Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 79

Sometimes called the executive of the nervous system, the prefrontal cortex is associated with selecting and guiding behavior. It receives information from many parts of the brain and integrates these when setting goals, planning, and directing behavior (Miller & Cohen, 2001). Remember how the injury to Gage’s prefrontal cortex prevented him from setting goals and controlling his behavior. Our ability to take environmental cues and conditions into account when deciding how to behave is dependent on the prefrontal cortex (Miller & Cohen, 2001). For instance, when do you decide to scratch or ignore an itch in a private part of your body? Obviously, context matters. Hopefully, you will ignore it when you are speaking in public, but you may deal with it immediately when you are home alone in your living room. This sensitivity to external cues is particularly important for social behavior because it so often is (or should be!) responsive to context.