Social Cognition

Question 1

What is the study of social cognition?

Answer 1

The application of cognitive psychology to social interactions.

Question 2

What was the design of Asch’s (1946) Study of Impression Formation

Answer 2

Interested in how quickly we arrive at judgements of others despite the load of information one must compute
Pioneering methodology - presented participants with personality adjectives who were then asked to write down what that person might be like.
He compared results from two lists of adjectives that were identical except for the word warm/cold. (intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, cautious)

Question 3

What were the results of Asch’s (1946) Study of Impression Formation

Answer 3

Large difference in responses: ‘warm’ as generous, wise and good-natured; ‘cold’ as snobbish, calculating and unsympathetic
This extended to physical characteristics (cold judged as thin and pale)
Replacing the word polite and blunt produced a much smaller effec

Question 4

What is the explanation for the results of Asch’s (1946) Study of Impression Formation

Answer 4

Warmth is seen as the central trait whereas politeness is a peripheral trait
The centrality of a trait is dependent on the context.
Earlier information exerts a disproportionate impact on impressions which suggests people do not wait for all the evidenced to be presented before they start to integrate it - primacy effect (stronger when the need for closure is higher (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983)

Question 5

What are the models for the process of impression formation?

Answer 5

summation
configural model (Asch, 1946)
Implicit Personality Theory (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954)
Cognitive algebra model (Anderson, 1981)
Weighted Average Model

Question 6

What is the Summation model of impression formation?

Answer 6

adding all pieces of information together

Question 7

What is the Configural model (Asch, 1946) of impression formation?

Answer 7

holistic approach implying that social perceivers actively construct meaning from the bits of information that they receive about other people.
Based on a general impression of how different personality aspects interact.
Central adjectives change the interpretation of other words.

Question 8

What is Implicit Personality Theory (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954)

Answer 8

integrated set of ideas held by a perceiver about how different traits relate to each other (meaning is actively constructed, specifying how trait information is organised

Question 9

What is the Cognitive Algebra Model (Anderson, 1981) of impression formation?

Answer 9

Any disproportionate effects of central adjectives are explained as conveying moree evaluative information e.g warm was one of the few words not relating to competence.

Question 10

What is the Weighted Average Model of Impression Formation?

Answer 10

apply more weight to more important items

Question 11

What are the limitations of Asch’s (1946) study (and therefore model) of impression formation?

Answer 11

Forming an impression from a list of adjectives does not accurately mimic the everyday scenario of meeting and interacting with another individual face-face.
Participants were explicitly told to make judgements about targets (goal would not be explicit irl - may engage different processes).
Only verbal information - nonverbal information may be processed differently (Kuzmanovic et al.,2012)

Question 12

How is non-verbal character information processed differently?

Answer 12

Process by separate mechanisms and brain regions
Some sense data carries direct implications about personality e.g babyface or high pitch voice
Berry and McArther (1985) found that participants judged targets with babyfaced features as more honest, warmer, more naive and more submissive.
Larger facial width:height for appearing more dominating (wolffhecchel et al., 2014) - bottom-up forms of perception are involved
Movement cues
Width:height ratio

Question 13

What are the models of the social thinker (Fiske & Taylor, 2017)?

Answer 13

Consistency Seeker (1950s): Distorts information in a way that is compatible with desires, motives and needs.
Naive scientist (1960s): systematically analyses information to predict and control behaviour
Cognitive Miser (1970s): “The cognitive system is limited in capacity, so people take shortcuts”
Motivated Tactician (1980s): “A fully engaged thinker with multiple cognitive strategies available, who … chooses among them based on goals, motives and needs.” 
Activated Actor (1990s): Situations automatically cue social concepts and associated cognitions, emotions and behaviours.

Question 14

Consistency Seekers and Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)

Answer 14

CDT exemplified how consistency seekers distort information to fit their needs, desires and motives.
Maintains that it is uncomfortable to hold two cognitions that seem to be psychologically inconsistent with each other so they adapt their beliefs to be consistent and alleviate the dissonance.

