Social Cognition PDF

Self in Social Context BLOCK 3 SOCIAL COGNITION 85 Social Cognition BLOCK 3 INTRODUCTION This block comprises of Four units which deals with the social cognition. It sh...

Self in Social Context BLOCK 3 SOCIAL COGNITION 85 Social Cognition BLOCK 3 INTRODUCTION This block comprises of Four units which deals with the social cognition. It should be mentioned here that social cognition is the way by which we process social information.The first unit deals with the concepts of schema and heuristics and the unit explains the modes of social thought. The unit also discusses about the sources of errors that affects our social cognition. With the help of this unit you will come to know about the role played by our cognitive processes in social interaction with others. The second unit discusses about the process of social perception and describes the ways in which we perceive others in different social situations. It will also deal with the theories of attribution, in order to know whether the behaviour of a person originated from his or her internal dispositions or there were some external situational factors that caused the particular behaviour. The unit will also explain the process by which an overall impression of others interacting with us in social situations is formed. Lastly, we will illustrate the errors we commit in attribution process. In the third unit of this block, we will discuss the meaning and definition of attitude. We will further explain the components, types and functions of attitude. We will also describe the process and theories of attitude formation and change. We will also discuss the issue pertaining to relationship between attitude and behaviour. Lastly, we will also try to understand the concept, process and relevance of persuasion. In the fourth and last unit of this block, we will discuss the relationship between attitude and behaviour. We will also understand the concepts of stereotype, prejudice and discrimination. By the end of this unit, you will also come to know about the sources of prejudice and the disguised forms of discrimination. Lastly, you will also be acquainted by the ways of reducing stereotype, prejudice and discrimination. 86  Social Cognition: UNIT 5 SOCIAL COGNITION: Understanding Social Behaviour- I UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR- I* Structure 5.0 Objectives 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Schema 5.2.1 Types of Schema 5.2.1.1 Person Schemas 5.2.1.2 Self Schemas 5.2.1.3 Group Schemas 5.2.1.4 Role Schemas 5.2.1.5 Events Schemas 5.2.2 Impact of Schema 5.3 Modes of Social Thought Processing 5.3.1 The Continuum Model of Processing 5.3.2 Automatic vs. Controlled Processing 5.4 Heuristics: The Mental Shortcuts 5.4.1 Availability Heuristics 5.4.2 Representativeness Heuristics 5.4.3 Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics 5.5 Sources of Errors in Social Cognition 5.5.1 Cognitive-Experiential Self Theory 5.5.2 Paying Attention to Inconsistent Information 5.5.3 Negativity Bias 5.5.4 Planning Fallacy 5.5.5 Potential Costs of Thinking Too Much 5.5.6 Counterfactual thinking 5.5.7 Magical Thinking 5.6 Let Us Sum Up 5.7 Unit End Questions 5.8 Answers to Self Assessment Questions 5.9 Glossary 5.10 Suggested Readings and References 5.0 OBJECTIVES After reading this unit, you will be able to: Understand the meaning of social cognition; Describe meaning, types and impact of schema; Explain the concept and relevance of heuristics; and Discuss the sources of errors in social cognition. * Dr. Ari Sudan Tiwari, Scientist ‘E’Defence Institute of Psychological Research, Ministry of Defence, Lucknow Road, Timarpur, Delhi 87 Social Cognition 5.1 INTRODUCTION Human beings are social animals. They think, feel and act by involving themselves, others and larger collectives throughout every moment of the day. The enormous yet seemingly natural tasks of social perception, social memory, and social decision-making in which they engage; and the by-products of such tasks constitute the study of social cognition. Social cognition is defined as the process by which we interpret, analyze, remember and use information about the social world. In the other words, social cognition is the way by which we process social information. More specifically, while studying social cognition social psychologists attempt to answer following important questions of social lives of human being: How do we register, encode, classify, store and utilise the overflow of information in our social world? What processes our cognitive system follows when we receive information about others in order to form an overall impression of them? What we do in order to understand the reasons behind and origins of behaviours of people around us? Is the processing of social information biased? What biases and errors generally we commit in the process of social perception? Social psychology has very vigorously attempted to answer these questions in its branch of social cognition. In this unit we will understand the concepts of schema and heuristics and the modes of social thought. We will also discuss about the sources of errors that affects our social cognition. With the help of this unit you will come to know about the role played by our cognitive processes in social interaction with others. 5.2 SCHEMA Our social interactions are largely guided by our expectations regarding the people involved in the interactions, roles played by them in the specific situations, norms guiding behaviours of people involved in the interaction and the likely events and actions in the situation. Such expectations originate from our previous experiences and knowledge of people, roles, norms and events of similar kinds. Social psychologists refer it as schemas. Schemas are defined as cognitive structures containing broader expectations and knowledge of the social world that help us systematically organise social information. Schemas contain not only some precise and explicit illustrations, they also include our inferences and assumptions about of the persons, events, situations, etc. Schemas help us to predict the likely behaviours of people occupying specific roles in a social interaction and sequence of actions in a particular social event. Further, schemas influence the process of encoding, storage and retrieval of social information.They also guide us in making inferences about the information which is not available to us in a particular social situation. By all its functions, a schema significantly reduces the efforts weput forth in processing the social information. 88 5.2.1 Types of Schema Social Cognition: Understanding Social Behaviour- I Social psychologists have categorised schemas into different types: person schemas, self-schemas, group schemas, role schemas and event schemas. 5.2.1.1 Person Schemas Cognitive structures that attempt to illustrate the personalities of others are called as person schema. Person schemas try to explain personalities of either specific persons (such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Buddha, J. R. D. Tata, etc.) or explain personalities in terms of some universal types (such as extravert, introvert, sober, sociable, depressive, submissive, etc.). Person schemas help us in classifying and organising our understandingabout the personalities of people around us and lead to make internal predictions about their behaviour. Person schemas, often referred as person prototypes, generally consist of a composition of personality traits that we use to classify people and to predict their behaviour in particular situations. Generally dominant personality traits are utilised as criteria for categorising people in our social world. Based on observations during our interactions we may infer that ‘A’ is submissive or that ‘B’ is honest or ‘C’ is dominant. This helps us in making expectations in our social interactions and giving us a sense of control and predictability in the situation. 5.2.1.2 Self Schemas Similar to the way we receive, encode, store and utilise the information about other people, we develop schemas that describe our self-concept based on past experiences. Self schemas are cognitive representations about us that organize and process all related information (Markus, 1977). Self schema is developed from the traits that we think as core of our self-concept. Self schemas describe the components that uniquely characterise and define our self-concept. We have different context specific self schemas that are activated in different social situations. For example, self schema of A as commanding and dominant when he is in his office may be opposite from his self schema as submissive and obedient when he is with his father. 5.2.1.3 Group Schemas Group schemas, often referred to as stereotypes, are the schemas regarding the people representing a particular social group or category (Hamilton, 1981). Stereotypes specify the traits, qualities, attributes and behaviours presumably characterising the members of that social group or category. In our social interactions we try to understand our social world with the help of number of stereotypes about people of different castes, religious groups, specific geographical regions, speaking different languages, ethnic groups, etc. 5.2.1.4 Role Schemas Role schemas characterise traits, qualities, attributes and behaviours of persons with a particular role in a group. Role schemas help us in understanding and predicting the behaviours of persons who occupy specific roles in a social group. Role schemas are categorised in various ways. For example, there are role schemas associated with various occupational roles, such as teachers, scientists, doctors, 89 Social Cognition sales managers, HR managers, etc. Similarly, role schemas are also associated with other kinds of roles in social groups, such as group leader, captain of a sports team, etc. Our initial interactions with a person are broadly guided by the cues that prominently visible to us. However, as our familiarity with the person increases importance of such physical cues is reduced and trait-based person schemas are given more importance in guiding our social interactions Fiske (1998). 