Social Cognition and Perception Flashcards
What is meant by the term ‘social cognition’ and ‘social perception’?
what is social cognition? It is essentially the cognitive processes and structures that affect and are affected by social context and behaviour.Social cognition is an approach in social psychology that focuses on how our thinking processes and thoughts are affected by wider and more immediate social contexts, and how thinking and thoughts affect our social behaviour. The focus here is on what goes on in the head of the individual person and how that impacts and is impacted by human interaction.
social perception… that’s like social cognition, right? Well, partly. Social perception is highly related to social cognition, but rather than focusing on how we think about our social world more generally, social perception is interested in our tendency to engage in attributions. Attribution is the process of assigning a cause to your own or another’s behaviour.
Outline the major assumptions of the following broad approaches to social cognition, as found in social psychology: (a) cognitive consistency; (b) naive scientist; (c) cognitive miser; and (d) motivated tactician.
1940-50s
Cognitive consistency A model of social cognition in which people try to reduce inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find inconsistency unpleasant.
1960s
Naive scientist (or psychologist) Model of social cognition that characterises people as using rational, scientific-like,
cause–effect analyses to understand their world.
1970s
A model of social cognition that
characterises people as using the least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviours.
(we are often economic rather than accurate when jumping to a conclusion).
1985
Motivated tactician A model of social cognition that
characterises people as having multiple cognitive strategies available, which they choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives and needs.
-a fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies available and chooses among them based on goals, motives, and needs. Sometimes the moti vated tactician chooses wisely, in the interests of adaptability and accuracy, and sometimes . . . defensively, in the interests of speed or selfesteem. (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p. 13)
What are central traits? Provide an example.
What are peripheral traits? Provide an example.
Traits that have a disproportionate influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation. (warm/cold)
Peripheral traits Traits that have an insignificant influence on the configuration of final impressions, in Asch’s configural model of impression formation. (polite/blunt)
A central trait is an attribute in someone’s personality that is considered particularly meaningful, in that its presence or absence signals the presence or absence of other traits. For example, if a person has a warm personality, it usually means that he or she is also friendly, courteous, cheerful, and outgoing—among many other possible traits. A peripheral trait is one whose presence or absence does not imply many other characteristics. For example, if a person is sarcastic, it might imply that he or she is cynical about the world or has a dark sense of humor—but not much else.
What did Asch do to test his ideas and what were his findings?
page 32.
However, the impressions we form are influenced by some bits of information more than others. Very early on, Solomon Asch (1946) argued that some attributes are strongly related in our minds to a large number of other attributes – knowing someone has one of these attributes allows one to infer a great deal about a person and readily form an integrated impression of that person. These attributes he called central traits, to distinguish them from less diagnostic attributes that he called peripheral traits. To investigate this idea, Asch had students read one of two lists of seven adjec tives (traits) describing a hypothetical person. The lists differed only slightly – embedded in one was the word warm and in the other the word cold. The stu dents then evaluated the target person on a number of other dimensions, such as generous/ungenerous, happy/unhappy, reliable/unreliable. Students who read the list containing warm formed a much more favourable impression of the target than did those exposed to the list containing the trait cold (see Figure 2.1). When the words warm and cold were replaced by polite and blunt, the difference in impres sion was far less marked. Asch argued that warm/cold is a central trait dimension that has more influence on impression formation than polite/blunt, which is a peripheral trait dimension.
Perhaps you are now wondering how ordinary people, or social psychologists
for that matter, decide which traits are central and which peripheral. Asch believed that central traits are ones that are intrinsically highly correlated with other traits.
What criticisms have been made regarding the concept of central trait? (Note the role of personal constructs and implicit personality theories).
However, others such as Mark Zanna and David Hamilton (1972) argued that what makes a trait central is influenced by context. In Figure 2.1, a trait that is distinctive (e.g. warm) and semantically linked to the other judgement dimensions (e.g. good-natured) will be more central than one that is nondistinctive or not obviously related to the other dimensions. Yet others have suggested that people have their own idiosyn cratic and enduring beliefs, which the personality psychologist George Kelly (1955) called personal constructs, about which attributes are most important in making judge ments of people – for example, you might organise your impressions around humour while your partner anchors it on intelligence. Arising from his research in person per ception, David Schneider (1973) suggested that people may also have more integrated implicit personality theories, or philosophies of human nature, which are enduring general principles about what sorts of characteristics go together to form certain types of personality. Implicit personality theories are widely shared within cultures but differ between cultures, according to Hazel Markus and her colleagues (Markus, Kitayama & Heiman, 1996), and can sometimes be quite idiosyncratic.
