Social Cognition
The process involved in perceiving other people
and how we learn about the people in the world
around us.
The study of the mental processes that are
involved in perceiving, remembering, thinking
about, and attending to the other people in our
social world.
The reasons we attend to certain information
about the social world, how this information is
stored in memory, and how it is then used to
interact with other people.
- How we think and how we understand
other people. We are trying to figure
out what someone else is like and how
we should interact with them.
Development
Social cognition develops in childhood and
adolescence. As children grow, they become
more aware not only of their own feelings,
thoughts, and motives but also of the emotions
and mental states of others. Children become
more adept at understanding how others feel,
learning how to respond in social situations,
engaging in prosocial behaviors, and taking the
perspective of others.
Prosocial behavior refers to an action that is
intended to benefit society or a group as a
whole.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget developed the theory of how a child's
thinking develops. He believes that a child
actively constructs understanding through the
world's experiences and interactions.
infants learn about the world through their
senses and actions.
children develop language and the ability to
think symbolically but still lack logical reasoning.
children gain the ability to think logically
develop the ability to think abstractly, use logic in more
complex situations, and engage in hypothetical
thinking.
Object permanence – a person or an object still
exists even when they are hidden and you can’t
see or hear them.
Theory of Mind
This refers to the ability to understand other
people such as beliefs desires, intentions, and
perspectives that are different – to both oneself
and others.
Cultural Differences
Social Psychologists have also found that there
are often important cultural differences in social
cognition. When looking at a social situation,
any two people may have wildly different
interpretations. Each person brings a unique
background of experiences, knowledge, social
influences, feelings, and cultural variations.
Some researchers have found that there are
also collective cultural influences that can affect
how people interpret social situations. The
same social behavior in one cultural setting may
have a very different meaning and
interpretation if it were to take place or be
observed in another culture.
- Living with extended Families
- Child Marriage
Schemas
A schema is a cognitive framework or concept
that helps organize and interpret information.
Schemas can be useful because they allow us to
take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount
of information that is available in our
environment.
Person Schemas
These are mental representations or
frameworks that we have about individuals.
They help us organize and categorize
information about people based on their traits,
behaviors, and characteristics. For example, if
we have a person schema for a "friendly"
person, we might expect them to be outgoing
and kind.
Social Schemas
These are schemas that we have about social
groups or categories. They help us understand
and interpret social situations and interactions.
Social schemas can include stereotypes and
generalizations about certain groups of people.
For example, a social schema for a "doctor"
might include expectations of intelligence,
professionalism, and medical expertise.
Self Schemas
These are schemas that we have about
ourselves. They include our beliefs, attitudes,
and perceptions about our own identities,
abilities, and characteristics. Self-schemas
influence how we see ourselves and how we
behave in different situations. For example, a
self-schema for a "creative" person might
include beliefs about being imaginative and
artistic.
Event Schemas
These are schemas that we have about specific
events or situations. They help us understand
and navigate different experiences by providing
a mental framework or script. Event schemas
can include expectations about the sequence of
events, roles of individuals involved, and typical
behaviors. For example, a schema for a "job
interview" might include expectations of
dressing professionally, answering questions,
and showcasing skills.
Heuristics
A heuristics is a mental shortcut that allows
people to solve problems and make judgments
quickly and efficiently. These rule-of-thumb
strategies shorten decision-making time and
allow people to function without constantly
stopping to think about their next course of
action.
- Making quick judgments based on
mental prototypes
Social Beliefs
Social beliefs refer to the ideas, attitudes, and
opinions that individuals hold about society,
social groups, and social issues. These beliefs
shape how we perceive and interpret the world
around us, as well as how we interact with
others.
• How we perceive, judge, and explain
our social worlds,
• And how to what extent our
expectations matter/to be important.
• It covers a wide range of things such as
war, religion, government, etc.
Belief Perseverance
• The tendency to cling to one initial
belief even after receiving new
information that contradicts or
disconfirms the basis of that belief.
• Its tendency is strengthened in an
explanation for our belief has been
created. One way to reduce this is to get
a person to argue the opposite position.
Perseverance Effect
The finding that people’s beliefs about
themselves and the social world persist even
after the evidence supporting it is discredited.
