Social cognition
How we think about the social world/how we select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgments and decisions.
The social cognitive assumption
is that people are generally trying to form accurate impressions of the world.
Two kinds of social cognition
1) quick and automatic "without thinking" 2) controlled thinking (effortful and deliberate)
Automatic thinking
Thought that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.
Automatic thinking helps us...
understand new situations by relating them to prior experiences.
Biases affect...
automatic thinking
Schemas
Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember.
Schemas encompass our knowledge about:
1) Others 2) Ourselves 3) Social Roles 4) Specific Events
Korsakov's syndrome
A neurological disorder in which person loses the ability to form new memories and must approach every situation as if new.
Thompson
Korsakov patient who invented and improvised a world around him. This shows that schemas are so important, people who can't relate to previous experiences, invent schemas where none exist.
Stereotypes
Schemas applied to members of a social group (fraternity), gender, or race.
Shooter bias
In an experiment, non-blacks were more likely to shoot blacks even without a gun. Links to stereotypes and automatic thinking.
Amadou Diallo
Feb 3, 1999 - South Bronx: West African immigrant suspected to be rapist (physical resemblance). Unarmed, was killed by 4 officers. Other examples: Thomas and Bell. This showed police officers shot without thinking- links to Automatic Thinking, stereotype
Richard Feynman
The first principle, is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." Links to social cognition.
Function of schemas:
1) Useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
2) Reduce ambiguity.
3) Help fill in the blanks when trying to remember things (memory guides).
4) Can help you avert a serious and perhaps deadly misu
Which schemas are applied?
1) Accessibility 2) Priming
Kelley study
Students in an economic class received a handout describing guest lecturer. Half got the note that said he was rather a cold person and the other half that he was a very warm person, everything else was the same. When rated, warm- higher ratings, cold- lo
Accessibility
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.
Man on city bus
Mutters incoherently to himself, rocks back and forth, and sings a Beatles tune. Schemas: Alcoholic? Mentally ill? The schema that comes to mind and guides our impression of the man can be affected by accessibility.
Something can become accessible for 3 reasons:
1) Chronically accessible due to past experience.
2) Temporarily accessible because it is related to a current goal.
3) Temporarily accessible because of our recent experiences.
Chronically accessible due to past experience.
Schemas are constantly active and ready to use to interpret ambiguous situations. For ex: history of alcoholism in family, traits describing an alcoholic are likely to be chronically accessible, increasing likelihood of assuming man on bus is drunk. VS kn
Temporarily accessible because it is related to a current goal.
Concept of mental illness may not be CHRONICALLY accessible, but if studying for a test in abnormal psychology class, this concept might be temporarily accessible at least until test is over.
Temporarily accessible because of our recent experiences.
A particular schema or trait is not always accessible but happens to be primed by something people have been thinking or doing before encountering an event. For ex: reading a novel about a mental patient or seeing an alcoholic drinking from a paper bag ri
Priming
The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept. For ex: reading the novel primes certain traits, such as those describing the mentally ill, making it more likely that these traits will be used to interpre
Priming is a good example of
automatic thinking. When judging others, people are not usually aware that they are applying concepts or schemas that they happened to be thinking about earlier.
An important source of our schemas is...
the culture in which we grow up. In fact, schemas are an important way cultures exert their influence: by instilling mental structures that influence how we understand and interpret the world.
The priming effect experiment
Participants were told they would take part in 2 unrelated stories: 1) a perception study- identify different colors while memorizing a list of either negative or positive words. 2) a reading comprehension study- read a paragraph about someone named Donal
Thoughts have to be both ________ and _______ before they will act as primes, exerting an influence on our impressions of the social world.
accessible, applicable
Bargh and Pietromonaco study
flashing either negative or positive words before people could recognize them consciously. Subliminal influence?
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The case whereby people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people's original expectations, making the expectations come true.
A sad cycle in four acts:
1) You have an expectancy or social theory about a person.
2) You behave toward the target in a way that's consistent with your theory or expectancy.
3) The target responds to your behavior in a similar manner.
4) You see the target's behavior as proof th
Self-fulfilling prophecies' serious consequences
Boys vs girls academics...boys are doing better in math and science because teachers and parents unintentionally behave in ways that make their expectations about boys' achievement come true.
Reign of error
people can "cite the actual course of events as proof that they were right from the very beginning" but failing to realize their role in producing the events.