What is the primacy effect? Provide an example.
What is the recency effect? Provide an example.
Impressions are also influenced by the order in which bits of information about the person are encountered. There is a primacy effect in which the first things you learn about a person disproportionately affect your overall impression. For example, Asch (1946) found that people had a more favourable impression of a hypotheti cal person described as being intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious (i.e. positive traits first, negative traits last) than when the order of the traits was reversed. He speculated that early information functions in the same way as central traits. There is also evidence for a recency effect where later information has more impact than earlier information – this is most likely to occur if you are distracted (e.g. overworked, bombarded with stimuli, tired) or you have little moti vation to attend to someone. Overall, however, primacy is more common (Jones & Goethals, 1972) – first impressions really do count!
How do physical cues feed into our impression formations? Provide a summary of a research finding in this area.
Given that in forming impressions of strangers often the first bit of information we have is what they look like, maybe appearance has a primacy effect. Although we would like to believe that we are way too sophisticated to be swayed in our impressions by mere physical appearance, research suggests otherwise – physical appearance has a huge influence on impressions. According to Leslie Zebrowitz and Mary Ann Collins (1997), people do tend to ‘judge a book by its cover’. This may not necessarily always be a bad thing, as appearancebased impressions can be surprisingly accurate. Indeed, as you will find in Chapter 10, impressions based on physical appearance play a critical role in romantic attraction. Now try answering the first focus question. However, forming impressions based on appearance can also have undesirable implications. For example, Mark Knapp (1978) found that professional men taller than 1.88 m had 10 per cent higher starting salaries than men under 1.83 m. In her research conducted in work settings, Madeline Heilman found that attractive male executives were considered more able than less attractive male executives. She also found that this effect was reversed for female executives; participants suspected that attractive female executives had been promoted because of their appearance, not their ability (Heilman & Stopeck, 1985; also see Chapter 7).
What are the positivity and negativity biases? Identify a reason why it might be more difficult to change a negative impression, once it is formed, than a positive impression.
Another problem with appearancebased first impressions is that because racial, ethnic and gender cues are highly visible, people rapidly categorise others and generate impressions based on these cues, effectively stereotyping them, sometimes in negative ways (again, see Chapter 7). Negative impressions formed in this way are difficult to change. Indeed a review of research shows that we usually give more weight to nega tive information when we form impressions than we do to positive information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). Even a positive view of a stranger that we have just formed can be dramatically reversed by just a small negative ‘fact’, such as appearing to avoid eye contact a couple of times. Unfortunately, positive infor mation seems to have little impact on a negative impression. Negative information has this effect because it is unusual and distinctive; it may also have survival value because it signals potential danger.
why do we classify people into categories?
The classification of a person or situation as fitting a particular category enables us to then apply schematic knowledge to social perception (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). This means, for example, that:
“Once you recognize someone filling a particular role (e.g., gas station attendant) on the basis of particular attributes (probably male, maybe wearing a jumpsuit, maybe with an oily rag in a pocket, maybe approaching your car, perhaps helping others get gas), then you can apply your knowledge about the role to guide the subsequent interaction (this person can help you with your car).” - Fiske & Taylor (1991, p. 105)
In other words, it is only after categorising a person or a situation that we can apply a particular type of schema.
Define the term ‘schema’ and identify the type of cognitive processing that a schema facilitates once it is invoked. (Note that the plural is either ‘schemas’ or ‘schemata’.)
A schema is a circumscribed and coherent set of interrelated cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us quickly to make sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited information. Typically, certain cues activate a schema and the schema then ‘fills in’ missing details to provide a rich set of perceptions, interpretations and expectations.
Once activated, schemas facilitate what is called top-down, conceptdriven or
theorydriven processing – that is, they rapidly generate an overall impression based on preconceptions and prior knowledge. The converse is bottom-up or datadriven processing in which an impression is painstakingly put together from separate bits of information gleaned directly from the immediate context.
Define and identify examples of each of the following types of schemas: (a) person schemas; (b) role schemas; (c) event schemas (scripts); (d) content-free schemas; (e) self-schemas.
Person schemas are idiosyncratic schemas we have about specific people: for example, a close friend (she is kind and intelligent but is shy and would rather frequent cafes than go mountain climbing).
• Role schemas are knowledge structures about role occupants: for example, air line pilots (they fly the plane and should not be seen swigging whisky in the cabin) and doctors (although often complete strangers, they are allowed to ask intimate questions and get you to undress). Role schemas can sometimes be better understood as schemas about social groups, in which case if such schemas are shared, they are social stereotypes.
