lecture 3 - social cognition

Question 1

what is social cognition?

Answer 1

How people attend to, perceive, store and respond to social information (martin et al 2019)
Basic cognitive processes involved in interpreting social situations - memory, concept formation, sensory and perceptual skills
How is social information stored, structured and retrieved from memory`/
How do goals/motives/needs influence cognitive strategies to process social information?

ways which we make inferences about people, social inferences and the world we live in and then store these inferences as schemata that guid e our perception and judgement.

Our ability to interpret social situations involves lots of basic cognitive- inferential processes, including memory for people, places and events, concept formation skills and sensory and perceptual abilities.

• Social cognition: Study of how people attend to, perceive, store, and respond to social information.
• Cognitive skills and cognitive processes involved in interpreting social situations
  -> Social cognition rests on an array of basic cognitive-inferential processes, and on the way social knowledge is stored, structured and retrieved from memory.
  -> Wide array of skills available. Goals/motives/needs influence the cognitive strategies we choose to process social information.

Social representations have consequences for how we deal with one another eg whether insanity is considered to have a moral, biological, religious, physical or social cause will determine how it is responded to by policy - makers and the public - Jodelet 1991.

Question 2

social cognition - fiske and taylor

Answer 2

Fiske and taylor say the individual is a motivated tactician - ‘a fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies available and chooses among them based on goals, motives, and needs. Sometimes the motivated tactician chooses wisely, in the interests of adaptability and accuracy, and sometimes . . . defensively, in the interests of speed or self-esteem. ‘ Source: Fiske and Taylor, 1991, p. 13.

Question 3

cognitive balance

Answer 3

‘balance’ as a fundamental concept in cognitive social psychology - Fritz Heider (1958) - the concept of cognitive balance balanced versus unbalanced social triads

Question 4

impression formation

Answer 4

Asch 1952 - ‘how do the perceptions, thoughts and motives of one person become known to their persons?’
Cognitive algebra (Anderson 1978)
- Impressions are evaluative
- People assign values to traits
Integrate these values in 3 ways to form an overall evaluation

Question 5

cognitive algebra

Answer 5

• Impression formation is evaluative (approach-avoidance).
• Traits vary in desirability. People assign values to traits.
• The value of traits is integrated to arrive at an overall evaluation of another person.

Three principles that guide integration of trait values:
- Summation: counting positive traits & negative traits: more positive traits = more positive evaluation.
- Averaging: Highly pos/neg traits have more influence than somewhat pos/neg traits
- Weighted averaging: some traits are more important than others
<= Weighted averaging best characterises impression formation

Question 6

cognitive algebra - factors that influence weighting

Answer 6

Several factors influence weighting eg same info may be weighted differently if forming an impression of a potential friend rather than potential colleague. Weightings of particular attributes may also be influenced by what other person attributes are present. The meanings of specific attributes, and overall meaning of a combination of attributes, may influence the meaning and the valence of a particular attribute. although attribute valence is important, so is the meaning of an attribute – when we evaluate someone as ‘cruel’ we not only evaluate that person negatively, but also know something about their behaviour. These and other considerations suggest people may not form impressions in such a piecemeal manner, but in a more holistic or Gestalt manner that places a greater importance on the meaning of attributes. This idea underpins Asch’s configural model of impression formation.

Question 7

Aschs configurational model

Answer 7

Asch 1946 - forming impressions of personality
People do not form impressions in a piecemeal fashion - we make holistic judgements of another person
Meaning of traits may depend on context or on different traits - some perceptual features have more influence than others
Asch 1946 said our impressions are formed by more complex rules than just a simple sum of the characteristics that we use to describe people. Asch showed when we form impressions of other people, some perceptual features seem to have more influence than others in our final impression. Eg your impression of someone may be changed by whether people are intelligent or not and a friends may be changed on whether people are approachable or not.

Question 8

kelly 1955

Answer 8

refers to these idiosyncratic views of what is most important in characterising people as personal constructs. In one context intelligence may be more relevant dimension than approachability whereas in another context the opposite may be true.

Question 9

central traits - asch 1946

Answer 9

Asch called characteritstics that are disproportionately influential in impression formation central traits which are useful for organising and summarising large amounts of diverse information about a person you encounter.Our perceptions of others are partially based on central traits - that vary from context to context or from person to person.