5.2.1.5 Event Schemas Event schemas, also referred to as scripts, are cognitive structures that describe the expected sequences of actions and behaviours of people participating in an event in our everyday social activities. We explicate scripts by asking people to describe that what actually happens in a particular social event, what is the sequence of these actions and what types of behaviours people do during the event. For example, if we are asked to explain the appropriate behavioural sequence of an Indian classroom, we can very vividly describe the behavioural sequences of teacher and students. The phenomenon of event schema or script indicate that we store the behaviours that are appropriate in particular situation for our broad understanding and whenever we are encountered to such situation the script is automatically activated in order to facilitate our smooth interaction in the situation. 5.2.2 Impact of Schema Our social environment is flooded with information at any given time and it is beyond our cognitive capacity to process all those information instantly. We cannot respond to all those social stimuli in equally efficient manner and therefore, we are required to focus on some of the most relevant and important information. Schemas provide us a practical tool to make precise social judgements up to an extent by helping us in registering, encoding, categorising, organising, storing, comprehending and retrieving the social information and consequently, making decision about the appropriate behaviour in a given situation. Schemas are theory-driven: Being originated from our previously acquired knowledge about the social surroundings, schemas function as ‘theory-driven’ structures that enable us to classify and organise our specific social interactions and broader social experiences. This suggests that the information available in the social environment is rarely used in social interactions, instead schematic theories operate subconsciously in the background and therefore, we comprehend and act in a novel social situation based our schema driven assumptions (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Impact of schemas on memory: Human memory is mainly considered as reconstructive in nature. In place of remembering all specific fine points of social encounters and situations, we generally remember only prominent details characterising and defining the situations which activate the schema when we require and subsequently schema fills in other minute details. Such impact of schema on memory suggests that schemas further determine that what details will be remembered and which details will be forgotten. When we try to recall about a social event, we are more likely to remember those details that are consistent with our schemas than those that are inconsistent (Cohen, 1981). 90 Impact of schemas on inferences in social interactions: Most of our social Social Cognition: Understanding Social interactions are facilitated by the schema driven assumptions and inferences we Behaviour- I draw about various people in our social surroundings (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). At number of occasions there are large gaps in our understanding of the social situations which are filled up by the schema.When we are unaware of certain information about someone, we draw some inferences consistent with our schema in order to create a coherent and complete understanding of the person. For example, if you know your roommate who is fitness crazy, you can infer that he will love company of another friend of yours who is a sportsperson. Impact of schemas on social judgements: Several schemas, particularly person schemas represent the cognitive structures referring our evaluations, judgements and affective orientations about people and events in our social environment. Therefore, when a particular schema is activated it leadsus to view the associated social stimulusin the categories of good-bad, normal-abnormal, positive-negative, etc. and consequently, it strongly elicits feelings consistent with our evaluations. Schemas are integrated and stable in nature: Schemas are developed and strengthened with our experiences in particular social situations and further they are stored in the form of integrated structures of associated components. During our social interactions even a single accessed component of a schema is capable of activating the whole schema, as strong associative links exist among the components of the schema (Fiske & Dyer, 1985). Once schemas are developed and are recurrently activated during our social encounters they become relatively stable part of our social thought process and further they resist change even when we are encountered with the evidences inconsistent with the existing schemas. Self Assessment Questions I Fill in the following blanks: 1).......................... influence the process of encoding, storage and retrieval of social information. 2) Most of our........................ are facilitated by the schema driven assumptions and inferences we draw about various people in our social surroundings. 3)................... which are often referred to as stereotypes, are the schemas regarding the people representing a particular social group or category. 4) Cognitive structures that attempt to illustrate the personalities of others are called as..................... 5) Self schema is developed from the traits that we think as core of our.................... 5.3 MODES OF SOCIAL THOUGHT PROCESSING 5.3.1 The Continuum Model of Processing Our presumptions and prejudices often result into distorted thoughts and biased evaluations. However, our thought process is not always guided by presumptions and prejudices in order to minimise cognitive efforts like cognitive misers. Instead, 91 Social Cognition we often analyse the social information in a very cautious, vigilant, systematic and piecemeal (progressive) manner. Fiske and Neuberg (1990) suggested that we process social information along a continuum starting from category driven schematic processing to datadrivensystematic processing. Theyfurther suggested that category driven schematic processing is employed in the when information is explicit and less important to the person; whereas, data driven systematic processing is employed when the informationis confusing and comparatively more significant for the person. Data driven systematic processing is employed also when we require very high accuracy in our social judgements. We encounter with different people in our everyday social interactions. With their varying importance to us we decide that that up to what extent information regarding them is systematically processed and data regarding which people will be superficially processed in order to form their impressions. 5.3.2 Automatic vs. Controlled Processing We follow two distinct ways of approaches of information processing in our social thought: an organized, logical, and highly purposeful approach known as controlled processing, or a quick, relatively effortless and intuitive-spontaneous approach known as automatic processing. Devine (1989) applied the difference between the two ways of processing to explain the process by which stereotypes are activated. Devine proposed that we acquire a number of social stereotypes during our childhood years through the process of socialization. Such stereotypes are further strengthened by repeated exposure in our social encounters and consequently they become an integral part of our social knowledge structure. In our subsequent encounter with the social groups the corresponding knowledge structures are activated automatically without our conscious and purposeful thinking. Devine (1989) further argued that the stereotypes are automatically activated with almost equal strength for those who are high prejudiced, as well as for those who are low prejudiced. Devine also demonstrated that stereotypes are activated in both high and low prejudiced people; even when cues for stereotypes were subliminally presented and therefore, participants were not consciously aware of cues presented to them. 5.4 HEURISTICS: THE MENTAL SHORTCUTS In our everyday social interactions, we are flooded by information which generally exceeds the capacity of our cognitive system. In such situations, we devise and employ various strategies which help us to maximum utilisation of our cognitive resources in minimum cognitive efforts; consequently leading to an automatic, rapid, spontaneous and effortless social thought process. Using heuristics, a type of mental shortcuts, is one of the most prominent such strategies in which we make complex decisions in an automatic, rapid, spontaneous and effortless manner by using simple rules. At a certain time, many schemas are available to us which may guide our social interactions. We employ heuristics in order to select a particular schema to guide our social interactions. Some of such heuristics are discussed below. 92 5.4.1 Availability Heuristics Social Cognition: Understanding Social Behaviour- I Some schemas are more frequently used in our social interactions than others. A schema which is most recently used is more readily available to us to guide our social interactions. Schwarz et al. (1991) proposed a different explanation to availability heuristics in terms of ease of retrieval. They argued that schemas consistent with the examples which are easier to remember are more readily available and therefore, used in our social thoughts. Thus they emphasised the ease of remembering a particular example associated with certain schema than the number of times the schema is used. 5.4.2 Representativeness Heuristics Representativeness heuristic is often used when we are faced with situations with high level of uncertainty. In such situations, we generally focus on very essential properties of the social entities and match them with various schemas held in our cognitive system. Furthermore, the schema which most closely resembles with the characteristics of the particular social entity is selected. In certain situations, representativeness heuristic becomes so strong that it is employed even in the presence of contradictory evidences and statistical information. 