Hostile Media Phenomenon
Refers to the theory that ideologically often
think that media coverage is biased against their
opinions on an issue. This phenomenon has
been identified experimentally (Vallone, Ross, &
Lepper, 1985).
An example is watching a basketball game on
the television or a recorded game wherein the
audience are supporters of the team that
played. The supporters of on team would see
more of the other team’s mistakes while the
other supporters see the mistakes of the
opposing team.
Biased Sampling
Is generalizing based on information from
others that are known to be biased. Biased
sampling can lead to misleading or inaccurate
conclusions, as the findings may not be
generalizable to the larger population.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Occurs when a person has expectations about
what another person is like, which influences
how they act towards the person, which causes
the person to act and behave according to the
person’s original expectations.
Let's say a teacher believes that a particular
student is not academically strong and expects
them to perform poorly in a test. Due to this
belief, the teacher may unknowingly treat the
student differently, providing less support or
attention compared to other students.
Consequently, the student may start to doubt
their abilities and lose motivation to study,
resulting in a lower performance in the test. The
teacher's initial belief is thus confirmed, creating
a self-fulfilling prophecy
Mental Strategies and Shortcuts
• We use mental strategies and shortcuts
to make decisions and judgments easily.
• There are two different approaches that
can be taken in reasoning and decision
making situations the algorithmic and
heuristic approach.
Critical thinking,
Algorithmic Approach Logical, and Rational
• A specific or solution procedure, often
quite detailed and complex that is
guaranteed to furnish the correct
answer if it is followed correctly. Simply,
the algorithm is a set of rules that need
to be applied correctly so you can
provide the correct answer or decision.
• The algorithmic approach involves
following a step-by-step procedure or
set of rules to reach a solution.
Algorithms are systematic and well-
defined methods that guarantee a
correct solution if followed correctly.
 They are often used in situations where
there is a clear and known path to the
solution.
Heuristic Approach More on intuitions, practical
to that certain situations
• A rule of thumb, an informal strategy or
approach that works under some
circumstances, for some of the time, is
guaranteed to yield an answer.
• The heuristic approach, on the other
hand, involves using mental shortcuts,
rules of thumb, or intuitive judgments
to make decisions or solve problems.
Heuristics are useful when a problem is
complex, time-constrained, or lacks a
clear-cut solution. They help simplify
the decision-making process by
providing quick and practical solutions,
although they may not always be
optimal or guarantee the best outcome.
Availability Heuristic
• A mental rule of thumb where people
base a judgment on the ease with which
they can bring something to mind.
• Availability heuristic involves making
decision based upon how easy it is to
bring something to mind. When you are
trying to decide, you might quickly
remember several relevant examples.
Since these are more readily available in
your memory, you will likely judge these
outcomes as being more common or
frequently occurring.
Representative Heuristic
• A mental shortcut is where people
classify something or something based
on how similar they are to a typical
case. It is often a reasonable thing to
do.
Affect heuristic
• Involves making choices that are
influenced by the emotions that an
individual is experiencing at that
moment.
Anchoring
• Involves the tendency to be overly
influenced by the first bit of information
we hear or learn. This can make it more
difficult to consider other factors and
lead to poor choices.
Counterfactual thinking
• It involves mentally reconstructing past
events and considering "what if"
scenarios to explore how different
actions or circumstances could have led
to different outcomes.
• Imagining ways in which events in one’s
life might have turned out differently.
This often involves feeling of regret or
disappointment (e.g., If only I hadn’t
been so hasty) but may also involve a
sense of relief, as at a narrow escape
(e.g., If I had been standing three feet to
the left..).
Base Rate Information
Is the information about the frequency of
members of different categories in the
population.
Social Thinkers
Tose people who can understand and think
about other people
Cognitive Misers – the idea that people are so
limited in their ability to think and make
conclusions+ that they take mental shortcuts
whenever they can. Cognitive misers seek to
minimize cognitive load and maximize efficiency
by avoiding extensive processing of information.
Motivated Tacticians – those who have a larger
arsenal of mental rules and strategies and
choose wisely among these strategies
depending on their need and goals. They are
also called flexible social thinkers. Motivated
tacticians are motivated by accuracy and
thoroughness, even if it requires more mental
effort.
