Social Cognition
Social Cognition
• The process by which people think about and make sense of people
– Making those split-second decisions about people and how people understand a social situation
Thinking about Objects vs. People: Similarities
• Cognitive misers
• We try to think as little as possible
• Snap judgments
• Intelligent, skillful, industrious, cold, determined, practical and cautious
• Intelligent, skillful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, and cautious
2 Schools of Cognitive Thought
• Weighted Averaging Model (WAM)
• Gestalt Model or Summation Model (GM)
• WAM suggests that personality descriptors are additive
• Gestalt Model or Summation Model (GM)
• GM suggests that personality descriptors are averaged
• Stacey Kim
• Trait
• Intelligent +9 +9
• Humorous +9 +9
• Practical +6 +0
• Hard-working +6 +0
• Overall Evaluation:
• Additive +30 +18
• Averaging +7.5 +9.0
Traits Influencing Judgments
• Traits are enduring dispositions to respond of one's environment in particular ways
• Central Traits
• Kelley (1950): Mr. Warm vs Mr. Cold
– Students evaluated a “guest speaker” after 20-min lecture
• Average Eval. (1 = pos.)
• Trait Warm Cold
• Knowledgeable 3.5 4.6
• Considerate 6.3 9.6
• Informal 6.3 9.6
• Sociable 5.6 10.4
• Intelligent 4.8 5.1
• Popular 4.0 7.4
• Humorous 8.3 11.7
• Humane 8.6 11.0
3 Factors Influencing Weighting
• 1. Primacy effect: early information is weighted more heavily
• 2. Negative information is weighted more heavily than positive information
• 3. Extremity of the information
Schemas
• Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus
• For example, “pit bull”
• Allport and Postman (1947)
• Ss looked at a drawing of a subway scene
• Ss then described the scene to other participants, who in turn described what they heard to other participants
Types of Schemas
• Person schemas
– Mr. Warm and Mr. Cold
• Self-schemas
– Form the core of our self-concept
• Role schemas
– The behaviors expected of people in those roles: Achieved and Ascribed Roles
Event Schema
• The procedure is actually quite simple. First, you arrange things into two different groups. Of course, one group may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do...It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first, the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, it will become just another facet of life
Benefits of Schemas
• 1. Schemas direct attention and guide the encoding of schema-relevant information
• 2. Schemas guide memory
• Cohen (1981) “waitress vs. librarian
Benefits of Schemas
• 3. Schemas influence judgment
• More complex our schemas are the less extreme our evaluations are of that group
• Linville and Jones (1980)
Benefits of Schemas
• 4. Schemas influence our behavior
• Synder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977)
• Results showed the men talked warmer and friendlier to the women they thought were attractive
• In the unattractive condition, the men were short, cold, and less friendly
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• The process in which a person’s expectation about another elicits behavior from the second person that confirms the expectation
• When the goal is to get along with another person, the self-fulfilling prophecy does not occur
Positive
Positive social climate
More feedback Good
More performance Student
opportunity
Teacher
Expectation
Negative
Negative social climate
Less feedback Bad
Less performance Student
opportunity
3 Determinants of Attention
• 1. Context: The situation determines what objects capture our attention
• 2. Prior Knowledge: Unusual or surprising behavior will capture our attention
• 3. Current Task: Attention is determined by what a person is up to at any given time
Consequences of Attention
• Exaggeration of causal attributions
• Base-rate information: statistical information about groups or categories of objects.
• People under-use base rate information
Heuristics
• 1. Anchoring and Adjustment heuristic
• Uncertain judgements
• Start with a reference point (anchor) and then adjust it insufficiently to reach a final conclusion
• 2. Availability heuristic
• The practice of estimating the frequency of an event according to the ease with which instances of the event can be recalled
• 3. Representative heuristic
• Gauging the probability that a person belongs to a particular social group by assessing how similar the person’s characteristics are to the “typical” group member’s
• 4. Simulation heuristic
• The ease of mentally undoing an event
• AKA counterfactual thinking…imagining what might have been