Social Cognition

How We Think About SocialWorld

CHAPTER 02
Social Cognition
The manner in which we interpret, analyze, remember, and apply
information about social world.

How we think about world around us ?

 Social World:
 Social world is created with the interaction of humans, either face to
face or with the help of technology.
MENTAL SHORTCUTS TO REACH
CONCLUSION
Interpret, Analyze, You Apply
Remember Information

Make
Judgment

Has to Pay
Rs. 200
 You remember the Interpret, Analyze, You Apply
memorable air crashes Remember Information

Make
Judgment

People should
not travel via
The Ratio of Air Plane
Airplane
crashes in Pakistan is
very minimal
In our daily life we involve in many Heuristics (Mental Shortcuts)

Simple rules of making complex decisions or drawing

inferences in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner.

In other words ‘Automatic Manner’

Humans tend to infer situations quickly, effortlessly and
without careful reasoning.

It may require little efforts (Efficient)  May Lead to Satisfactory

 It may lead to errors in conclusion  Unsatisfactory judgments
Heuristics: How We Reduce Our Effortin
Social Cognition
 By involving certain biases while making judgment.
Jumping to Conclusion because of:
 Information Overload: Mind has limited capabilities and you
demand more from mind.

Teacher has given you a

assignment and you Just Read Initial 10
searched over internet Articles
and found more than
1000+ articles on topic
Conditions of Uncertainty:
Uncertainty is state of having limited knowledge about
current conditions and future outcomes
Representativeness: Judging by
Resemblance
You judge current situation by the resemblance with the past
events.

And sometimes you develop PROTOTYPES in your mind and try to

link or compare.
Conflict on Building ReligiousPlace
Proposal to build a mosque within
an Islamic Cultural Center.
 Near Ground Zero at New York
Anti-mosque protest opposed the construction
of mosque.
 Claim was to:
 Move planned mosque’s to future location.
They believed that for 9/11 incident “Muslims
are Responsible”
 3000 innocent humans were killed
 Because Al-Qaida (Terrorist organization)
members has conducted this and they were
Muslims.
 Mayor’s Point of View General Perception in USA about
Muslims

There is no justification in All Muslims are Terrorist because

they were involved in 9/11 incident.
moving this Mosque.

If we do so, then their will be

message to 9/11 terrorist that
“They have accomplished their
goal: Making Citizens to fight
with each other ”
 Compare Information & Then Make Decision
(No Mental Shortcuts)
At the time of 9/11:
900 Million Peaceful Muslims in the world.
 And out that 6 Million Muslims were living in United States.
Al Qaeda members were just 9000 in numbers

If we see the Ratio 900 Million / 9 thousand = Out of 100,000 there is only
01 Al Qaeda Member.
How can you say 100,000 Muslims who never attacked America
are Terrorist
 Why People Think In ThisWay
“All Muslims Are Terrorist”

THEY USED TO INVOLVE IN MENTAL SHORTCUTS OR RULES OF THUMB TO

ARRIVE AT JUDGMENT
“Generally we don’t have much
time or resources to compare
all information before making
judgment.”
Representative Heuristic:
1) Relaying on past experiences to make
judgment about new situations which has
recently witnessed.
Judgment is somehow based upon the
resemblance of current event to past
event.
2)Ignoring the Base Rate: (Insensitive to sample
size)
◦ How 9000 thousand Al-Qaida members can
represent the 900 Million Muslims.

How can they blame??

Refined Judgment

 Al-Qaida is not Army of Muslims.

Few people can not represent all.
 It’s Deviant Group:
 There interpretation of Quran, attitudes & beliefs and behaviors are
different from Peaceful Muslims.

How they can represent General Muslim Population??

Use Prototypes for Reaching Conclusion
 Original form of something that serve as standard.
And this prototype helps in comparing and reaching to conclusion

Allow us take shortcuts and make quick judgment and decisions.

Prototypes are used to enhance memory and recall, since you can
keep a prototype of something and then match the current
attributes of something with prototype in order to identify or
categorize.
Situation
You went to visit your new neighbor
and found a new girl she was
gentle, helping, and good at
numbers and little shy.
And you not asked her profession
What’s her profession ??

Error in judgment: These traits may belong

to Financial Analyst, Banker or Engineer
Example:

Mr. Ali is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. He majored
in Philosophy and Gender Studies. As a student, he was deeply
concerned with issues of gender discrimination in Pakistan and social
justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Is Mr. Ali a Civil Engineer, Designer, Feminist Doctor or Social

Activist?
Certain Physical Attributes Belong to Particular Groups
Contd…..
Availability Heuristics
Judge event on the basis readily available information in our
minds, rather than examining all information available.