Autonomic and Controlled Processing
• People's level of motivation is a key
determinant of whether they engage in
what is called automatic versus
controlled thinking.
Automatic Processing
• can be defined as thinking that is
unconscious, unintentional, involuntary
and effortless. It allows us to use our
minds in more important purposes.
Controlled Processing
• the opposite. It is thinking that is
conscious, intentional, voluntary and
needs a lot of effort. It is the thinking
that we can turn on and turn off.
• Controlled processing's purpose is to
check and balance automatic processing
so we can
• avoid and control unusual events.
Automatic Believing and Controlled
Unbelieving
• Benedict Spinoza, a philosopher three
centuries ago made a characterization:
When people initially see, hear or learn
something, they take it at face value
and assume it is true. Only after
accepting the reality of a fact do people
go back and decide whether it is true or
not. The automatic, "seeing is believing"
process is built into human beings
because pretty much of what we hear
and see is true.
THOUGHT SUPPRESSION
There is another consequence of being
preoccupied and unable to engage in much
controlled processing. It reduces our ability to
engage in thought suppression which is the
conscious attempt to not think about
something.
In early investigations researchers
demonstrated that the suppression of a
particular thought often resulted in the
subsequent increased return of the unwanted
thought, a phenomenon termed the 'rebound
effect' (Wegner et al., 1987). This basic effect
has been replicated on many occasions, and a
more recent meta- analysis suggests the
rebound effect is robust (Ambramowitz et al.,
2001; Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000).
Two processes in thought suppression
1. Operating Process - happens when a person
may repeatedly attempt to decrease a thought's
occurrence, ideally, until the thought appears in
the mind's eye no more.
2. Monitoring Process - a less effortful mental
process. In theory, during thought suppression,
a person makes a mental note to wait and then
see if an uninvited thought recurs.
How to Correct Reasoning Skills
Make people a little more humble about
reasoning. It is often that we have greater
confidence in our judgments than we should.
Tell this overconfidence directly. We have to get
the people to consider the possibility that they
are wrong in their judgments and decisions.
Teach the people directly some basic statistical
and methodological principles about how to
reason correctly, with the hope that they will
apply these principles in their everyday lives.
Also called algorithms.
Other people are not easy to figure out. Why
are they the way they are? Why do they do
what they do?
We all have a fundamental fascination with
explaining other people's behavior, but all we
have to go on is observable behavior:
- What people do
- What they say
- Facial expressions
- Gestures
- Tone of voice
We can't know, truly and completely, who they
are and what they mean.
Instead, we rely on our impressions and
personal theories, putting them together as well
as we can, hoping they will lead to reasonably
accurate and useful conclusions.
Social Perception and Behaviors
Social Perception - the study of how we form
impressions of and make inferences about other
people. To understand others, we rely on our
impressions and theories, putting them all
together and making our conclusions based on
them.
Nonverbal Behavior
What do we know about people when we first
meet them?
We know what we can see and hear, and even
though we know we should not judge a book by
its cover, this kind of easily observable
information is crucial to our first impression.
With no words at all, we can communicate
volumes.
We have a special kind of brain cell called mirror
neurons.
These neurons respond when we perform an
action and when we see someone else perform
the same action.
Mirror neurons appear to be the basis of our
ability to feel empathy.
For example, when we see someone crying,
these mirror neurons fire automatically and
involuntarily, just as if we were crying ourselves.
• Nonverbal cues serve many functions in
communication. You can express “I'm
angry” by narrowing your eyes,
lowering your eyebrows, and setting
your mouth in a thin, straight line.
You can convey the attitude "I like you" with
smiles and extended eye contact.
And you communicate your personality traits,
like being an extrovert, with broad gestures and
frequent changes in voice pitch and inflection.
Some nonverbal cues actually contradict the
spoken words.
- Communicating sarcasm is the classic
example of verbal-nonverbal
contradiction.
- Think about how you'd say "I'm so
happy for you" sarcastically.
Facial Expressions of Emotion
• the six major emotional expressions:
anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust,
and sadness.
