Topic 3__Social Cognition__SV (1).pptx

Social Cognition Topic 3 Overview of Topics Social Cognition Defined Two modes of thinking Automatic Thinking and Schemas o Priming, embodied cognition, heuristics Controlled Thinking o Counterfactual Reasoning  Improving Thinking Social Cognition  Social Cognition: o How people think ab...

Social Cognition Topic 3 Overview of Topics Social Cognition Defined Two modes of thinking Automatic Thinking and Schemas o Priming, embodied cognition, heuristics Controlled Thinking o Counterfactual Reasoning  Improving Thinking Social Cognition  Social Cognition: o How people think about themselves and the social world – how they select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions.  Humans often effortlessly understand the world o Automatic processing o Top-down processing  Case example: perceptual problems o Apperceptive agnosia Two Modes of Thinking Intuitive Thinking (System 1) o Quick and reflexive; often rely on “hunches” o Little mental effort required Analytical Thinking (System 2) o Slow and reflective; deliberate o Requires mental effort Intuitive thinking is adaptive and important but over-reliance on it leads to errors Automatic (Low-effort) Thinking  We quickly (and automatically) make sense of the world around us.  Automatic Thinking: o Nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless forms of thought. Examples of Automatic Functions: o Understanding social situations o Understanding language Automatic Thinking  Schemas: o Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.  Example: Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts o Read Western participants a folk tale o Had to retell the story – right away and later on o Overtime, stories are shaped to fit culturerelated schemas Automatic Thinking: Schemas Functions of schemas Organize our knowledge & provide continuity Direct attention & process information efficiently Influence interpretation o Useful in ambiguous circumstances Influence memory processes Guide decision-making Applying Schemas: Accessibility  Accessibility o The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are, therefore, likely to be used when making judgments about the social world Three ways schemas become accessible: o Chronic availability o Related to a current goal o Recent experiences: priming • The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait or concept Priming Example Higgins et al. (1977) o Ps participated in two ”unrelated” studies o 1st study: Exposed to words that could influence perceptions of a person o 2nd study: Read description and rated impressions of “Donald” o Only relevant words had an effect (not other positive and negative words) Automatic Thinking: Schemas  Self-fulfilling prophecy: o The case whereby people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which, in turn, causes that person to behave consistently with their original expectations. Examples: o Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968): Teachers and IQ of students o Riley & Ungerleider (2012): Self-fulfilling prophecy could negatively affect indigenous and ESL students Types of Automatic Thinking  Embodied Cognition: o The process by which bodily sensations activate mental structures, such as schemas Examples: o Head nodding increases persuasiveness of messages (Wells & Petty, 1980) o Holding a pencil in teeth (activated smiling muscles) increased judgments of how funny cartoons were (Strack et al., 1988) o Relationships are perceived as less stable when people are in physically unstable chairs (Kille et al., 2013) Types of Automatic Thinking  Heuristics: o Mental shortcuts used to make judgments quickly and efficiently o Save mental effort o Prone to errors Two Important Heuristics: o Availability o Representativeness Heuristics  Availability Heuristic: o Judgments or decisions are made based on the ease with which information comes to mind. o Can work well Problem: what we can bring to mind may not represent what is typical in reality o Biased by salience, limited experience, and feelings of familiarity Example: Tversky & Kahneman (1973) o Gave people lists with 39 names (19 women’s names and 20 men’s names per list) o In some lists the men’s names were famous (but not the women’s), in others the women’s names were famous (but not the men’s) o People could recall more famous names from the lists and estimated the total number of names to be higher when the names were famous Availability Heuristic Schwarz et al. (1991) o Personal ratings of assertiveness o Ps were asked to think of either 6 or 12 examples o Results: Heuristics Representativeness heuristic: o A mental shortcut whereby people make classifications based on similarity to typical cases. Example: Tversky & Kahneman (1974) o Steve is shy and withdrawn, and helpful, but has little interest in people or reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure and has a passion for detail o What is the likelihood that Steve is a farmer, salesman, pilot, librarian, or physician? Ignore base rates: People do not consider the actual frequency (number of people) of the membership in categories Cultural Differences in Social Cognition  All people and cultures use automatic thinking o How this is used varies  Analytic Thinking Style: o People focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context o More characteristic of individualistic cultures  Holistic Thinking Style: o People focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects related to one another o More characteristic of collectivist cultures Cultural Differences in Social Cognition Attentional processes are shaped by culture o Attention is directed (in part) by top-down knowledge Example: Masuda & Nisbett (2006) o Asian Ps detected more changes in the contextual information o Western Ps detected more changes in focal objects Holistic and analytical thinking can be primed (Miyamoto et al, 2006) Controlled Thinking  Controlled Thinking: o Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful o Requires mental energy o Focus on one thing at a time Controlled Thinking and Freewill o Example: deciding that I want ice cream o Beliefs about control are important for humans o E.g., Dar-Nimrod et al. (2014) • 2 Conditions: Obesity is genetically caused or due to lifestyle factors • ”Genetic cause” group ate more cookies Counterfactual Reasoning Counterfactual Thinking: o Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been. o Simulation heuristic Research uses hypothetical situations o E.g., Kahneman & Tversky (1982) • Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees were scheduled to leave the airport on different flights, at the same time. • They traveled from town in the same limousine, were caught in a traffic jam, and arrived at the airport 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time of their flights. • Mr. Crane is told that his flight left on time. Mr. Tees is told that his flight was delayed, and just left five minutes ago. • Who is more upset, Mr. Crane or Mr. Tees? Counterfactual Reasoning Counterfactual thinking happens in the real world too  Examples: o Self-blame after loss of a loved one (Davis et al., 1995) o Justifying the past (McCrea, 2008) o 3rd place is happier than 2nd (Medvec et al., 1995) Counterfactual thinking is often adaptive o Preparation for the future (Byrne, 2016) o Negative affect is often key (Byrne, 2016; McCrea, 2008) o May not be adaptive for people high in perfectionism (Sirois et al, 2010) Improving thinking Controlled thinking provides a check for automatic thinking o Minimize errors Overconfidence Barrier: o People tend to have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments o Judgments are not usually as correct as people think they are No perfect solution: start with humility o Considering other opinions can improve judgment o Teach people statistical and methodological thinking The End