2 conditions - have words - intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm/cold, determined, practical and cautious - ptps who saw ‘warm’ were more likely to rate person as generous, happy and humorous
One word can have a big effect on overall evaluation.
Central traits = characteristics that are disproportionately influential in impression formation

Question 10

Kelley 1950

Answer 10

repeated aschs study in a more naturalistic setting. Group of students have guest lecture from an instructor not met before. Before lecture students received info about instructor - for 1/2 students note described instructor as ‘rather cold’, the other half got notes saying ‘very warm’. Students in cold condition rated the lecturer as more self-centered, formal, unsociable, unpopular, irritable, humourless, ruthless and engaged less in the discussion.

Question 11

biases in impression formation

Answer 11

• One factor that determines whetehr a trait is central or niot is the order in which information is available or processed. Research suggests that the first information we process is the most important - primacy effect.

non-central traits
* To see if first impressions overpower later impressions, asch 1946 presented one of these lists of words to two groups of ptps -
- Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious
- Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent
These lists have the same words but in reverse order. After ptps saw the lists they were asked to describe the personality of the person with these characteristics. People who heard the first list evaluated the person mcuh more favourably than people who heard the second list = primacy effect.
More recent info can be influential but first impressions are most impactful and enduring - jones and Goethals 1972

The first information we receive affects how we evaluate subsequent information about another person

Question 12

impressions we form of people are disproportionately influenced by negative information

Answer 12

The impressions we form of people are also disproportionately influenced by negative information. We tend to pay more attention to negative information, we like to think the best of people but once bad impressions are formed they can be very difficult to change. However good impressions can easily change. One reason for this negativity bias is people are probably especially sensitive to negative info as it can signify potential harm or danger. - skowronski and carlston 1989.

Question 13

There are social conventions and norms that actually discourage us from forming impressions at all

Answer 13

people would resisit forming impressions based on race, gnder or diasbility especially if on a selection panel for job applicants. People make an assessment of social judgeability, a perception of whether there is a legitimate and adequet basis for judging a specific person before forming an impression. Sometimes believing youe in a position to make a judegment results in you making unwarranted evaluations of other people. - leyens et al 1992.

Question 14

impressions based on physical appearance

Answer 14

· Impressions are infleuncd by physical appearance as immediate first impressions are often based off what we see as other info on peoples ‘character’ is not avaliable yet.
· Zebrowitz and collins 1997 say appearance based first impressions can actually be surprisingly accurate but there are flaws eg tendency to from more positive first impressions of physically attractive people may cause you to hire people who are attractive but not good at the job - Heilman and Stopeck 1985.
· A study of 11,370 convicted criminals found that those with the greatest tendency to control the impression formed of them were less likely to be antisocial but were more likely to be convicted of serious crimes such as murder and sexual assault (Davis et al, 2011a). They also received longer sentences.

Question 15

interim summary

Answer 15

Social cognition - basic cognitive processes involved in interpreting social situations
Impression formation - people form an overall evaluation through intergrating values that are assigned to traits, some perceptual features have more influence than others

Question 16

schema (or schemata) and schematic processing

Answer 16

Central theme for social cognition = concept of schema ‘schemata’ (plural) - Fiske and Taylor 1991.
Help to see what’s important about info and stimuli
Mental framework that organises and synthesis information - attributes and relations between attributes
Structure can be exemplar or prototype
Specific people, groups of people, ourselves, events, roles, places and objects - different schemas
Aids in interpretation of world
We define ourselves differently in different situations
Can lead to surprises, prone to biases
Flexible and complex
schemas are more factual
· Research has demonstrated that understanding is improved when people know the title of a passage before its read - Bransford and Johnson 1972

Question 17

types of schemas

Answer 17

Both types of schemas are equally accurate or inaccurate as a ‘true’ description of the category as a whole.

Question 18

exemplar schemas

Answer 18

Exemplar - stores what comes first - dominant in your mind - specific instance of the category

a specific instance of the category eg if your schema of Australian people is the actor High Jackman then you have an exemplar representation, whereas if what comes to mind is a general notion of billabongs, kangaroos, boomerangs and so forth then you have a prototype representation.