5.4.3 Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristics In a situation where we are required to take a social decision or to express our opinion on some social issue about which we do not have expertise, we usually try to make a guess based on a somewhat workable cue. This cue functions as a starting point or as an anchor and further we make modifications and adjustments in the starting point in order to arrive at our final decision or opinion. Suppose that you are asked in an exam to provide the population of Delhi. If you do not know that population but you know the population of Haryana, you might use the population of Haryana as an anchor and thinking that Delhi must be somewhat smaller than Haryana, adjust the population of Haryana downward to produce your guess. In most cases of social judgements, we generally use ourselves as an anchor. 5.5 SOURCES OF ERRORS IN SOCIAL COGNITION As a human being, we consciously desire to think logically in order to make somewhat error-free decisions, evaluations and judgements about people and events in social surroundings. However, at various occasions our social thought process ignores certain logical standards and we put in less cognitive effort to comprehend our social world which subsequently leads to errors in our social cognition. 5.5.1 Cognitive-Experiential Self Theory Cognitive-experiential self theory argues that many times we prefer our intuitive thoughts based on past experiences over logical thinking in order to evaluate a social situation. For example, when a cricket player scores a century with a pair 93 Social Cognition of shoes he continues to wear the same pair of shoes in coming matches as well despite the probable dangerous consequences of wearing an old pair of shoes. Such intuitive thoughts originate from the past experience that the old shoes were lucky for him. 5.5.2 Paying Attention to Inconsistent Information When we encounter with a person in a social situation, information inconsistent with his/her role draws our attention even at cost of some consistent and even more relevant information. Social psychologists have provided evidence that inconsistent information is better remembered than the consistent information about gender roles. BardachandPark (1996) reported that the participants remembered the qualities inconsistent with a gender (‘nuturant’ for males and ‘competitive’ for females) better than those that are usually inconsistent with a gender (‘adventurous’ for males and ‘emotional’ for females). The findings indicated that the inconsistent information may be preferred over important consistent information leading to potential errors in social cognition. 5.5.3 Negativity Bias The negativity bias refers to the notion that, even when of equal intensity, human being has the tendency to give greater weight to negative social information and entities (events, objects, personal traits, etc.) as compared to positive ones. When traits differ in terms of their positivity and negativity, negative traits are disproportionately impact the final impression. 5.5.4 Planning Fallacy While deciding about the time we will take to complete a task, we often underestimate the time needed and at the time of execution we generally overshoot the time period that we had assigned to ourselves. This is known as planning fallacy. The reason for this is that while initially taking the decision about the time required, we generally focus on events or actions to occur in future rather than focusing on the time we had taken to accomplish a task in the past. This tendency disallows us to do a realistic estimate of time needed. Furthermore, at the time of initial decision-making, even if one is reminded of the excessive time incurred in the past, the delay is usually attributed to some external factors rather than one’s own capabilities to the finish the work in time. 5.5.5 Potential Costs of Thinking Too Much At number of occasions, we excessively do careful thinking resulting into confusion, frustration and wrong judgement. Wilson and Schooler (1991) asked half of their research participants to“simplyrate” the several strawberry jams and the other half of them to “deeply analyse” the reasons for the ratingsthey themselves gave to each jam. The researchers also took the opinion of experts (who professionally compared various products) about the correctness of judgement made of the two groups of participants. They found that, according to the experts, the judgement of the secondhalf of the participants (consisting of participants who deeply analysed their own rating) were not as accurate as that of the first half (consisting of participants who simply rated the jams). 94 5.5.6 Counterfactual Thinking Social Cognition: Understanding Social Behaviour- I Counterfactual thinking is a tendency in which people think contrary to what actually occurred. People think about the already occurred events by framing some possible alternatives in terms of “What if?” and the “If I had only...” For example, a cricketer thinks that “what could have happened if played in that match!” 5.5.7 Magical Thinking Magical thinking is the kind of thinking that involves irrational assumptions often associated with law of similarity or law of contagion. Law of similarity states our assumption that people similar to each other in appearance may be having similar fundamental characteristics. For example, some children might not like to eat a biscuit in the shape of a lizard. Law of contagion is the belief that when two people or objects come in contact with each other, they pass on their properties to one another and such an impact last long even after the contact is over. For example, one might not like to wear the coat used by an HIV patient even after it is dry-cleaned. Self Assessment Questions II State whether the following are ‘True’ or ‘False’: 1) Magical thinking is a tendency in which people think contrary to what actually occurred ……….... 2) Cognitive-experiential self theory argues that many times we prefer our intuitive thoughts based on past experiences over logical thinking in order to evaluate a social situation …………. 3) Representativeness heuristic is often used when we are faced with situations with high level of uncertainty ……………….. 4) Our presumptions and prejudices neverresult into distorted thoughts and biased evaluations …………….. 5) Heuristics are a type of mental shortcuts ……….. 5.6 LET US SUM UP Thus, it can be summed up that social cognition is a very relevant process at individual level.This process is facilitated by cognitive representations of the social world in our minds called schemas. Distinct types of schemas, person schemas, self-schemas, group schemas, role schemas and event schemas; function as organising structures influence the encoding, storing, recall of complex social information and social judgements.To deal with the state of information overload in the social situations where the demands on our cognitive system are greater than its capacity, people adopt various heuristic strategies. In our everyday social interactions, we are flooded by information which generally exceeds the capacity of our cognitive system. The unit started with the explanation of concept and meaning of social cognition, which was followed by the meaning, types and impact of schema. The unit also explained the concept and relevance of heuristics. Finally the various sources of errors in social cognition were also discussed in the present unit. 95 Social Cognition 5.7 UNIT END QUESTIONS 1) Define the concept of social cognition and schema? 2) Describe various types of schema and also evaluate its impact on social thought process. 3) Present an account of modes of social thought processing as proposed by psychologists and also explain various sources of errors in social cognition. 4) Discuss the various sources of error involved in social cognition. 5) What is the role of heuristics in social cognition? Describe various types of heuristicsemployed in social cognition. 5.8 ANSWERS TO SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Self Assessment Question I 1) Schemas 2) Social interactions 3) Group schemas 4) Person schema 5) Self-concept Self Assessment Question II 1) False 2) True 3) True 4) False 5) True 5.9 GLOSSARY Social cognition: The process by which we interpret, analyze, remember and use information about the social world. Schemas: Cognitive structures and representations of social world in our minds that help us organise social information and contain general expectations and knowledge of the world. Person schemas: Cognitive structures that organise our conceptions of others’ personalities and enable us to develop expectations about others’ behaviour. Self schemas: Cognitive representations about us that organize and process all related information. Group schemas: Also called stereotypes, are schemas regarding the members of a particular social group or social category and indicate that certain attributes and behaviours are typical of members of that group or social category. 