The BrainBank

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: online teaching resource
  • Home
  • Instructor Notes
    • How to use the BrainBank
    • About the BrainBank project
    • Feedback and evaluation
    • Contact the authors
    • Links to other resources
  • Teaching Materials
    • Brain Biology
      • What does the brain look like?
      • Cerebral Cortex: The Thinking Part of the Brain
      • How do body and brain size guide intelligence?
      • Neurons, neural networks and the nervous system
      • Architecture of the Brain
      • How do we know so much about the brain?
    • Brain Function
      • Learning
      • Memory
      • Multi-tasking
      • Attention
      • Illusions: How Our Brain Can Trick Us
    • The Social Brain
      • Perceiving faces and social cues
      • Seeing social signals everywhere
      • Emotions
      • Imitation & Synchrony
      • Mindreading
      • How Magicians Trick Us

The Social Brain

In this section we examine how we perceive faces and social cues, how and why we tend to see social cues even where there aren’t any, people’s emotions, why we imitate each-other, how we can tell what someone else is thinking and how magicians use psychology to trick us.

Emotions

  • What emotions do everybody share? [All Ages]
  • What emotions do we learn from our parents? [All Ages]
  • How do emotions spread from one person to another? [All Ages]

How Magicians Trick Us

  • Magicians using Psychology [All Ages]
  • How to be a magician [Key Stages 3-4]

Imitation & Synchrony

  • Imitation: Monkey see, monkey do [All Ages]
  • Social contagion: Why is laughter catching? [All Ages]
  • Behavioural Synchrony: Why do people walk in step? [All Ages]

Mindreading

  • Developing a sense of self [Key Stages 2-4]
  • Are you thinking what I'm thinking? [Key Stages 2-4]

Perceiving faces and social cues

  • Even babies find other people fascinating [All Ages]
  • How do we pay attention to people around us? [All Ages]
  • Social cuing: What are you looking at? [All Ages]
  • The Hollow Mask Illusion: Looking at inside-out faces [All Ages]
  • The Thatcher Illusion: Looking at upside-down faces [All Ages]

Seeing social signals everywhere

  • 'Pareidolia': Seeing faces EVERYWHERE [All Ages]
  • Seeing biological movement: Turning dots into people [All Ages]
  • Seeing intention: Treating objects as if they have thoughts and feelings [All Ages]

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Written by Dr Nathalia Gjersoe and Prof Bruce Hood