Question 19

prototype schemas

Answer 19

look at exemplars you have seen and create a prototype, abstract set of attributes, abstract ideal

an abstract set of attributes that define a category where no instance may actually embody the attributes.

Question 20

categories

Answer 20

· Categories vary in inclusiveness. Highly inclusive categories have many members so overshadow potentially important differences between people. More exclusive categories have fewer members. These capture differences more precisely but an exclusive category structure would produce too many catgories.
· The most cognitively accessible social categories are basic level catgegories which are neither too inclusive or too exclusive. Basic level categories = default categories that we first use to generate context-specific schemata of people - often based on visible cues such as skin colour, physiognomy, sex and dress - Zebrowitz 1996.
But many factors such as the social interactive context, our interaction goals and our own personal history can influence basic level categories and what categoristaion and associated schema comes to play in a particular context.

Question 21

schemas adv

Answer 21

Aid interpretation: Speed-up processing (more info uptake, more attention to details), add (missing) information, provide expectations
=> Swift and economic information processing: makes (social) world comprehensible & predictable

Question 22

schemas disadv

Answer 22

Prone to biases: wrong interpretations, inaccurate expectations, inflexible responses
Flexible and complex

Question 23

social categorisation

Answer 23

• we perceive the social world in categories - perception of properties/fetaures, assigned to a social category, simplifies perception and structures environment, activates schema of social group
  
  • Influences perception, expectation and interaction
  • perception of properties/features

Question 24

stereotypes

Answer 24

Schemas about groups that are shared by different people
- characterize large number of people in small number of properties
- ignores writhing group variability
- Can be wrong
Related to prejudice and discrimination

Question 25

heuristics

Answer 25

• Cognitive shortcuts
  
  • Rules of thumb
    - reduce complex problems to manageable ones - tversky and kahneman 1974
  • Schemas and categories are concepts about how we percieve and understand the world. Heuristics are a related concept about how we make decisions.
    Often we do not use all available info to draw accurate conclusions about the world as info processing is effortful and we don’t always have the resources or time available to do this. Instead we rely on heuristics - mental shortcuts that are used for problem solving and that reduce complex or ambiguous information to more simple judgemental decisions.

they are procedural

there are representativeness, availability and anchoring heuristics

Question 26

Tversky and Kahneman 1974 - representiveness heuristic

Answer 26

An important basis for social inference is to find causes for people’s behaviour through attribution processes but these processes are often not very accurate or reliable. Often, we do not use attribution processes at all to make inferences about people, but instead use cognitive short-cuts or inferential rules called heuristics. Two of the most important heuristics that people use are representativeness and availability

study - describe someone called steve - ‘very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure and a passion for detail”. Most people infer he is a librarian rather than a farmer, surgeon or trapeze artist as what we know about steve is representative of what we know about librarians. However he is statistically more likely to be a farmer.

Question 27

representativeness heuristic

Answer 27

objects are assigned to categories that share similar attributes - it’s a useful tool. Ability to categorize information. Some characteristics often go together. When we perceive certain characteristics - we infer that other chracteristics must also be present. - can go wrong eg overlook statistical information about size of category and therefore probability that person belongs to category

we use it to conclude that people fit a particular category.
* Based on our previous experience we use info like clothes, hairstyle, posture and other characteristics that we notice when we meet someone for the first time, to make tentative conclusions about other characteristics that was cannot immediately discover.
We attempt to match the characteristic we observe with schemata or stereotypes we have of different types or groups of people. We classify an object into the category to which it appears to be the most similar. It’s based on our ability to categorise information. We observe some characteristics go together so we observe some of them we conclude the others are also present. - most of the time this works and predicts peoples behaviour fairly accurately.

As we rely on the representativeness heuristic we often fall victim to the base - rate fallacy - where we overlook statistical information about the relative size of categories and the probability the person will belong to the category.

Question 28

availability heuristic

Answer 28

importance and frequency of events is guided by the ease with which it comes to mind. Using the ease of remembering examples or the amount of info you can quicklu remember as an estimate for the probability that this will occur.

• a mental short cut - when people try to assess the importance or the frequency of an event they are guided by how easily examples come to mind - by how available these examples are to the imagination. Overall things we think of most easily are more important and occur more frequently than things that are difficult to imagine so the availability heuristic works well most of the time.
  Some events are so vivid we can easily picture them happening eg being involved in a plane crash so people tend to overestimate the likelihood of these misfortunes happening to them.