• Scripts are schemas about events (Abelson, 1981): for example, attending a lecture, having a party, giving a presentation or eating out in a restaurant.
• Self-schemas are schemas about your self – they are often more complex and varied than schemas about other people. They form part of a person’s concept of who they are, the selfconcept, and are discussed in Chapter 3 when we deal with self and identity.
Family resemblance Defining property of category membership.
Fuzzy sets Categories are considered to be fuzzy sets of features organised around a prototype.
Prototype
Cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category.
• Content-free schemas do not describe specific people or categories, but are ‘rules’ about how to process information: for example, a contentfree schema might specify how to attribute causes to people’s behaviour (see discussion of attribution theories below); or that if you like John and John likes Tom, then in order to maintain balance you should also like Tom (Heider, 1958).
What is meant by the term ‘family resemblance’?
Family resemblance Defining property of category membership.
What are ‘prototypes’? (Note that they are used to assess family resemblance.)
Prototype
Cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category.
What sort of relationship between ‘categories’ is thought to exist?
What determines whether we represent a category as a prototype or an exemplar? As people become more familiar with a category, they shift from using prototypes to exemplars. This shift is most clearcut when people represent out groups (Klein, Loftus, Trafton & Fuhrman, 1992).
Once a person, event or situation is categorised, the relevant schema is invoked. Schemas and prototypes are similar and indeed are often used interchangeably by social psychologists. One way to distinguish them is that prototypes are more nebulous and fuzzy whereas schemas are much more organised (Wyer & Gordon, 1984).
Distinguish between prototypes and exemplars and ensure you understand the difference between prototypes and schemas (go back to earlier definition if necessary).
prototype is a typical idea of something in a category.
exampler is something specific in that category
A schema is a circumscribed and coherent set of interrelated cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allows us quickly to make sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited information.
Note the definition of stereotypes. Briefly overview five things research has told us about stereotypes.
Stereotypes are simplified images of members of a group; they are often deroga tory when applied to outgroups; and they are often based on, or create, clearly visible differences between groups (e.g.
in terms of physical appearance;
Zebrowitz, 1996). They are usually shared by group members characterising members of another group; and can also be shared images of one’s own ingroup.
• People readily describe vast human groups using a few fairly crude shared features. Stereotyping is an adaptive cognitive short cut that allows one to form quick impressions of people. Stereotypes are not inaccurate or wrong, and they may or may not have a kernel of truth; but the key point is that they serve to make sense of particular intergroup relations.
• Because stereotypes are cognitively adaptive they are slow to change. When they do, it is generally in response to wider social, political or economic changes. However, stereotypes of the same group can vary from context to context – they are selected to fit situational demands and our own goals and motives. Stereotypes will usually persist if we can readily access them in memory, because we use them a great deal and they are important to who we are. Changes in accessibility or fit will change the stereotype.
• Some stereotypes are acquired at an early age, often before the child has any knowledge about the groups that are being stereotyped, while others crystallise later in childhood, after age 10 (e.g. Rutland, 1999).
• Stereotypes become more pronounced and hostile when social tensions and con flict arise between groups, and then they are extremely difficult to modify.
What is Tajfel’s accentuation principle and how does it relate to stereotyping?
Accentuation principle: Categorisation
accentuates perceived similarities within and differences between groups on dimensions that people believe are correlated with the categorisation. The effect is amplified where the categorisation and/or dimension has subjective importance, relevance or value.
Relying on categories to clarify perception is a very basic human activity, but it also produces a widespread cognitive perceptual bias. Tajfel (1959, 1969) intro duced the term accentuation principle to describe how we accentuate: (1) similarities among instances within the same category; (2) differences between instances from different categories; and (3) differences between different categories as a whole. This effect is enhanced when people are uncertain about how to judge something, and when they think that what they are categorising is very important, relevant or valu able. Shelley Taylor and her colleagues found that, in practice, we tend to make more errors within a category than between categories (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff & Ruderman, 1978). For example, Australian people attending a meeting in Melbourne would more likely remember whether it was a Lebanese or a Greek delegate who said some thing than remember which specific Arabic or Greek delegate it was.
What sorts of schemas are especially likely to be used or invoked?