How quickly you retrieve specific information about the

particular event or situation.
Example 1
In USA people die twice because of Diabetes and Stomach Cancer
THAN the car accidents & murders.

But people see car accidents as more dangerous and take more
precautions for that.

Reason: Frequently Car Accidents are reported in Media

(Dramatic in nature and reported in mainstream media)
We easily & quickly retrieve information that is:
Frequently heard such news  That’s why they take
precautions
 Dramatic in nature
Like many people fear to travel in airplanes more than
automobiles.
Where as chances of car accidents are higher than airplane, if you
check the statistics.
Example 2

Went to discuss case with

Lawyer:
He may retrieve the readily
available laws, regulations
about the matter.
Example 3
UNFAMILIAR OBJECTS- DIFFICULT TO
FAMILIAR OBJECTS- EASY RETRIEVAL
RETRIEVE
Example 4

Your parent has given you 1 million rupees to invest in shares.

And you heard from friend or read in newspaper that ABC Co. has
announced the dividend this year.

But they have announced dividend after 4 Years.

Anchoring & Adjustment Heuristics
Start judgment with certain REFERENCE POINT (anchor value) and
then adjust until you found the acceptable value.

•Rely too heavily on first piece of information when offered, and

make judgment.

•Once we attain reasonable value we stop the process of thinking.

Purchase of Electronic Appliances
Salesman generally describes the
average model first.
And you unintentionally set it as anchor.
 And try adjust around just on basis of
price.
 You are just relying on first piece of
information:
That’s PRICE only
But you have exempted quality,
electricity consumption, past reviews
etc
You know the scientific principle of Inertia

It says body at rest shall remain at rest unless moved by the
external force.
Similarly people try to stick upon same decisions/plan since
long.
And avoid risks that can be generated by change
Status Quo Heuristic: “What is, Is Good”
 Tendency to favor decisions that maintain the status quo.

 Those who are affected by this bias choose not to divert from
established behaviors.

If they change from the baseline is perceived as a loss.

They hate the change!

Current Internet Package
 Charging more amount than other networks
 Even though you prefer to stick on that
Order same dishes
When we go to Restaurants with
friends.
 Tend to order same dishes
 That we have been eating for years
Schema
 Imagine what it would be like ???
If you did not have mental model of your world
 You will not be able to make use of information form a past
experiences.
Schemas: Mental Frameworks for Organizing
Social Information
Schema:
Mental frameworks centering on a specific theme that
help us to organize social information

It is developed on the basis of information provided

by life experiences and are then stored in memory.
Mental Framework: How to Board on Flight
The Impact of Schema onCognition:
Attention, Encoding, Retrieval
 Attention: What information we notice.
 Encoding: The process through which we store that
information in memory. (Observation, Writing, Verbally etc)
 Consistent Info  Stored in Long term Memory
 Inconsistent Info  Stored in separate Memory
Retrieval: The process through which we recover information
from memory.
And then we finally make judgment
  Mental Schema: (Consistent)
Long-term

 Academic Teacher will come and

Memory

teach
 Respond to questions
 Evaluate the performance
 Mental Schema: (Inconsistent)
Separate Tag

 Comes in class and perform

 Magical Tricks, Singing or Dancing
How to have a Dinner in Restaurant??
Schema: Stored pattern of behavior

PIZZA HUT V/S KFC

Temporarily Activated Schema
 PRIMING:
Recent experiences make Schema active and affect  Current
Thinking  that Results in certain Behavior
Priming persist until thought or behavior NOT expressed*

It increases the availability and accessibility to the information

 For Example: During the first year of Medical School

Medical Student Syndrome:
They began to suspect that they have many serious illness.
 Wonder as if they have:

BRAIN TUMOR

Ordinary Headache

Wonder as if they have:

Feel Like FATAL

INFECTION

Mild Issue in Throat

What is the cause of such cognition ??
Students are exposed to description of disease day
after day in their classes.
Assigned readings to know the symptoms of
different diseases.
When they found such mild symptoms
They start imagining  We have such & such disease
More Examples
 Magnified fear after watching movie  Start Fearing
 Un priming
 So we have to deactivate the affect of recent experience on
thinking or behavior. (Bring priming effect to end)

 e.g We must share experience of boarding on flight or dinner last

night
When expressed it decrease the impact of priming
If you pass mobile to friend and reminds you: to make call to
mom.  And you make call (Priming effect come to end)
 Un priming
Schema Active by some Schema is NOT
experience or event expressed in thought or
behavior
Un priming – Schema is
expressed somehow in
behavior or thoughts
Effects Persist – Schema
influence social thought
and/or behavior
Effects of schema
dissipate (go away) and
No longer influence
social thought or
behavior
Schema Persistence: Affect our Thought&
Behavior
Even discredited schemas can influence our behavior
For Example:

show strong Preservation Effect

Preservation Effect:
The tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged
even in the face of contradictory information.