Question 15

Naive Scientists and Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958)

Answer 15

Process information in a systematic and analytic manner, in the way that a psychologist would develop theories about why people behave as they do.
Conducts a causal analysis based on lay theories e.g success is attributed to either personal ability (power factors), personal effort (motivational factors) or task difficulty (situational factors).

Question 16

Cognitive Misers and Top-of-the-Head Phenomena (Taylor & Fiske, 1978)

Answer 16

As there is limited cognitive capacity, rather than conducting a systematic analysis, individuals use shortcut heuristics to make judgements - opting for the most obvious explanation.
Conducted a study where participants observed a ‘get acquainted’ conversation between two confederates, manipulating the participants view point (facing one or the other confed or side on view of both).
Asked participants to judge which of the confeds was the most influential.
Participants tended to judge the person sitting opposite them as the most influential or judge the two as equally influential if sat side on.

Question 17

Motivated Tacticians and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)

Answer 17

Perceivers can process messages systematically or heuristically
Systematic Processing becomes more likely as actual confidence falls below desired confidence (sufficiency threshold).
E.g purchasing behaviour differs when buying an expensive item one knows little about compared to cheaper less consequential products (research vs gut feeling).

Question 18

Stereotyping and Cognitive Load (Bodenhausen & Liechtenstein, 1987)

Answer 18

High cognitive load explains why people opt for heuristic approaches (over systematic ones).
Investigated implications for jury decisions in legal trials.
Participants were given general information about an assault and were presented with favourable and unfavourable evidence for the defendant.
Cognitive load manipulated: is defendant innocent/guilty (difficult) vs is defendant aggressive (easier).
Stereotype activation manipulation: defendant is named Robert Johnson (no stereotype) vs defendant is named Carlos Ramirez (Hispanic stereotype).
When participants had sufficient resources (low cognitive load condition) to focus on the details of the trial the availability of the stereotype made no difference to judgements on the likelihood of guilt.
In the high cognitive load condition participants were more likely to resort to an stereotype available.

Question 19

Activated Actors and Stereotype Priming and Behaviour (Bargh, Chen & Burrows, 1996)

Answer 19

Interested in implicit cuing effects, social concepts were activated and Bargh et al. show that these directly affect behaviour, perception and judgement outside our control.
Participants took part in a scrambled sentence task; half were in the elderly stereotype activation condition and primed with words like wrinkle, bingo and grey.
Despite few reporting they were aware the words they had been presented with were associated with older people, those unconsciously primed took longer to walk to the lift than those who had not had the stereotype activated.
Effects have been criticised due to their inconsequential nature.

Question 20

Priming Complex Behaviour (Dijksterhuis & Van Knippenberg, 1998)

Answer 20

Tested performance on general knowledge quizzes after having various types of stereotypes activated.
Participants scored higher than controls after thinking about typical characteristics of a professor.
Participants scored significantly lower after thinking about typical characteristics of a football hooligan.
Priming effects extend to more complex forms of behaviour.
Effects have been criticised as the result from the original research have not been easily replicated.

Question 21

Countering Automatic Stereotypes

Fiske & Neuberg (1990)

Answer 21

Suitably motivated participants engage in individual impression formation after automatic stereotyping.
This suggests we can control stereotype activation to some extent

Question 22

Macrae et al. (1994)

Criticism of countering automatic stereotypes

Answer 22

Found limits to stereotype control
Once we engage in controlling stereotyping we actively seek to avoid behaviour we think the stereotype would make us do
Participants successfully suppressed stereotypes when writing about a day in the life of a skinhead but showed greater stereotyping when no longer following suppression instructions (rebound effect).
This is because stereotypical thoughts become sensitised and this sensitisation effect persists beyond the active suppression resulting in one becoming more stereotypical than they would have done otherwise.
Makes us question whether this is really control.