96 Role schemas: Indicate that certain attributes and behaviours are typical of Social Cognition: Understanding Social persons occupying a particular role in a group and are often used to understand Behaviour- I and to predict the behaviours of people who occupy roles. Event schemas: Often referred to as cognitive scripts, describe behavioural and event sequences in everyday activities; specifies the activities that constitute the event, the predetermined order or sequence for these activities, and the persons (or role occupants) participating in the event; provide the basis for anticipating the future, setting goals and making plans. Heuristics: Cognitive strategies to deal with the state of information overload in the social situations where the demands on our cognitive system are greater than its capacity. 5.10 SUGGESTED READINGS AND REFERENCES Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social Psychology (10thed.). Cengage Learning. Branscombe, N. R., & Baron, R. A. (2016). Social Psychology (14th ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn& Bacon. Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290. Bardach, L., & Park, B. (1996). The effects of in-group/out-group status on memory for consistent and inconsistent behavior of an individual. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 169-178. Cohen, C. E. (1981). Person categories and social perception: Testing some boundaries of the processing effects of prior knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 441-452. Devine, P. C. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18. Dreben, E. K., Fiske, S. T., & Hastie, R. (1979). The independence of evaluative and item information: Impression and recall order effects in behavior-based impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1758- 1768. Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Fiske, S. T., & Dyer, L. M. (1985). Structure and development of social schemata: Evidence from positive and negative transfer effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 839-852. Fiske, S. T., &Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 23 (pp. 1-74). New York: Academic Press. 97 Social Cognition Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Hamilton, D. L. (1981). Stereotyping and intergroup behavior: Some thoughts on the cognitive approach. In D. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior (pp. 333-353). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Heider, F. (1944). Social perception and phenomenal causality. Psychological Review, 51, 258-374. Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press. Jones, E. E., & Goethals, G. R. (1971). Order Effects in Impression Formation: Attribution Context and the Nature of the Entity. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. (1972). The actor and observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. W. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Jones, E. E., &Harris, V. A. (1967). The Attribution of Attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 3, 1-24. Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium in Motivation, 1967. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Kelley, H. H. (1973). The process of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107-128. Luchins, A. S. (1957). Experimental attempts to minimize the impact of first impressions. In C. I. Hovland (Ed.), The Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemas and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 63-78. Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact or Fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-225. Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., &Maracek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 154-164. Pettigrew, T. F. (1979). The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 461-476. Schwarz, N., Bless, H.,Strack, F.,Klumpp, G.,Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61, 195-202. 98 Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1978). Salience, attention, and attribution: Top of Social Cognition: Understanding Social the head phenomena. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Behaviour- I Psychology (Vol. 11). New York: Academic Press. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131. Weiner, B. (1986). An Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion. New York: Springer Verlag. Wilson, T. D., & Schooler, J. W. (1991). Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 181-192. 99 Social Cognition UNIT 6 SOCIAL COGNITION: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR- II* Structure 6.0 Objectives 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Person Perception 6.2.1 Impression Formation 6.2.1.1 Trait Centrality 6.2.1.2 First Impression 6.3 Theories of Attribution 6.3.1 Heider’s Naive Psychology 6.3.2 Correspondent Inference Theory 6.3.3 Covariation Model 6.3.4 Attribution of Success and Failure 6.4 Errors and Biases in Attribution 6.4.1 Fundamental Attribution Error 6.4.2 Actor-Observer Bias 6.4.3 Self-Serving Bias 6.4.4 Ultimate Attribution Error 6.5 Let Us Sum Up 6.6 Unit End Questions 6.7 Answers to Self Assessment Questions 6.8 Glossary 6.9 Suggested Readings and References 6.0 OBJECTIVES After reading this unit, you will be able to: Explain the concept of person perception and impression formation; Discuss the various theories of attribution; Illustrate the process of impression formation; and Elucidate the ways in which people generally commit errors in person perception. 6.1 INTRODUCTION The present unit of the block will explain the process of social perception and describe the ways in which we perceive others in different social situations. We will also illustrate the theories of attribution in order to know whether the behaviour of a person originated from his or her internal dispositions or there were some external situational factors that caused the particular behaviour. We will also understand the process by which an overall impression of others * Dr. Ari Sudan Tiwari, Scientist ‘E’Defence Institute of Psychological Research, Ministry of Defence, 100 Lucknow Road, Timarpur Delhi-110054 interacting with us in social situations is formed. Lastly, we will illustrate the Social Cognition: Understanding Social errors we commit in attribution process. Behaviour- II 6.2 PERSON PERCEPTION We perceive people with whom we interact in the social surroundings quite differently from the way we perceive non-living things. We do soprimarily because we evaluate and judge people based on assumptions and inferences regarding the intentions behind their behaviours. Often we make assumptions about the persons’ internal state which significantly influences the perceptions and judgments we do regarding that person’s actions.Person perception is the area of social psychology which studies the processby which we form impressions of other people with whom we interact in ourreal or virtual social surroundings and also that how we make inferences about them.Thearea of person perception also analyses the cognitive process involved in making decision that which information isattended, registered and encoded when we interact with other people, how we evaluate these information and how this evaluationaffects our subsequent social behaviour. 6.2.1 Impression Formation We receive information regarding people around us from a variety of sources. These sources may include the written facts about the person, something which is told to us about the person by other people or behaviour of the person which we directly observe. During our social interactions, we may form an impression of a person on the basis of his or her obvious and visible features, such as look, clothing, way of verbal communication, etc. We may further make assumptions about the personality traits of the person on the basis of these physical characteristics. Although we receive information regarding people around us from a variety of sources, we are primarily concerned with organising and assimilating such diverse information into a coherent picture. Impression formation is the process by which we amalgamate diverse facts in order to form an integrated impression of people around us. Understanding people in a vacuum is a difficult task. Therefore, we explain others’ personality in terms of their traits. Traits function as building blocks of how we construe others’ personality. In many cases, in order to form impression of others’ personality we combine whatever information, in terms of personality traits, we find in a person possibly in a mathematical way. We assign some positive or negative value to all the traits inferred in the person and then we may derive an additive value or an average value of those traits. 6.2.1.1 Trait Centrality When we try to form an impression of a person, we give greater importance to some traits as compared to others. For example, this has been reported that when we notice negative information regarding a person, we give more emphasis to it than the positive information. Asch (1946) presented empirical evidence to the view that when we form impression of a person some traits play more important role than others. Asch (1946) presented a list of traits of an imaginary person to one of his two research 101 Social Cognition groups. The list included seven traits: intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm, determined, practical and cautious. The list which was presented to the second research group differed in the manner that the trait “cold” replaced the trait “warm”. After being presented with the list of traits, participants of both the research groups were asked to write a short description of the impression they formed of the imaginary person and also to rate the person on another list of characteristics: generous, wise, happy, good-natured, humorous, sociable, popular, humane, altruistic and imaginative. The findings revealed that when the traits “warm” and “cold” shaped the overall impression formed by the research participants to a great extent. In the “warm” trait condition, the imaginary person was evaluated as happy, successful, popular and humorous. While in “cold” trait condition, he was perceived as self-centred, unsociable and unhappy. Furthermore, a considerable qualitative difference was observed in the overall impression of the imaginary person as written in the description of the person by both “warm” and “cold” trait groups. This evidence was substantiated when the basic research procedure was replicated with a minor innovative change that in the list of traits the trait of “warm-cold” was replaced by “polite-blunt”. Results indicated that difference in the impression formed in polite vs. blunt trait conditions was significantly lesser than that of warm vs. cold. The findings suggested that different traits vary in their centrality value in order to form impression of others. The trait which has greater influence on overall impression is considered to have higher trait centrality value. 