Social Cognition

Question 1

What is social cognition and why is it studied?

Answer 1

• Social cognition is  how people make sense of the social world with emphasis on cognitive processes
• Cognitive processes lay basis for social psychology research
  
  • Understanding social cognition allows us to anticipate and combat negative social behaviour
    
    • Eg Conspiracy theories (moon landing, Barak Obama birth)
• Lessons from social cognition
  
  • People create their own reality
  • Situational cues can have powerful effects on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour

Question 2

What are the three models of social thinkers?

Answer 2

• The Naive Scientist: we go around the world gathering evidence to test our hypotheses
  
  • Eg Obama: Where’s the birth certificate, is it real, is there corroborating evidence, where can more information be found?
  • But this is effortful and time consuming (uncommon)
• The Cognitive Miser: lack of time for scientist approach - do as little thinking as possible and use heuristics instead
  
  • Eg Obama: experts say he is born in US, my friends believe X
• The Motivated Tactician: choose cognitive strategies (eg above 2) based on motivations/goals
  
  • Motivated scepticism: only sceptical of evidence when the conclusion is unpalatable

Question 3

What factors separate automatic and controlled processes?

Answer 3

• Original criteria for automaticity:
  
  • Intentionality: Is an act of will necessary to set the process in motion?
  • Awareness: Is one consciously aware of the process?
  • Controllability: Is one able to stop the process once it is operating?
  • Efficiency: How much attentional resources does the process take?
    
    • Eg Reading text in front of you, as illustrated by stroop task
• Current definition
  
  • behaviours can be partially automatic, or only automatic in certain situations
  • Not all four criteria need to be met
    
    • eg Driving

Question 4

What are the Priming effect and Priming techniques?

Answer 4

• Priming effect: The unintended influence of prior experience on judgment, thought, or behaviour
• Priming Technique:  The presentation of a stimulus that activates a concept in memory
  
  • Awareness is important: people cannot be aware of the priming technique. can be avoided by using subliminal messaging
  • Not all people are affected by priming: the stimulus must be relevant to the individual, and stereotypical of the target
• Example Rating Donald
  
  • Priming subjects with passages related to “reckless” or “adventurous”
  •  Participants primed with “reckless” rated Donald more negatively than participants primed with “adventurous”

Question 5

How did Banaji et al. demonstrate that primes must be stereotypically related to the target to be effective?

Answer 5

• Rating Donald or Donna:
  
  • Experiment A (aggression)
    
    • Priming “aggression” or neutral (via gender ambivalent sentence scramble).
    • Then read passage about either man (donald) or woman (donna)
    • No difference in female rating, effect of prime present in male rating
  • Experiment B (dependance)
    
    • Priming dependence or neutral, otherwise same design
    • Prime only had effect for Donna

Question 6

What was the experiment conducted by Mckenzie-Mohr and Zanna on the effect of pornography priming?

Answer 6

• Effect of Pornography: McKenzie-Mohr & Zanna Only certain men are effected by the priming.
  
  • Men completed BEM sex; 30 androgenous, 30 macho
  • Priming watched either (non-violent) porno or parliament question time
  • Subsequent interview with attractive women
    
    • Rating of sexual motivation: prime/macho higher, no other effect
    • Interpersonal distance: androgenous no effect, macho high prime effect
  • Given time to recount interview
    
    • Primed macho men recalled significantly more information about the physical appearance of interviewer. No effect on androgenous

Question 7

What did the experiment by Rudman and Borgida show about the effect of sexist ads on social priming?

Answer 7

•  Macho or androgynous men watched sexualised or non-sexualised ads
  
  • Completed a Lexical decision task:
    
    • Reaction time to responses eg “babe” vs “sister”
    • Sexualised prime: slower response to non-sex object words. Those primed non-sexual: reverse effect
    • No effect of androgenous or macho
  • Interviewed a woman,
    
    • had to choose between pairs of questions to ask the woman
    • Sexualised prime: sat closer to interviewee, asked sexual questions, rated employee as less competent
    • consistent across androgenou & macho
• Androgenousmacho men react the same

Question 8

What did Yao et al find about the effect of sexualised video games on social behaviour?

Answer 8

• Lexical decision task on sexual vs non-sexual female words
  
  • Leisure Suit Larry: strong effect
  • Sims2, Pacman: no effect
• Note: didnt look at subtypes of men

Question 9

What is self-regulation and how is it helpful?

Answer 9

• Bringing behaviour, thoughts, emotions into line with desired outcomes
  
  •  requires monitoring, resisting alternatives, keeping focus
• Localisation in brain?  Prefrontal cortex (Phineas Gage)
• Self-regulation promotes Delay of gratification
  
  • Delayed gratification in kids predicts success in schooling
  • Adult self-rated self control associated with success

Question 10

What is Wegner’s Ironic Process Theory?

Answer 10

• Proposed by Wegner to explain the effect of thinking more about something you dont want to think about
• Mental control is achieved through two processes which work hand in hand
  
  • Intentional operating process: searches for distracters
    
    • conscious, effortful, and interruptible
    • Can be affected by depleted resources (tiredness)
  • Ironic monitoring process: used to monitor whether the to-be-suppressed thought is resurfacing
    
    • unconscious, less effortful, and uninterruptible
• Ironic monitoring continuous regardless of fatigue, but intentional operating will be affected and not block it out - continued resurfacing

Question 11

How did Wegner’s “Putt and the Pendulum” studies support the Ironic Processes Theory?