• All humans encode or express these
emotions in the same way, and all
humans can decode or interpret them
with equal accuracy.
• Paul Ekman and others have conducted
numerous studies indicating that the
ability to interpret at least the six major
emotions is cross-cultural-part of being
human and not a product of people's
cultural experience.
Other emotions such as guilt, shame,
embarrassment, and pride occur later in human
development and show less universality.
These latter emotions are closely tied to social
interaction.
Decoding facial expressions accurately is more
complicated than we have indicated, for three
reasons.
1. Affect blends occur when a person reveals
two or more emotions simultaneously.
2. At times people try to appear less emotional
than they are so that no one will know how they
really feel.
3. A third reason why decoding facial
expressions can be inaccurate has to do with
culture.
Culture and the Channels of Nonverbal
Communication
Examples of display rule differences:
• American cultural norms discourage
emotional displays in men, such as grief
or crying, but allow the facial display of
such emotions in women. I
• Japanese women will often hide a wide
smile behind their hands, whereas
Western women are allowed- indeed,
encouraged-to smile broadly and often.
• Japanese norms lead people to cover up
negative facial expressions with smiles
and laughter and to display fewer facial
expressions in general than is true in
the West.
• Members of American culture become
suspicious when a person doesn't “look
them in the eye" while speaking, and
they find talking to someone who is
wearing dark sunglasses quite
disconcerting.
• Cultures vary greatly in what is
considered normative use of personal
space. Most Americans like to have a
bubble of open space, a few feet in
radius, surrounding them; in
comparison, in some other cultures,
strangers think nothing of standing right
next to each other, to the point of
touching.
Emblems
Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood
definitions within a given culture; they usually
have direct verbal translations, like the "OK"
sign.
• The important point about emblems is
that they are not universal.
• Each culture has devised its emblems,
and these need not be understandable
to people from other cultures.
• President George H. W. Bush once used
the "V for victory” sign, but he did it
backward—the palm of his hand was
facing him instead of the audience.
Unfortunately, he flashed this gesture to
a large crowd in Australia— and in
Australia, this emblem is the equivalent
of "flipping the bird"!
Multichannel Nonverbal Communication
• Because nonverbal information is
diffused across these many channels,
we can often rely on one channel to
understand what is going on.
• This increases our ability to make
accurate judgments about others.
Gender and Nonverbal Communication
• In general, women are better at
encoding and decoding nonverbal cues.
• One exception is that women are less
accurate at detecting deception.
• Social role theory of sex differences
suggests that this is because women
have learned different skills, and one is
to be polite and overlook lying.
 According to Alice Eagly's social role theory,
most societies have a division of labor based on
gender:
- Men work in jobs outside the home.
- Women work within the home.
Implicit personality theory refers to the set of
Implicit Personality Theory assumptions and beliefs we have about how different
personality traits are related to each other.
composed of our general notions about which
personality traits go together in one person
• This theory is called the implicit
personality theory because the
A kind person is
also a generous response that individuals have to first
person
meeting people is automatic, like a
reflex.
Solomon Asch
• was a Polish American psychologist who
was one of the first people to research
how people form impressions of each
other. His research found that first
impressions are incredibly important,
and much more influential on one's
perception of people than later
impressions.
Lee Cronbach
• developed the concept of implicit
personality theory and introduced the
idea to the field of psychology in the
1950s. He found that people's beliefs
about certain attributes influence their
perceptions about people upon first
meeting.
Priming Effect
• Priming is the psychological
phenomenon in which the exposure of
the stimuli influences the behavior of
the individual, without even letting Two Main Ideas of Attribution Theory
individual aware that the first thing they
listened or got exposed with has • Dispositional vs Situational Attribution
influenced their behavior or answer. Dispositional Attribution:
• Priming is how tiny cues and stimuli
• Dispositional attribution refers to
around us can subconsciously (and
significantly) affect our behavior, and explaining someone's behavior based
the stimuli can be a word, image, on their internal characteristics, traits,
sound, smell, taste, and even a physical or personal qualities. It involves
movement. attributing behavior to stable, enduring
factors within an individual, such as
Correspondent Inference Theory their personality, attitudes, beliefs, or
• A correspondent inference, sometimes innate disposition.