6.2.1.2 First Impression As discussed earlier, individuals make conscious efforts to create a good impression when entering into the interviewing room, joining a new group or meeting with an important client. People generally do so because they think that the first impression which we form on others is particularly significant and also it has a considerably stable impact. This view originates from the researches on primacy effect (Luchins, 1957) demonstrating that when we form an impression of other people information received early is attached with greater value than the information received later. Social psychologists have proposed various explanations for primacy effect. Firstly, once impression of a person is initially formed, it affects how we process information received later regarding the person. When later on we receive information about the person, it is registered, encoded and interpreted in such a way that it is consistent with our first impression. For example, once we form impression of a person as honest and later on we find that he or she is not returning some money borrowed from a friend 2-3 months back. With the background that we have initial impression of the person as honest, from the newly observed behaviour we may infer that the person may have financial constraints or he or she may have forgotten to return the money. Thus, the already formed impression functions as a schema into which the information received later is assimilated and the existing schema significantly influences the way of interpreting new information. Secondly, the primacy effect assumes that we tend pay greater attention to the information received early and the information received later is somewhat ignored once we get the amount of information which we consider sufficient to make a judgment. Thus, instead of interpreting the information received later differently; we in fact tend to ignore it or use it less (Dreben, 102 Fiske, & Hastie, 1979). Despite being an important phenomenon, primacy effect does not always occur. Social Cognition: Understanding Social In some conditions, our impressions are most affected by the set of information Behaviour- II which we receive most recently. This phenomenon, opposite to the primacy effect, is known as the recency effect (Jones & Goethals, 1971). Recency effect is most likely to occur when there is such a considerable time gap after the formation of first impression that its trace has been lost. Recency effect is seen also when we are primarily concerned with evaluating transient qualities, such as moods or attitudes. Self Assessment Questions I Fill in the following blanks: 1)........................ presented empirical evidence to the view that when we form impression of a person some traits play more important role than others. 2) Person perception is the area of social psychology which studies the process by which we form......................... of other people with whom we interact in ourreal or virtual social surroundings. 3) Theperson perception also analyses the.................... involved in making decision that which information isattended, registered and encoded when we interact with other people. 4) The already formed impression functions as a................ into which the information received later is assimilated 5).................... effect is most likely to occur when there is such a considerable time gap after the formation of first impression that its trace has been lost. 6.3 THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION While interacting with people in our social surroundings, we largely focus on their behaviours and their effects. However, we are also interested to the reasons behind others’behaviours. It requires making inferences ahead of our general observations of behaviours. For example, if we see someone being very aggressive in public, we are interested to know that why is he doing so? Is the person aggressive by nature? Or is he is using aggression as an instrument to achieve some hidden goal? Is there something inherent in the environment which is stimulating the person to be involved in the aggressive behaviour? We are concerned to understand the reasons behind the behaviours primarily because it helps us to predict future behaviour of people around us in order to act effectively in the social environment. This process by which we try to infer causes behind the other persons’ behaviours is referred to as attribution. We infer causes behind others’ behaviours generally in terms of persons’ intentions, their abilities, traits, motives and the situational factors that lead a person to some specific behaviour. Various attribution theories discuss the process by which we interpret behaviours in order to infer their causes. 6.3.1 Heider’s Naive Psychology Although we are concerned about understanding and inferring the personality traits of people with whom we deal with during our social interactions, their behaviour may be caused by both their personality attributes; as well as by the 103 Social Cognition environment in which behaviour takes place. Thus, the actions of people do not always originate from their personality; they may originate from the situation also. Heider (1958) opined that causal attribution is the process by which we infer the causes behind behaviour of other people. While doing causal attribution, we try to deduce that the behaviour was originated from which of the two causes. Fritz Heider (1944, 1958) proposed that in regular social interactions people try to find out the causes behind the behaviour of other people by using commonsense reasoning. The process and method of finding out the causes of behaviour is performed as”naive scientists” and is similar to the scientific method.Therefore, Heider argued that in order to understand the process by which people do causal attribution social psychologists are required to focus on commonsense reasoning employed by common people. Heider proposed that while doing causal attribution, people are primarily focused on understanding whether the behaviour is attributed to the person’s internal state, referred to as dispositional attribution; or to the environmental factors, referred to as situational attribution. For example, attributing a person’s aggressive behaviour to his or her internal states or characteristics, such as irritability, bad temper, hostility is an instance of dispositional attribution. On the other hand, judging the aggressive behaviour originating from the situational factors, such as being aggressive under provocation; refers to situational attribution. As a perceiver, our decision to attribute behaviour to the personal dispositions or to the situational factors is based on our evaluation of the strength of situational pressures on the actor. Under strong situational pressure, we generally go with situational attribution. 6.3.2 Correspondent Inference Theory Correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis, 1965) proposes that in order to make inference that a person’s behaviour originated from personal dispositions, we firstly focus on the intention behind the particular behaviour. Then we try to infer whether such intentions were caused by personal dispositions or not. However, making such inferences becomes difficult because any particular behaviour may produce number of effects. Therefore, to be convinced by our attributions we try to discern that which of the effects the person actually intended and which were simply incidental. As a perceiver, our decision about which of the several effects of the person’ behaviour was actually intended depends on the factors that include the extent to which the effects were common, the extent to which the effects were socially desirable and the extent to which the behaviour complied with the normative perspective (Jones & Davis, 1965). Firstly, the principle of non-common effects refers that we infer a person’s behaviour corresponding to an underlying disposition when the behaviour has an exceptional or non-common effect which could not be produced by any other behaviour. Secondly, we tend to infer a person’s behaviour corresponding to an underlying disposition when the outcomesconsequent to the behaviour are socially undesirable. Being engaged in socially desirable behaviours simply indicates our tendency to appear normal and similar to other people and does not specify any personal disposition. However, low socially desirable behaviours are inferred as a consequence of a personal disposition. 