Limits of self-fulfilling prophecies
Self-fulfilling prophecies can often occurr but some of the conditions under which people's true nature will win out in social interaction: 1) s.f.p. are most likely to occurr when interviewers are not paying attention, they are often able to put their ex
Mental strategies and shortcuts
When making decisions, we often do not conduct a thorough search of every option. However, mental shortcuts are efficient and usually lead to good decisions in a reasonable amount of time.
Judgmental heuristics
Heuristic comes from the Greek: discover; in the field of social cognition, they are mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently. However, do not guarantee that people will make accurate inferences of the world.
Availability heuristic
A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring something to mind. Ex: Alphonse at restaurant, "Do you think I'm an unassertive person?" Easier to think of times he's been assertive or unassertive?
The trouble with the availability heuristic__________
is that what is easiest to remember is not typical of the overall picture leading to faulty conclusions.
Do people use the availability heuristic to make judgments about themselves?
It might seem as if we have well-developed ideas about our own personalities, such as how assertive we are, but often we lack firm schemas about out own traits. We thus might make judgments about ourselves based on how easily we can recall examples of our
Representativeness heuristic
A metal shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case. For ex: Brain has blond hair and a deep tan, seems mellow, and likes to go to the beach- Californian!
Base rate information
Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population. For ex: Assuming Brian is from New York because a large percentage of students at New York state universities are from in-state.
When base rate information contradicts the representative heuristic______________
people rely more on the representative heuristic.
The power of unconscious thinking
For ex: At a party when you hear someone called you name while in a conversation. Helping a student study depending on which goal has been recently activated or primed (help-kindness vs not help-save curve). $10 game, task to form sentence with nice words
False Consensus Effect
The tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which others share our opinions, attributes, and behaviors.
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
A mental shortcut whereby people use a number or value as a starting point and then adjust insufficiently from this anchor. For ex: If asked how many people get mugged in NY? Even if your percentage was too high, you won't lower it down all the way to the
Cultural Determinants of Schemas
Schemas are a very important way by which cultures exert their influence - namely, by instilling mental structures that influence the very way we understand and interpret the world. For ex: Scottish man not remembering the cattle vs Bantu man remembering
Controlled Thinking
Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful; requires mental energy. People have the capacity to think in a conscious, controlled way about only one thing at a time.
Counterfactual thinking
Mentally challenging some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been. One circumstance is when they experience a negative event that was a "close call." "If only I had answered that one question differently," you might think, "I would h
Counterfactual thinking can have a big influence on our ___________
emotional reactions to events.
The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome, ______________
the stronger the emotional reaction to it.
Counterfactual reasoning can lead to some ___________ _________ on people's _______.
paradoxical effects, emotions
If you're going to lose, _________
it is best not to lose by a slim margin.
Counterfactual thinking is clearly conscious and effortful, it is not always ______ or ______.
intentional, voluntary
Rumination
people repetitively focus on negative things in their lives; contributor to depression.
Thought suppression
the attempt to avoid thinking about something we would prefer to forget.
Successful thought suppression depends on the interaction of two processes:
1) one relatively automatic 2) relatively controlled.
Monitoring process
the automatic part of the system that searches for evidence that the unwanted thought is about to intrude on consciousness.
Operating process
the more controlled, effortful, conscious part of the system that attempts to distract oneself by finding something else to think about.
When the controlled operating process is unable to do its job______________, which then intrudes on consciousness unchecked by the controlled system, resulting in a state of ________ in which the unwanted thought ______________.
the monitoring process continues to find instances of the unwanted thought, hyperaccessibility, occurs with high frequency.
Cognitive load
if people are tired or preoccupied.
Ironic processing
when people are trying their hardest not to think about something, if under cognitive load, these thoughts are likely to spill out unchecked.
Circadian Rhythms
we lose attentional resources during certain phases of our daily cycle.
Need for structure
don't like change, uncertainty
Complex situations use up more __________, thus leading us to rely on _______________.
attention, cognitive short-cuts
Need for cognition
people who are high in need for cognition view thinking as fun, enjoy solving puzzles, and enjoy analyzing arguments.
Accuracy requires cognitive resources
1) have a desire to avoid making mistakes
2) desire to have control over their lives
3) when interpreting people on whom we depend
Racial prejudice can result from either ____________ thinking or ________, _________ thinking
automatic, conscious, deliberative
Desire for accuracy leads people to ____________.
pay special attention to new information