Answer 11

• Study 1: Putt putt golf challenge
  
  • Cognitive load condition: need to remember 8 digit number
• Study 2: Don’t let the pendulum swing sideways
  
  • Cognitive load condition: count back from 1000 in 3s
• Findings:
  
  • Rebound effects for cognitive load
    
    • ended up doing it even more - overshoot target or swing in sideways motion

Question 12

What is the Ego-depletion/Strength Model of Self-regulation?

Answer 12

• Self regulation is like a muscle:
  
  • Relies on a limited energy source
  • Consumed by use (ego depletion)
  • Can be strengthened with “exercise”
• Ego depletion is NOT domain specific (use of resources in one area will affect other “unrelated” areas)

Question 13

What is some empirical evidence for Ego depletion?

Answer 13

• Baumeister et al. Hungry participants (instructed to skip a meal):
  
  • 3 conditions: Resist chocolate cookie, resist radishes, control
  • Then told to do an unsolvable puzzle measured persistence time
  • Results: chocolate chip (8mins) less than other two groups (20mins)
• Muraven  Effects of suppressing thoughts of a white bear
  
  • subsequent driving task effected
• Vohs effects of decision making
  
  • Participants who made many choices drank less of a bad tasting “health drink” they were being paid to consume

Question 14

What is some evidence that exercising can increase self control?

Answer 14

• Oaten and Cheng longitudinal study of university students
  
  • Control phase (2 months) then exercise program phase (2 months) (not already physically active)
  • Measured DVs at baseline, 1month and 2months
    
    • Performance on a visual tracking task while ignoring video
    • Self-reported self-regulatory behaviours
• Results:
  
  • Self report: self reported better healthy behaviours (junk food, healthy eating) also reported increases in no health related behaviours (impulse spending, temper, procrastination)
  • Visual tracking: performance 2m >1m>baseline

Question 15

What is affect and and its effects on behaviours?

Answer 15

• Affect is our current emotions and moods
  
  • reciprocally related with cognition (thought shapes feelings, feelings shape thought)
  • Affect can effect memory, judgments/inferences, and information processing strategies

Question 16

What is the difference between mood-congruent and mood-dependent memory?

Answer 16

•  Mood-congruent memory:
  
  • recall memories that are congruent with current mood
  • moods serve as a filter
  • eg. you met sarah when in a good mood, you remember good things about sarah
• Mood-dependent memory:
  
  • fit between mood at retrieval and mood at encoding
  • moods serve as a retrieval cue
  • eg. you met sarah when in a good mood, sarah comes to mind the next time you are in a good mood

Question 17

What is Bower’s network theory of affect?

Answer 17

• Affect as Priming = nodes in a semantic network, Mood as a source of priming
  
  • eg “Happy” is a central node linked to memories of positive effects -
  • once activation of paths reaches a threshold you become that mood
• Relation to mood dependent memory: when new info is learned it is linked to the mood node active at the time. That mood then acts to activate that info.
• Relation to mood congruent memory: Being in a mood leads to retrieval of info associated with this mood. Mood then serves as a filter to what you pay attention to and remember (within that network only)
• Mood affecting judgement: Moods influence memory processes which influence judgement

Question 18

What is Swartz and Clore’s theory that feelings can be a direct source of information to affect judgement?

Answer 18

• Swartz and Clore: We may use our mood as a direct source of information
  
  • When you encounter something or someone, you use your existing affective state to construct a response
  • Potential source of error, however, when mood is irrelevant to target of judgment (eg conditioning with chocolate bar)
• Contrast to Bower Priming/Network
  
  • for direct source: Impact of affective states on judgment depends on perceived information value, attribution of emotion to cause
  • Bower: informational value should not matter

Question 19

What is the evidence that people evaluate the value of their emotions for judgement?

Answer 19

• Source of disagreement between two models of mood effects (network vs direct model) is whether people place value judgement on mood when making judgement
• Schwarz & Clore Weather effects
  
  • Asked people either on sunny or rainy weekends how satisfied they are with their lives on the whole
  • Some people where asked first - how’s the weather where you are
  • Results:
    
    • No weather priming: weather affected judgement
    • Weather primed: no difference in life satisfaction
• So people use feelings, unless specifically cued to think that feelings may not be appropriate

Question 20

How can mood effect the processing strategies that we adopt? What evidence is there for this?

Answer 20

• Emotions exist to guide responses to the current environment
  
  • Negative emotions: promote action to solve problem, promotes detail oriented systematic programming
  • Positive emotions: promotes use of heuristics
• Study 1: Mood and Correspondance bias
  
  • Read essays on topical issues, being told whether authors chose or were assigned topic
  • Sad condition lower correspondance bias, happy higher rates
  • Sad condition remembered more information
• Study 2: Stereotyping
  
  • After priming, read ambiguous description of assault case defendant, varied as either latino or caucasian and asked for verdict
  • Happy participants relied on stereotypes, whereas neutral participants based judgments on the evidence provided