Question 29

Tversky and Kahneman ( 1982) - availabilty heuristic

Answer 29

demonstrated the effect of availability by asking people to estimate whether english words starting with ‘k’ were more or less common than words with ‘k’ in the third position eg kiss vs lake. Most people said more words starting with ‘k’ but there are two times as many words with ‘k’ in the third position than first. Thinking of words starting with a certain letter is easier than thinking of words with the letter in a different position so peoples judgements are misled.

Question 30

availability heuristic - many variables can affect the availability of an event or concept

Answer 30

so increases its effect on our decision- making. Eg having recently seen a particular type of event makes it easier for us to think of other examples of that event = this is called priming. When we are primed we are usually unaware of the stimulus that causes the priming - we are physicially aware of the stimulus but not of the effects they have.

Question 31

availability heuristic - two types of priming in psychology

Answer 31

one in social and one in cognitive. Both have features in common - doyen et al 2014. - experimenters expose a participant to a priming stimulus, the prime activates a representation in the participant’s mind, this representation activates other representations, and these other representations lead to changes in behaviour.

Question 32

availability heuristic - In Bargh et al 1996

Answer 32

(unreplicated) ptps were exposed to words about old people (priming stimulus) which activated representations (old people) which activated other representations (the way old people behave) which led to behaviour change (people walked out of the lab like old people). Explanation - sematic or associative priming because the prime activates thoughts about stimuli associated with the priming stimulus.

Question 33

availability heuristic - Carter et al 2011

Answer 33

US researchers found that exposure to the Republican party flag increased positive attitudes to Republican beliefs (carter et al 2011). In two experiments, conducted during 2008 US presidential election and one year into obamas administration they exposed ptps to the republican flag and measured voting intentions and political attitudes and beliefs. Those exposed to the flag were more likely to be sympathetic to Republican beliefs and attitudes and expressed an intention to vote Republican despite the participants denying that such exposure would influence their thinking and this finding applied to both Democrat and Republican participants.

However priming in social psych is controversial due to the failure to replicate some significant and noteworthy priming effects eg bargh et al. one robust prime is religious priming - people directly exposed to religion-specific words eg Bible or words related to religion eg divine either consiously or subliminally behave in more prosocial ways following exposure (shariff et al 2015) so are more likely to behave positively and kindly towards others.

Question 34

heuristics - representativness - conjunction error

Answer 34

‘Linda problem’ - female person has a career and is active for women’s rights is she - a businesswomen or a businesswoman and feminist?
A group of undergraduates were provided with a description of Linda, modeled to be representative of an active feminist. Then participants were then asked to evaluate the probability of her being a feminist, the probability of her being a bank teller, or the probability of being both a bank teller and feminist. Probability theory dictates that the probability of being both a bank teller and feminist (the conjunction of two sets) must be less than or equal to the probability of being either a feminist or a bank teller. A conjunction cannot be more probable than one of its constituents. However, participants judged the conjunction (bank teller and feminist) as being more probable than being a bank teller alone.[22] Some research suggests that the conjunction error may partially be due to subtle linguistic factors, such as inexplicit wording or semantic interpretation of “probability”.[23][24] The authors argue that both logic and language use may relate to the error, and it should be more fully investigated.[24]
- Heuritsics often studies as departures from rationality, negative influence, biasing. Heuristics are not necessarily irrational. When there is lack of full information, any information (similar event, self) can serve as a starting point to derive estimates of probability
- Slovic et al 1977 - probability of a combined event is overestimated
Alternative explanation in terms of everyday language (gricean pragmatics)

Question 35

Thaler

Answer 35

Studied the psychology of decision making
- Limits in rationality: Simplifying financial decision making through mental accounting.
- Social preferences: Ideas/concerns about fairness affect financial decisions.
- Lack of self-control: Planner-doer model and short-term temptations.

Nudge - improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness - 2008

Question 36

summary

Answer 36

• Social cognition
• Impression formation
• Schemas & categories
  
  • Mental framework that organises and synthesises information
  • Group schemas & stereotypes
    Heuristics