104 Finally, the perceiver evaluates the normativeness of the behaviour in order to Social Cognition: Understanding Social infer that the behaviour is resultant of the person’s personal disposition. Behaviour- II Normativeness refers to the behaviour which is normally expected from a person in given social situation. When behaviour does not conform to the social norms in the situation the behaviour seems to have been freely chosen and not forced on the person in question. Jones and Davis (1965) further argued that the behaviours complying to the social norms generally do not reveal about the individual dispositions. Alternately, the behaviours that contradict social norms are attributed to the personal dispositions. Correspondent Inference Theory: Jones & Davis (1965) BEHAVIOUR THAT IS Freely chosen Somehow forced Non common in its effects Common in its effects Low in social desirability High in social desirability Behaviour originates from the Behaviour originates from the person’s stable traits and situational effects dispositional factors Fig. 6.1: Correspondent Inference Theory Thus, correspondent inference theory states that we are most likely to conclude that others’ behaviour reflects their stable traits and dispositional factors (i.e., we are likely to reach correspondent inferences about them), when that behaviour is freely chosen, yields distinctive, non-common effects and is low in social desirability. 6.3.3 Covariation Model The theories discussed in the preceding sections primarily focus on make attribution of behaviour on a single instance. However, in real life situations we make attributions of person’s behaviour based on information obtained from several instances. Such multiple behavioural observations and comparisons do not only facilitate the process of causal attribution, but also increases the accuracy of attribution. Kelley (1967, 1973) proposed that we process and analyse the information regarding a person’s behaviour obtained from several observations in the same way a scientist does. Kelley argued that there may be various possible factors or causes of behaviour. In order to identify these causes covariation principle is applied. We attribute the behaviour to the factor that is both present when the behaviour occurs and absent when the behaviour fails to occur; the cause that co-varies with the behaviour. 105 Social Cognition Suppose, while going toward your office you notice a road accident. There may be at least two potential causes to which the accident may be attributed: internal causes (personal attributes of the person involved in the accident, such as rough driving), external causes (abrupt driving by others, sudden exposure to damaged road). Kelley (1967) proposed that while employing the principle of covariation to determine whether the behaviour was caused by the internal causes or external causes, people focus on three types of information: consensus, consistency and distinctiveness. Consensus is the extent to which people react to a given stimulus or event in the same manner. It refers to whether all persons behave in the same way or only a few people behave in that way. For example, whether all persons driving on that side of road meet an accident (high consensus), or is that person only who has encountered with an accident while driving on that side of road (low consensus)? Fig. 6.2: Covariation Model (Kelley, 1967,73) Consistency refers to the extent to which the person behaves in the same way at different occasions and situations. If theperson meets an accident on many different occasions, his/her behaviour is (similar) highin consistency. If s/he has been never met a road accident earlier, his/her behaviour is low in consistency. Distinctiveness refers to the extent to which the person behaves in a unique/ distinctive way to various stimuli or events. The individual will show low distinctiveness if s/he behaves similarly in all situations while there exists a high distinctiveness when the individual shows the behaviour in particular situations only. If the person always gets involved in a road accident whenever s/he drives, even when s/he drives on other roads, his/her behaviour (getting involved in the accident) is low in distinctiveness. If the person does not get involved in an accident on other roads, his behaviour is high in distinctiveness. The causal attribution for the behaviour depends on the particular combination of consensus, consistency and distinctiveness information that people associate 106 with that behaviour. People usually attribute a behaviour to the internal causes Social Cognition: Understanding Social (personal characteristics of the person, the driver) when the behaviour is low in Behaviour- II consensus, low in distinctiveness and high in consistency. In contrast, people usually attribute a behaviour to the external causes (rough driving by other drivers, the context/damaged road) when the behaviour is high in consensus, high in distinctiveness and high in consistency. 6.3.4 Attribution of Success and Failure In the age of tremendous competition in all spheres of our lives, people around us evaluate our performances and make attributions regarding our successes and failures. For example, success of a sports team in an important competition may be attributed to several causes. The team’s success may be attributed to the intrinsic ability of the team members, effort exerted by the team members, easy competition due to weak opponents or even luck. Thus, there may be four factors of success or failure: ability, effort, task difficulty and luck. In order to decide that which of these four factors was the actual reason behind the success or failure, perceivers firstly determine the locus of control of the success or failure. That is, whether the reason of success or failure was within the actor (internal or dispositional attribution) or it was caused by some environmental factors (external or situational attribution). Secondly, the perceiver determines the degree of stability of the success or failure. That is, whether the reason behind the result was an enduring characteristic of the actor/environment (stable) or it was varying (unstable). The perceiver can make a final attribution of success or failure only after deciding the internality-externality and stability- instability aspects of the causes. Causal attribution of success and failure Locus of Control Degree of Stability Internal External Stable Ability Task Difficulty Unstable Effort Luck Fig. 6.3: Causal attribution of success and failure Weiner (1986) proposed that the four factors of success or failure can be arranged in the form of a matrix along the dimensions of internality-externality and stability- instability of the causes. For example, ability is usually considered as an internal and stable factor. Ability is primarily interpreted as an internalcharacteristic of the individual and it is considered as a stable property which does not variesquickly. On the contrary, effort is an internal and unstable property. Effort is exerted by the individual (internal) and also, the same individual may exert different amount of efforts at different occasions and at different tasks (unstable). Task difficulty is an objective characteristic of the task (external) that remains constant for a particular task (stable). Luck or chance is an external and unstable factor. Performance of a person is attributed to internal or external causes after comparing his or her performance with that of others. Extraordinary performances, regardless of good or bad, are generally attributed to internal causes. We are more likely to 107 Social Cognition evaluate a student as exceedingly able or extremely motivated who secures very high grades in an extraordinarily tough examination. Likewise, a student with unusually poor performance is perceived as weak in ability or very low in motivational aspect. On the contrary, an average performance is generally attributed to external causes. A mediocre performance of a student in an examination is attributed either to the tough competition or to misfortune. Whether observers attribute a performance to stable or unstable causes depends on how Consistency in the individual’s performance over time plays a vital role in attributing a performance to stable or unstable causes. Consistent performances are usually attributed to the stable causes. A student’s consistent high grades in different examinations over a period of time are more likely to be attributed either to his or her intelligence (ability) or to the low level of the examination (task difficulty). Inconsistent performances are usually attributed to the unstable causes (varying efforts or luck/chance). 6.4 ERRORS AND BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION As explained by various attribution theories, perceivers examine their social surroundings, process information, form impressions and interpret behaviours in a seemingly rational and logical manner. Nevertheless, perceivers often diverge from the logical methods described by attribution theories and commit many errors and biases in this process leading the perceivers to misinterpret the received information and to make flawed attribution. We will now consider the biases and errors that are most pervasive in the process of attribution. 