Actual Situation  Girls are opting Engineering Field

Nowadays  Boys are opting Medicine Field

But still many people force & enroll their daughters in Medicine &
Sons in Engineering Field
 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Prove our Prediction)
 Once these schema constructed we believe they are correct and follow
it as if they are final decision. And act accordingly to prove our self.
For Example:
If any Faculty member visits our class and Say “Student A is good at
participation”.
Schema: In mind of teacher that particular student would be highlighted
and at the time of evaluation teacher will rate high to particular student
in Participation Marks.
(Even though student make jus one point in a week)
Example
Schema: Cricket Coach believes New Player is to be Less
Skilled, so Coach will not put him in Playing Eleven in few
matches

(New player can be well performer in previous team)

Metaphor
 Talk in figurative way to explain something.
 State something in words and then allow people to think &
understand the meaning behind the lines. (implied meaning)

“He drowned in a sea of grief”

(Don’t take literal meaning of words, but understand the story behind)

Is there any sea of grief ?

But it means person is going through the deep grief
 Relate abstract concept to another dissimilar concept.

SUCCESS has many fathers while FAILURE is an orphan!

If you Succeed in your life everyone wants to take credit

and
The moment you Failed no wants to take responsibility
 For Example: Director Sukkur IBA says in his speech that:

Time is a Thief!

Time isn't really stealing anything, this metaphor just indicates

that time passes quickly and our lives pass us by
 When Metaphor Primed, theyinfluence
How Social Attitudes and Behavior are Affected by such Figures of Speech

Time is a Thief!
 Social Cognition:
 May start thinking about how to manage time efficiently.
 Decide how to study course timely, assign study hours, group study
 Behavior
Act upon the set plan for semester
Attain class attentively
Automatic and ControlledProcessing:
Two Basic Modes of SocialThought
These two distinct modes are used when “We think about something”

Automatic Processing Controlled Processing

Fast, relatively effortless,

Systematic, logical, and
and intuitive manner or
highly effortful manner
non-conscious manner

They both are distinctive & bit independent but both modes can be
activated together
Social judgment about person
 Research-Findings (Neuroscience)
People actually posses two different neural systems to process
social information
Two different regions of brain
Controlled Process
Reasoning & Logical,
Prefrontal More Effortful
Cortex

Simple good or bad judgments. Think carefully, logically and weigh all
(Mental shortcuts) points of personality and then decide
Like or Disliked
Automatic Process
Amygdala
Fast, effortless and non-
conscious manner
Controlled Processing
Think carefully, logically and weigh all available information and
then make a decision.
It requires: Reasoning, Logic and more efforts
 Avoid mental shortcuts
Learn To Drive For First Time
The Benefits of AutomaticProcessing
 You quickly & efficiently respond to situations [Unconscious Thought]

 You unconsciously retrieve information

from mind: And drive accordingly
 You Know how “Coordinate”
 Pedals and steering
 Clutch and Gear lever
 Where to apply brake
 How to rush from traffic
 Automatic Processing & AutomaticSocial
Behavior

Wrestlers are very tough &

Schema Trigger consistent
have always strong tendencies
behavior towards i.e Wrestlers
towards aggression

Schema Trigger preparation for Artists are very much sensitive

interacting with persons & caring  Future interaction
is expected
Potential Sources of Error inSocial Cognition:
The judgment of people deviate in number of ways
from perfect rationality.
Few Reasons:
 Information Constraint
 Because of subjectivity
 Different level exposure people have (Past Experiences)
A Basic “Tilt” in Social Thought: Over Optimistic
 Optimistic Bias:
When we overlook the risk or problems and expect
things to turn better.
“Rose Colored Glasses”
In Daily Life: We Involve in Such Biases
People believe they are more likely to experience positive events in
life than negative events. [Optimistic about their life]
For Example
 Grab Admission in good University In Result: You put less
 Will Get A Good Job efforts in process that
 Will have good family will take you to desired
 Live for longer life goals
Don’t Think of Negative events: May be fired from job, May be ill
seriously *If don’t about these things: Less efforts in Life +
Overconfidence Barrier
 Tendency to have more confidence in the accuracy of our
own judgments than is reasonable.
[ Blind Trust on own Judgment ]

“The less People know, the more stubbornly they know it”

*You consider yourself as perfect and don’t work on

Deficiencies  Put less efforts in Life ]
It happens under the Conditions of Uncertainty
Conditions of Uncertainty: Where all the information is not known
and future outcome is uncertain.

