Social Cognition PDF

Social Cognition Thinking about the Social World Social Cognition Social Cognition: ◦how people interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world Social Cognition - Topics Schemas Heuristics and Automatic Processing Potential Sources of Error in Social Cogn...

Social Cognition Thinking about the Social World Social Cognition Social Cognition: ◦how people interpret, analyze, remember, and use information about the social world Social Cognition - Topics Schemas Heuristics and Automatic Processing Potential Sources of Error in Social Cognition Affect and Cognition  Schemas Schemas Can have schemas for common events (scripts), people (person schemas), and social roles (role schemas) ◦ Schemas influence three basic processes:  Attention  Encoding  Retrieval  Schemas Schemas help us cut down on the amount of information we have to process – we are cognitive misers When do schemas have stronger effects on social cognition? Schemas can result in distortions in how the social world is understood and inaccurate processing Perseverance effect Self-fulfilling prophecy  Self-fulfilling Prophecies Teacher’s Teacher’s behaviour Student’s expectation behaviour Smiling more at “Rena’s older brother Rena, teaching her Rena responds was brilliant. I bet more, calling on her enthusiastically. she is, too.” more, giving her more time to answer. Confirming Getting from others what we expect Vicious cycle Several experiments – erroneous beliefs about social world can induce others to confirm these beliefs ◦Behavioural confirmation ◦e.g., Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977) Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fu  Accessibility and Priming Higgins, Rholes & Jones (1977)  ◦ Unrelated study paradigm ◦ First part – had participants memorize list of words (functioned as primes)  Positive word condition – adventurous, self-confident  Negative word condition – reckless, conceited, aloof ◦ Second part – reading comprehension study  Heuristics and Automatic Processing The complexity of the social world and the limited nature of cognitive processing can result in information overload A strategy to reduce mental effort is the use of heuristics - Often adaptive, but sometimes maladaptive Two examples of heuristics  ◦ Representativeness heuristic (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973)  HEURISTICS Heuristic Definition Example May Lead to Representativeness Snap judgments of Deciding that Carlos Discounting of whether someone or is a librarian rather other important something fits a than a trucker information category because he better represents one’s image of librarians Availability Quick judgments of Estimating teen Overweighting vivid likelihood of events violence after instances and thus, (how available in school for example, to shootings fearing the wrong memory) things  Representativeness Heuristic Kahneman and Tversky (1973): Engineer and lawyer problem Read description of “Jack”, a man drawn from pool of: 70 engineers and 30 lawyers 30 engineers and 70 lawyers Description of Jack Stereotypic engineering traits (careful, likes math) Based estimates on trait information Judged him just as likely to be an engineer when there were 70 as when there were 30 Ignored base rate information 12 Automatic Processing Automatic Processing vs Controlled? Automatic processing often involves errors  An example is the automatic activation of stereotypes  Automatic activation of schemas can lead to automatic effects on social behaviour Automatic Processing  Processing and the Brain ◦ Evidence from social neuroscience shows that automatic and controlled processing are distinct from one another  Different parts of brain are activated depending on which type of social evaluation people make  automatic evaluative judgments?  controlled evaluative reactions? Can Automatic Processing be a bad thing? Correll et al. (2002) Police video game study: Have to determine whether or not to shoot a target who is either: ◦ White or Black ◦ Armed or unarmed Results? Effects of stereotypes and prejudice? Potential Sources of Error Humans are not like computers – we are far more likely to make errors Two major examples of errors: ◦Negativity Bias ◦Optimistic Bias Negativity Bias Negativity Bias Example? Bias may be explained by evolutionary factors  Negative information reflects features of the external world that may threaten safety and well-being Optimistic Bias Optimistic Bias ◦People believe that they are more likely than others to experience good outcomes, and less likely to experience bad outcomes ◦Overconfidence Barrier ◦Planning fallacy ◦Bracing for loss (exception to the optimistic bias) Counterfactual Thinking Counterfactual Thinking Thoughts may occur automatically and require cognitive effort to dismiss ◦ People who have these thoughts can experience both benefits (hopefulness) and costs (regret) ◦ Upward vs downward counterfactual thinking Thought Suppression  Thought Suppression ◦ Involves two processes: 1) Monitoring 2) Operating ◦ Rebound Effect – Macrae et al. (1994) Illusory Thinking We search for order in random events ◦Illusory Correlation ◦Illusion of Control Affect and Cognition Thereis a complex interplay between affect and cognition ◦The relationship is a two-way street   Our feelings and moods influence cognition, and cognition influences our feelings and moods The Influence of Affect on Cognition  Moods affect how stimuli are perceived (Forgas, 1984) – see next slide  Happy moods can increase creativity  Happy moods can make people more susceptible to social influence  Information that evokes emotional reactions may be processed differently than other kinds of information  Bad moods lead to more systematic thinking, while good moods lead to more heuristic thinking Forgas (1984) The Influence of Affect on Cognition Affect can influence memory Two important effects that affect can have on memory  1) Mood-dependent memory 2) Mood congruence effects Mood-Dependent Memory and Mood Congruence Effects  The Influence of Cognition on Affect There exists a lot of research on the effects that our feelings and moods have on our thoughts but there is research evidence for the reverse as well Cognition can influence affect different ways: - Two-factor theory of emotion - Activating schemas with a strong affective Social Cognition: Final Thought We will be touching upon social cognition throughout all of our classes As mentioned in the first class, cognition is part of everything we do!