6.4.1 Fundamental Attribution Error Fundamental attribution error refers to a tendency in which we augment the impact of situational or external factors and reduce the impact of dispositional or internal factors while attributing behaviour. Jones and Harris (1967) presented an empirical evidence for fundamental attribution error in an experiment in which he gave an essay to read to American college students. The essay either supported or criticised the Castro government in Cuba. However, the research participants were differently informed regarding the choice of position taken by the essay writer. The experimenters informed half of the participants that the essay writer was free to choose his or her position, ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Castro, while writing the essay (choice condition).While the other half of the participants were informed that the position, ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Castro, taken by the essay writer was directly assigned to them (no-choice condition). While being asked to evaluate the true attitude of the essay writer towards the Castro government in Cuba, the participants viewed the writer’s attitude consistent with the opinions expressed in the essay, regardless of the condition that the writer had choice to take his or her position in the essay (choice condition) or not (no-choicecondition). Experimenters further reported that although the research participants didnot completely ignored the fact that the writers of no-choice condition were assigned the position to take, they attached less importanceto it and overestimated the attitudinal disposition of the essay writer. Thus, the impact of the no-choice condition (situational or external factor) was under estimated and the choice component (dispositional or internal factor) was over estimated.This error results from a failure by the observer to fully apply the 108 subtractive rule. 6.4.2 Actor-Observer Bias Social Cognition: Understanding Social Behaviour- II Actor-observer bias refers to the tendency to attribute other’s behaviour to internal/ dispositional factors, while attributing our own behaviour to situational/ environmental factors (Jones & Nisbett, 1972). For example, a student who fails in an examination justifies his or her result to tough question paper, very strict evaluation, not getting sufficient time for preparation, some sudden engagements in family, etc. However, he or she explains similar results of other students by lack of their ability, carelessness, indiscipline, etc. It has been observed that in clinical settings the clinical practitioners tend to view their clients’ problem related to their internal stable dispositions, while the clients justify their problems by the situational factors. Arguably, actors and observers view each others’ performances with distinct perspectives. When we are actors, we are not able to see our own behaviours. Rather the situational factors influencing our behaviour are more readily noticed. However, when we are an observer the person’s behaviour is more prominent than the environmental and contextual factors influencing the behaviour. Such differential perspective of actors and observers lead to situational attributions for actors and dispositional attributions for observers. Furthermore, as an actor we are able to see our behaviours at different occasions and at different places. Therefore, the information regarding the factors pertaining to the situation and context are more readily available to us. However, as an observer we are able to see the person’s behaviour only at one instance and in one situation. Consequently, we tend to presume that unlike us, other people behave in same way at other occasions as well. In the other words, we presume higher level of consistency in other person’s behaviour as compared to our own behaviour which leads to make dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for own behaviour (Nisbett et al., 1973). 6.4.3 Self-Serving Bias Self-serving bias refers to a general tendency that we acclaim for our achievements, but do not see ourselves responsible for our failures. We generally claim that we succeeded at a task due to our sheer ability (internal factor). However, we justify our failures with misfortune or task difficulty (external factors). As an individual we have a strong need to enhance our self-esteem when we achieve something significant, to protect the self-esteem while faced withfailures. Millerand Ross (1975) referred internal attribution to the successes as the self-enhancing bias, and external attribution to the failures as the self- protection bias. 6.4.4 Ultimate Attribution Error Ultimate attribution error refers to the self-serving bias operated at the group level. It suggests that we have strong tendency to defend our own group while making attributions. Pettigrew (1979) suggested that relations between two groups largely affect the attribution members of each group make for the members of other group for similar types of behaviours. Positive and socially desirable behaviours of the members of our own group are attributed to internal qualities; however, similar behaviours of the members of the other group are attributed to external factors. On the other hand, negative behaviours of the members of our 109 Social Cognition own group are attributed to internal factors; while, similar behaviours of the members of the other group are attributed to internal traits. Self Assessment Questions II State whether the following are ‘True’ or ‘False’: 1) Actor- observer bias refers to a general tendency that we acclaim for our achievements, but do not see ourselves responsible for our failures. ( ) 2) Ability is primarily interpreted as an internal characteristic of the individual. () 3) Consistency is the extent to which people react to a given stimulus or event in the same manner. () 4) Heider (1958) opined that causal attribution is the process by which we infer the causes behind behaviour of other people. () 5) We tend to infer a person’s behaviour corresponding to an underlying disposition when the outcomes consequent to the behaviour are socially undesirable. () 6.5 LET US SUM UP It can be concluded from the above discussion that, social cognition is the way by which we process social information. During social interactions we organise diverse information into a unified coherent manner to form an impression of the other person. Also, by the process of attribution people try to infer the causes of other persons’ behaviour. We observe another’s behaviour and infer backward to its causes that explain why people act as they do. Various theories of attribution focus on the methods we use to interpret another person’s behaviour and to infer its sources. Although the process of social cognition is seemingly rational, observers often deviate from the logical methods and commit many errors and biases in this process leading to misinterpret events and to make erroneous judgements. 6.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS 1) Explain the theories of attribution. 2) Discuss the causal attribution of behaviour 3) Explain the process of impression formation and present empirical evidences for trait centrality and first impression. 4) Explain various errors and biases committed in attribution. 6.7 ANSWERS TO SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS Self Assessment Questions I 1) Asch (1946) 2) impressions 110 3) cognitive process Social Cognition: Understanding Social 4) schema Behaviour- II 5) Recency Self Assessment Questions II 1) False 2) True 3) False 4) True 5) True 6.8 GLOSSARY Impression Formation: The process by which we organise diverse information into a unified coherent manner to form an impression of the other person. Trait Centrality: Phenomenon that some traits of a person are weighted more heavily and have large impact than others on the overall impression we form of that person. Primacy Effect: Phenomenon that observers forming an impression of a person give more weight to information received early than to information received later. Recency Effect: The most recent information we receive exerts the strongest influence on the impressions we form of others. Attribution:The process that an observer follows to infer the causes of another’s behaviour. Correspondent Inference Theory: Others’ behaviour reflects their stable traits and dispositional factors when that behaviour is freely chosen, yields distinctive, non-common effects and is low in social desirability. Principle of Covariation: We attribute the behaviour to the factor that is both present when the behaviour occurs and absent when the behaviour fails to occur. Consensus: The extent to which other people react to a given stimulus or event in the same manner as the person we are considering. Consistency: Whether the person behaves in the same way at different times and in different settings. Distinctiveness: The extent to which the person reacts in the same manner to other, different stimuli or events. Attribution of Success and Failure: The process to find out causes of success and failure of ours and that of others. Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to underestimate the role of situational or external factors, and to overestimate the role of dispositional or internal factors. 111 Social Cognition Actor-Observer Bias: Tendency to attribute other people’s behaviour to dispositional factors and to attribute our own behaviour to situational factors. Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to accept credit for success and deny responsibility for failure. Ultimate Attribution Error: Tendency to make attributions that protect the group we belong to. 6.9 SUGGESTED READINGS AND REFERENCES Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2017). Social Psychology (10th ed.). Cengage Learning. Branscombe, N. R., & Baron, R. A. (2016). Social Psychology (14th ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn& Bacon. Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290. Bardach, L., & Park, B. (1996). The effects of in-group/out-group status on memory for consistent and inconsistent behavior of an individual. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 169-178. Cohen, C. E. (1981). Person categories and social perception: Testing some boundaries of the processing effects of prior knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 441-452. Devine, P. C. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18. Dreben, E. K., Fiske, S. T., & Hastie, R. (1979). The independence of evaluative and item information: Impression and recall order effects in behavior-based impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1758- 1768. Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Fiske, S. T., & Dyer, L. M. (1985). Structure and development of social schemata: Evidence from positive and negative transfer effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 839-852. Fiske, S. T., &Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23 (pp. 1-74). New York: Academic Press. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Hamilton, D. L. (1981). Stereotyping and intergroup behavior: Some thoughts on the cognitive approach. In D. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive Processes in 112 Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior (pp. 333-353). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Social Cognition: Understanding Social Behaviour- II Heider, F. (1944). Social perception and phenomenal causality. Psychological Review, 51, 258-374. Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press. Jones, E. E., & Goethals, G. R. (1971). Order Effects in Impression Formation: Attribution Context and the Nature of the Entity. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. (1972). The actor and observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. W. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Jones, E. E., &Harris, V. A. (1967). The Attribution of Attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 3, 1-24. Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium in Motivation, 1967. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Kelley, H. H. (1973). The process of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107-128. Luchins, A. S. (1957). Experimental attempts to minimize the impact of first impressions. In C. I. Hovland (Ed.), The Order of Presentation in Persuasion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemas and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 63-78. Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact or Fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213-225. Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., &Maracek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 154-164. Pettigrew, T. F. (1979). The ultimate attribution error: Extending Allport’s cognitive analysis of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 5, 461-476. Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F.,Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61, 195-202. Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1978). Salience, attention, and attribution: Top of the head phenomena. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 11). New York: Academic Press. 113 Social Cognition Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131. Weiner, B. (1986). An Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion. New York: Springer Verlag. Wilson, T. D., & Schooler, J. W. (1991). Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences and Decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 181-192. 114  Social Cognition: UNIT 7 ATTITUDE AND ATTITUDE Understanding Social Behaviour- II CHANGE* Structure 7.0 Objectives 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Meaning and Definition of Attitudes 7.3 Structure of Attitudes 7.4 Types of Attitudes 7.5 Functions of Attitudes 7.6 Attitude Formation 7.6.1 Mere Exposure 7.6.2 Personal Experience 7.6.3 Classical Conditioning 7.6.4 Operant Conditioning 7.6.5 Observational Learning 7.6.6 Genetic Factors 7.7 Attitude Change 7.7.1 Balance Theory 7.7.2 Cognitive Dissonance Theory 7.7.2.1 Forced Compliance Behaviour 7.7.2.2 Decision Making and Cognitive Dissonance 7.7.2.3 Effort Justification 7.7.3 Persuasion 7.7.3.1 Dual Process Models of Persuasion 7.7.3.2 Factors Affecting Persuasion 7.7.3.3 Resistance to Persuasion 7.8 Relationship between Attitude and Behaviour 7.8.1 Attitude Specificity 7.8.2 Attitude Accessibility 7.8.3 Self Awareness 7.8.4 Attitude Certainty 7.8.5 Attitude Strenght 7.9 Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination 7.9.1 Stereotype 7.9.2 Prejudice 7.9.2.1 Sources of Prejudice 7.9.3 Discrimination 7.9.4 Reducing Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination 7.9.4.1 Social Learning Approach 7.9.4.2 Increased Intergroup Contact 7.9.4.3 Recategorisation: Developing Common Social Identity 7.9.4.4 Feeling of Guilt Originated from Prejudice 7.9.4.5 Learning to Negate Stereotypes 7.10 Social Distance 7.11 Measurement of Attitude 7.12 Let Us Sum Up * Dr. Ari Sudan Tiwari, Scientist ‘E’Defence Institute of Psychological Research, Ministry of Defence, Lucknow Road, Timarpur, Delhi 115 Social Cognition 7.13 Unit End Questions 7.14 Glossary 7.15 Answers to Self Assessment Questions 7.16 Suggested Readings and References 7.0 OBJECTIVES After reading this unit, you will be able to: Explain the meaning of attitude; Describe components, types and functions of attitudes; Elucidate the process of attitude formation; and Discuss the process of attitude change. 7.1 INTRODUCTION Attitude has been a core issue of study in social psychology since its inception. Attitude is generally used to explain our feelings, thoughts and behaviours for other people, issues, events, situations, etc. In our everyday life also, attitude has been one of the most used word. Often we say that: “I do/don’t like Rohan.” “I have positive or negative feelings and ideas about dogs as a pet.” “Anand, as a colleague, has an attitude problem.” “I favour capital punishment for the sexual offences.” “I favour atomic non-proliferation at the global level.” All these statements refer to some or other aspects of attitude. In this unit we will understand the meaning and definition of attitude. We will further explain the components, types and functions of attitude. We will also describe the process and theories of attitude formation and change. We will also discuss the issue pertaining to relationship between attitude and behaviour. Lastly, we will also understand the concept, process and relevance of persuasion. 7. 2 MEANING AND DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE Although attitude is a common term which is very frequently used in our daily conversations, social psychologists define attitudes in a specific way. One of the pioneers of the field, Gordon Allport (1935) defined attitude as “mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.” There have been a number of attempts to define attitude in different expressions by different social psychologists, however the definition given by Allport has been still regarded as a comprehensive definition of attitude. The definition describes three different aspects of attitudes. Firstly, Allport refers attitudes as mental and neural states of readiness. This assumption implicitly asserts that attitudes are entirely personal affair and cannot be observed or measured directly by other people. Only the person who holds an attitude has access to it. Social psychological tools that claim to measure attitudes are in fact indirect measures of attitudes. 116 Secondly, the definition states that attitudes are acquired and organized through Attitude And Attitude Change experience. This indicates that the genesis of the attitudes we form about various people, issues, events and situations lies in the experiences that we have in our families, neighbourhood, peer groups, work place and larger society. However, this assumption overemphasises the importance of social learning in attitude formation and underestimates the role of genetic factors in this process. Finally, the definition states that attitude exerts a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related. Thus, attitudes are not merely feelings or beliefs that we have regarding people, issues, events and situations but they also guide and predict our future responses to those people, issues, events and situations. 7.3 STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDES An attitude is comprised of three interrelated components: Cognitive component of the attitude refers to the beliefs and thought processes associated with the attitude object. The cognitive component of the attitude further guides the way in which we process information regarding the attitude object. At the initial stage of attitude formation we usually weigh the pros and cons of the attributes of the attitude object and based on these ‘factual’ evaluations we form either a favourable or unfavourable attitude for the object. Furthermore, once an attitude is formed it steers the way we encode, register and utilise the information received from the environment. Affective component indicates that every attitude is associated with positive or negative feelings towards the attitude object. This affective feeling further leads to pleasant or unpleasant emotional responses to the attitude abject. Thus liking or disliking for the attitude object originates. Behavioural component indicates that a specific attitude toward an object leads us to a specific behavioural tendency or readiness and thus we are inclined to respond to the attitude object in particular manner consistent with the attitude. Although these three components are distinct processes, they function in an integrated and interrelated fashion to express the attitude. Since they all belong to the same attitude, they function in a consistent manner. If a person has a negative attitude toward polythene bags he or she will search for information supporting his view that polythene bags are dangerous to the environment. He/she will dislike the consumer goods that are packaged in the polythene bags. Furthermore, he/ she himself/herself will not use polythene bags. In this way the attitude structure remains consistent. Each of these components influences the other two and therefore, changes in one component attitude leads to the changes in other components. This process makes the attitude itself dynamic. 7.4 TYPES OF ATTITUDES Generally we express our attitudes as per our wish. We are aware of our attitudes and their influences on our behaviour. Such attitudes are known as explicit attitude. Since the explicit attitudes function on the conscious level, we are aware of their cognitive processing and their impact on our behaviour. Explicit attitudes are activated by control process of evaluation and execution. For example, we may be aware of our view and feelings towards a particular brand of toothpaste 117