Social Cognition

Social Psychology
 What is Cognition?
 Cognition is a term referring to the mental
processes involved in gaining knowledge and
comprehension. These cognitive processes
include thinking, knowing, remembering,
judging, and problem-solving. These are
higher-level functions of the brain and
encompass language, imagination, perception,
and planning.
 Social cognition

 According to Baron, The manner in which we

interpret, analyze, remember, and use
information about the social world.
 Social Cognition—how we think about the
social world, our attempts to understand it, and
ourselves and our place in it.
 Nature of Social Cognition 
 There are two basic ways to make sense of
social world around us.
 Automatic Thought / Processing
 Controlled Thoughts / Processing
 1. Automatic Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition
Often our thinking about the social world
proceeds on “automatic”—quickly, effortlessly,
and without lots of careful reasoning.
Basic advantages of Automatics Processing in
Social Cognition are –
 It need very little or no efforts.
 It can be very efficient.
 It can lead to satisfactory judgments.
 1. Automatic Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition

Heuristics means simple rule of thumb which

are quick & effortless.
Simple rules for making complex decisions or
drawing inferences in a rapid manner and
seemingly effortless manner.
 1. Automatic Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition
 There are four types of heuristics – 
• Affect (decisions made based on instant
emotions)
• Anchoring (decisions made based on the first
bit of information)
• Availability (decisions made based on
resources or information available around) 
• Representativeness (decisions made based
on similar past events)
 1. Automatic Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition
 Schemas are mental frameworks that help us
to organize social information, and that guide
our actions and the processing of information
relevant to those contexts.
 Mental structures that organize our knowledge
about the social world (about people, ourselves,
social roles, specific events).
 Schemas are typically very useful for helping us
organize and make sense of the world and to fill
in the gaps of our knowledge.
 1. Automatic Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition
 Schemas are particularly important when we
encounter information that can be interpreted
in a number of ways, because they help us
reduce ambiguity.
 Information consistent with our schemas are
remembered more (e.g., perseverance effect)
 Nature of Schemas 
 Self-Confirming nature of schemas  
 Self-fulfilling prophecies

Predictions that, in a sense, make themselves

come true.
 A self-fulfilling prophecy starts with the belief
about something. It happens when the individual
alters their behavior, either consciously or
unconsciously, to make the prediction come true.
 Nature of Schemas 
 Behavioral confirmation

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people’s

social expectations lead them to act in ways that
cause others to confirm their expectations.
Do we get from others what we expect of them?
 What do schemas do?
 “The human mind must think with the aid of
categories…orderly living depends upon it.” --Allport,
1954.
 Help us organize information.
 Help us remember certain things.
 Help us to fill in details when our information is
incomplete.
 Can influence behavior.
 Help us to interpret ambiguous behavior.
 Influence what information we attend to
 2. Controlled Thought / Processing in
Social Cognition
 It occurs when something unexpected happens.
 Unexpected events often triggers such careful,
systematic, logical effortful thought.
 Recent evidence suggests that automatic and
controlled processing may often occur
together, especially in situations involving
some uncertainty. The distinction between
automatic and controlled processing is indeed
real—and very important.
 Errors in Social Cognition-
Total rationality is rare
 Most people tend to “see the world through
rose-colored glasses,” which is known as the
Optimistic bias –a powerful predisposition to
overlook risks and expect things to turn out
well.
 In fact, research findings indicate that most
people believe that they are more likely than
others to experience positive events, and less
likely to experience negative events.
 Errors in Social Cognition-
Total rationality is rare
 We often have greater confidence in our beliefs
or judgments than is justified—an effect known
as the overconfidence barrier.
 Ironically enough, people who are least
competent in a domain are often the most likely
to be overconfident of their judgments in that
domain!
 Errors in Social Cognition-
Total rationality is rare
 Planning fallacy the tendency to make
optimistic predictions concerning how long a
given task will take for completion.
 Our tendency to believe that we can get more
done in a given period of time than we actually
can, or that a given job will take less time than
it really will.
 For example- schedules for public works like
new roads, airports, bridges, etc
 Errors in Social Cognition-
Total rationality is rare
 Counterfactual thinking, situation specific.
the tendency to imagine other outcomes in a
situation than the ones that actually occurred
(“What might have been”)
 It can affect our sympathy for people who have
experienced negative outcomes. But upward
counterfactuals can also motivate us to perform
better in the future in hope of avoiding the
outcome that did occur.
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