For Example: If you are asked to rate your writing skills  You may
give higher rank to yourself than other.

 You don’t know the writing capability of other class fellows.

Optimism Affect Our Ability to Plan Effectively
The Planning Fallacy: To make optimistic predictions about
the completion of particular work.

“In other words Underestimate task completion time”

Why It Happens: PlanningFallacy
 Focus primarily on future time  How they will perform a job

 Don’t look backward how similar project took time  Earlier

 They overlook the potential obstacles

 The high level motivation at the time of planning but little at
execution level
Situation Specific Sources ofError
 Counterfactual Thinking: (Contrary to the facts)
 Tendency to imagine other outcome in particular situation
than the ones that actually occurred.
 Imagining what did not actually happened – can influence
our social thoughts.
“What if the 9/11 terrorists had been stopped by security guards
at the airport?”
 “I would have passed if worked hard in exam”
 Counterfactual Thoughts TriggerFrom:
 Negative emotion or a Problematic Situation, Disappointment

◦ Expect something better from that.

◦ When people feel bad about a negative outcome

For Example:
“If I had been 3 seconds earlier I would have won the
Marathon Race”
Upward Counterfactuals:
Here you’re comparing current outcomes with more
favorable one than you have experienced  Strong
feelings of Dissatisfaction
Downward Counterfactuals:
Compare with less favorable one  Feeling of Satisfaction
Counterfactual Thoughts Help us to Perform Better

“I would have passed if worked hard in exam”

 We come up with the improved strategies and ways of using our

efforts more effectively.
Magical Thinking
 Non-scientific beliefs and explanations that we make about
the world around us.

Belief in things that are not real

Free from any logic [i.e Superstitions]

Thinking involves assumptions that don’t hold up to rational

scrutiny i.e The belief that things that resembles one another
share fundamental properties
 For Example Chinese Culture

Cultural Belief: 13 Floor

is Bad Luck
Superstitions in Pakistan
Terror Management
We know the death is inevitable (unavoidable).
And we believe in supernatural powers outside our understanding
and control  That influence our lives.
 People have to manage that fear and lead a life that is short.
 Affect and Cognition: How FeelingsShape
Thought and Thought ShapesFeelings

Affect Two Way Process Cognition

(Feeling) (Thought)
The Influence of Affect onCognition
“Current Mood (Affect) influence our cognition”

Waiting for interview  Feeling Bit Nervous

And activate your mind to remember things (concepts)
◦ (If interviewer is in good mood: Rate high to candidates)

Appearing in Exam  Bit Nervous

◦ Recall Formulas
1. Mood CongruenceEffects

Current Mood: Notice & Remember

Positive Positive Information

Mood Serve As Kind Of Filter

and Permit Information that is
consistent with the mood
Current Mood: Notice & Remember
Negative Negative Information
2. Mood Dependent Memory
Easily Recall/ Retrieve
Current Mood: Positive Past Incidents
Positive from Memory

Affect Influence  What

specific information is
retrieved from memory
Easily Recall Negative
Current Mood: Past Incidents/ Info:
Negative from Memory
What do you think about Sukkur IBA ??
Positive Mood Boost Creativity
3. Heuristic Processing
Our mood also insist us to involve in mental shortcuts

Positive Mood  More Likely Encourage us to involve in Heuristics

Negative Mood  Less Likely encourage us to involve Heuristics

◦ Negative Mood trigger us to be very carful while making any decision.
The Influence of Cognition onAffect
“How Thought Influence Feelings?”
For Example:
I’m never going to make any friends at this new school  Ali may feels worried
and sad.

I wrote a good story in class yesterday. Nyle  Feels proud and confident.
Activating Schema
Cognition &Regulating the Feeling States
 May think to engage in activity to regulate feelings.
Chapter Completed 

FARHAN SHAHZAD [FACULTY MEMBER @ SUKKUR IBA UNIVERSITY]