lecture 3 - social cognition Flashcards
what is social cognition?
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.
social cognition - fiske and taylor
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.
cognitive balance
‘balance’ as a fundamental concept in cognitive social psychology - Fritz Heider (1958) - the concept of cognitive balance balanced versus unbalanced social triads
impression formation
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
cognitive algebra
- 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
cognitive algebra - factors that influence weighting
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.
Aschs configurational model
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.
kelly 1955
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.
central traits - asch 1946
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
Kelley 1950
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.
biases in impression formation
- 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
impressions we form of people are disproportionately influenced by negative information
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.
There are social conventions and norms that actually discourage us from forming impressions at all
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.
impressions based on physical appearance
· 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.
interim summary
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