Social Cognition: Concepts PDF - Lecture 2

SOCIAL COGNITION CONCEPTS LECTURE 2 LECTURER: Miss Nadia Veiro  OBJECTIVES  Give general view of Concepts as Social Representation  To define concept  Provide an understanding of the functions of concepts  Look at how concepts are activated...

SOCIAL COGNITION CONCEPTS LECTURE 2 LECTURER: Miss Nadia Veiro  OBJECTIVES  Give general view of Concepts as Social Representation  To define concept  Provide an understanding of the functions of concepts  Look at how concepts are activated  Explore types of concepts  SOCIAL REPRESENTATION HOW DO WE CONSTRUCT SHARED REALITY? are images that condense manifold meanings that allow people to interpret what is happening; categories which serve to classify circumstances, phenomena and individuals with whom we deal, theories which permit us to establish facts about them ( Jodelet,1991). Symbolic Interaction where people actively interpret and assign meaning to symbols (like words, gestures, and objects) through their interactions with each other, creating shared reality. how individuals within a group collectively construct shared meanings and understandings of social objects through communication and interaction  What is a Concept? 1. an idea that represents a class of objects or events or their properties, such as cats, walking, honesty, blue, or fast. (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2024) 2. The building block of cognition 3. A mental representation of a category, that is a class of objects that we believe belong together. (Kunda)  FUNCTION OF CONCEPTS Imagine going to a wedding and not understanding the concept of wedding or marriage. Without this understanding our experience would make little sense; for example, the understanding of a wedding cake, bride, groom, photographer, gift, etc. Without concepts, our world would make little sense. We would be unable to extract meaning from the huge amount of information that surrounds us  FUNCTIONS OF CONCEPT Classification – objects, people and behaviours are classified as instances of a concept, eg. An animal that has a trunk, tusks and is grey.is an instance of an elephant. Inferring Additional Attributes – additionally, the elephant makes a trumpet sound. Guiding Attention and Interpretation – a forest has elephant, trees, birds, etc. Communication - we don’t need to explain many things to another person because they understand the concepts we are using to communicate. Reasoning – new ideas can be formed from the foundation of concepts.  How do we activate concepts?  We have many objects and activities on a daily basis that we encounter; how does a particular concept comes to our focus when they are so many others that are present? Stimulus Features – We are able to differentiate a child from an adult because of their features. Salience – The context of a situation may make a person stand out.  Example, A co-worker shows up for work in a green shirt on election day in Jamaica becomes salient.  How are concepts activated? Cont’d.. 3. Priming is a technique in which the introduction to one stimulus (the prime) subconsciously influences how people respond to a subsequent stimulus. 4. Chronic Accessibility – Everyone has some concepts that tend to be accessible at all times and are applied whenever possible. 5. Goals – Concepts can be activated or suppressed based on an individual’s goal How are concepts structured in our minds? 1. Classical View 2. Probabilistic View a. Prototype b. Exemplar  Classical View Concepts may be defined by a set of necessary and sufficient attributes. For example a teacher is defined by a set of attributes and can only be defined as a teacher if all the attributes are present. LETS TRY IT! Let us define some concepts:  Who is a Teacher?  Who is a role model for children  Probabilistic View A category can be described by a set of features that are typical of it. For example a car typically has 4 wheels and 4 doors so even if a car has only 2 doors it still qualify to be a car according to this view Within the Probabilistic View there are 2 ways on conceptualizing categories: Prototype and Exemplar Prototype speaks to an abstracted list of features that are typical of category members Exemplar View – Categories are represented in examples. Example, its difficult to define the concept ‘Superstar ‘ except by giving examples. END OF CONCEPT!!