091.
Ratcliff, Roger, Philip L. Smith, Scott D. Brown, and Gail McKoon. 2016. “Diffusion Decision Model: Current Issues and History.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20 (4): 260–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.01.007.
Schmidt, Kathleen, and R. Grace Drake. 2023. “Minimal Group Procedures and Outcomes.” Edited by Norman Farb. Collabra: Psychology 9 (1): 90187. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.90187.
Singer, Judith D., and John B. Willett. 2003. Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence. Oxford University Press, USA. https://books.google.com?id=PpnA1M8VwR8C.
Tajfel, Henri. 1970. “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination.” Scientific American 223 (5): 96–103. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24927662.
———. 1974. “Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour.” Social Science Information 13 (2): 65–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847401300204.
Tajfel, Henri, and John C. Turner. 1979. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel, 33–47. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Yarkoni, Tal. 2022. “The Generalizability Crisis.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45: e1. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20001685.

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