also called a correspondent trait Situational Attribution:
inference, is a judgment that a person's
personality matches or corresponds to • Situational attribution, on the other
his or her behavior. hand, involves explaining someone's
behavior based on external factors or
Attribution Theory situational influences. It focuses on
•
Attribution theory deals with how the attributing behavior to the specific
social perceiver uses information to context, environment, or external
arrive at causal explanations for events. circumstances in which the behavior
It examines what information is occurs.
gathered and how it is combined to The Fundamental Attribution Theory
form a causal judgment" If you see a coworker
• When explaining others' behavior-- we
arriving late to a meeting.
If you attribute their
EXAMPLE: tardiness solely to their tend to underestimate situational
laziness or lack of
• When you get a poor grade on a quiz, punctuality, factors & overestimate dispositional
without
considering the possibility influences. In contrast, we explain our
you might blame the teacher for not that they might have
encountered unexpected own behavior in terms of the situation (I
adequately explaining the material, traffic or had a personal
completely dismissing the fact that you emergency wasn't feeling well, had a bad day, etc).
didn't study. Self-serving attribution
• When a classmate gets a great grade on
the same quiz, you might attribute their • occurs when people make internal
good performance to luck, neglecting attributions for their successes and
the fact that they have excellent study external attributions for their failures.
habits. you perform exceptionally well on an exam, and you attribute your success
to your intelligence and hard work. if you perform poorly, you attribute it to
the exam being difficult or the professor not explaining the material.
Defensive Attributions Ways on how our Attitude Change Do attitudes determine behavior?
• are explanations of behaviors that serve • When people receive a persuasive • Leon Festinger - concluded that
to defend an individual's preferred communication changing one's attitude does not
beliefs about self, others, and the world. • Emotions influence attitude change in guarantee a change in behavior, but
you hear about a friend getting into a car accident. To protect yourself from the
anxiety or fear of a similar event happening to you, you might attribute the accident several ways. rather maintained that it was the other
Types:
•
to your friend's recklessness or bad luck, rather than considering that accidents can
happen to anyone.
People in positive moods are less likely way around.
unrealistic optimism - about the future, to analyze a message carefully than • It seems then that WE do NOT really
whereby we think that good things are more people in negative moods are. BEHAVE in ways that would COINCIDE
likely to happen to us than to other people, and • Fear-arousing communications can with our ATTITUDES.
bad things are less likely to happen to us than to cause lasting attitude change if a
WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOR?
others. moderate amount of fear is aroused
and people believe they will be • Our behavior is sometimes not the
defensive attribution - is the belief in a just reassured by the content of the same with our expressed attitudes
world, whereby we believe that bad things message. because they are both subject to
happen to bad people and good things happen
external and internal (feelings/
to good people. Reactance Theory
emotions) forces.
Attitude • those people who experience an
unpleasant state called reactance when
• In psychology, an attitude refers to a set their freedom of choice is threatened.
of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors • when people feel that their ability to
toward a particular object, person, choose or act freely is limited, they
thing, or event. Attitudes are often the experience a psychological reactance,
result of experience or upbringing, and which motivates them to resist or
they can have a powerful influence over restore their sense of freedom.
behavior. While attitudes are enduring,
they can also change. Psychological reactance refers to the emotional
and cognitive response individuals experience
Factors when they perceive a threat to their freedom or
Cognitively Based Attitude - based mostly on options. It arises from the innate need for
people's beliefs about the properties of the autonomy and the desire to maintain control
attitude object. rational evaluation and cognitive processes, such as over one's choices and behaviors.
weighing pros and cons or considering factual information.
Behaviorally Based Attitude - based on past
Reactance theory suggests that when
behaviors individuals experience psychological reactance,
people's actions toward the attitude object. and
personal they are motivated to restore their freedom or
Affectively Based Attitude - based more on experiences.autonomy.
people's emotions and values. It can be created They are
influenced
through classical conditioning or operant by our
actions and
conditioning. the
consequenc
emotional or affective responses. They are based on es we have
our feelings, values, and emotional associations with a experienced.
particular object, person, or concept.