Introduction Flashcards
social cognition definition
analyses the steps in people’s train of thought about other people
methods used from cog psych
what can social cognition tell us?
Social cognition is concerned with “…our knowledge of the people that inhabit our social world - how we understand their qualities, make inferences abut their traits and characteristics, form judgments about the pressures of the situations they are in, predict what they are likely to do, and decide how we are to act in return.”
naiive realism definition
The failure to see how we subjectively arrive at the conclusions we draw about others
naiive realism: the construction of social reality
Creating an expectancy / good stereotype – expectations bias person perception process
Go with info given even if not the facts – don’t systematically review facts – latch onto stuff want to see
Don’t have awareness that were doing this
we don’t realise we are doing naiive realism
We cannot always recognise that our perceptions of others are influenced by how they want us to see them
We cling to the belief that we are objective
We seek out information that supports our initial impressions
object v person perception
Take a chair…
- We go beyond the information given in order to imbue the stimulus with meaning…
- This process is “…the most ubiquitous and primitive cognitive activity” (Bruner, 1957, p. 33)
are objects and people different?
Objects have a set of immutable features
They lack the subjective qualities of humans
But…a lot of the time, we go beyond the data with people too…
naiive realism illustration
Football fans and fouls…
Despite the fact that people…are hardly as objective as objects, we rarely recognise the perceptual distortions and inferences that we often make.”
what factors lead to naiive realism?
Context
Constructed nature of perception: The role of the perceiver
The power of the data
context: illustrations from classic perceptual psych
Mueller-Lyer illusion
Pragnanz (perceptual rigidity)
people factor examples
Field theory: every action has some specific background and is determined by that background…
Milgram (1963) - provided context in which it was deemed ‘ok’ to electrically shock people
Latane & Darley (1968) - the more bystanders present, less likely a person was to help
Asch (1952) - context affected perception of line length
the role of the perceiver
Our subjectivity as perceivers affects our perceptions of others…
Norms, goals, stereotypes, expectancies, culture, prior knowledge, mood, needs can affect what we think we see
“Your brain is constantly comparing incoming information to what it already knows, expects, or believes…
how does the mind operate?
via prediction
“ …Perception is not a process of passive absorption but of active construction. When you see, hear, or feel something, the incoming information is always fragmentary and ambiguous. As it percolates up the cortical hierarchy, each area…analyzes the data stream and asks: Is this what I expected based on my last experience? Do I need to fill in some of the gaps…?”
illustrations of how perceiver subjectivity affects person perception
Same person/people can be perceived differently by two observers: A ‘dirty’ game of US football (Hastorf & Cantrill, 1954)
We like a statement more if we like the person who said it: spreading evaluation (Lorge, 1936)…
We assume positive goes with positive: Halo effect
Impressions can be shaped by relations between traits: Trait centrality (Asch, 1946)
the power of the data
We will be affected by features of the data that make it somehow stand out
Key question here: what properties grab our attention?