Basic-level categories Middle range categories that have cognitive priority because they are the most useful, e.g. a ‘chair’ rather than ‘furniture’ or a ‘rocker’.
basic-level categories that are neither too big nor too small (see Figure 2.2). They use subtypes such as ‘career woman’, rather than superordinate categories such as ‘woman’ or subordinate categories such as ‘female astronaut’. They also access social stereotypes and role schemas such as ‘politician’, rather than trait schemas such as ‘intelligent’.
What happens when people need to use more accurate schemas? What happens if the costs of indecision are high?
Schemas that we use automatically are usually accurate enough for immedi
ate daytoday interaction – they have circumscribed accuracy that optimises the tradeoff between rapid topdown theorydriven cognition and accurate bottomup datadriven cognition (Swann, 1984). A key factor that governs this tradeoff is how costly people feel it is to be wrong or to be indecisive.
If the costs of being wrong are high, we are more attentive to data and use more accurate schemas. The costs of being wrong become important when our rewards and punishments are heavily dependent on the actions of others, and when we feel that we should account for their actions (see Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Tetlock & Boettger, 1989). If the costs of being indecisive are high, people make quick deci sions and form quick impressions – indeed, any decision or impression, however inaccurate, may be preferable to no decision or impression, so people rely heavily on schemas. The costs of being indecisive become important when people perform a task under time pressure, or when people are anxious or distracted (Jamieson & Zanna, 1989; Wilder & Shapiro, 1989).
Explain the role of experience when it comes to schema acquisition.
Where do our schemas come from? People can simply tell you or you can read about them, but more typically we acquire or modify our schemas through encoun ters with instances that fit the category (directly or through various media). Take an example when the schema is of an individual person. According to Bernadette Park (1986), as you encounter more instances of a category, in this case a person, your schema becomes more general and abstract. For example, your impressions of Roberta might evolve from descriptions such as ‘dyes her hair pink’ and ‘is boister ous in class’ to character traits such as ‘extraverted’. A schema can also become richer, more complex and more tightly organized into a single compact mental structure that can be activated in an allornothing manner. Thus an experienced university student is more likely than a firstyear student to have a more detailed schema of someone who would make a good roommate. Schemas formed in this way are quite resilient – they are able to incorporate exceptions, rather than disre gard them simply because they might threaten the validity of the schema (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). One paradoxical feature of such schemas is that they are relatively ‘accurate’ in so far as they closely map social reality.
Briefly describe the processes of schema change as suggested by Rothbart (1981).
coherence to a social world that would otherwise be highly complex and unpre dictable. For this reason schemas do not easily change. Ross, Lepper and Hubbard (1975) investigated how people deal with information that is not consistent with a schema. They told their participants that information they had received, that a target person had made either good or poor at making decisions, was entirely false. Despite this correction, participants held on to their original impression that the target was a good or poor decision maker. Trial lawyers take advantage of this. They introduce inadmissible evidence, which the judge immediately instructs the jury to disregard. But of course an impression formed from inadmissible evidence will not vanish just because the judge has instructed jurors to disregard it (Thompson, Fong & Rosenhan, 1981). The impression lingers. People think a lot about their schemas, marshalling all sorts of supportive evi
dence. The original basis of the schema is lost in the mists of time and is rarely unearthed, let alone critically reexamined (e.g. Schul & Burnstein, 1985). Schemas can, and do, change, however, if they are really inaccurate. For exam
ple, a schema that characterised lions as cuddly, goodnatured and playful pets as seen in a fun TV programme would, if you encountered one on foot in the wild, change rather dramatically – assuming that you survived the encounter! Mick Rothbart (1981) has studied extensively how social categorisation works, and suggested three ways in which schemas can change: 1. Bookkeeping – they can change slowly in the face of accumulating evidence. 2. Conversion – they can change suddenly once a critical mass of disconfirming evidence has accumulated.
3. Subtyping – they can form a subcategory to accommodate disconfirming evidence.
Subtyping is probably the most common way that a schema adapts to discon firming evidence (Weber & Crocker, 1983). For example, a woman who believes that men are violent might, through encountering many who are not, form a sub type of nonviolent men to contrast with violent men.
What is ‘social encoding’? (Note the various stages to this process.)
‘Priming’ is a term that refers to the activation of a cognitive representation to increase its accessibility to make it more likely to be used. What happens once a category is primed?
- Pre-attentive analysis – an automatic, nonconscious scanning of the environment. 2. Focal attention – once noticed, stimuli are consciously identified and categorised. 3. Comprehension – stimuli are given meaning. 4. Elaborative reasoning – the stimulus is linked to other knowledge to allow complex inferences.
Social encoding depends heavily on what captures our attention. In turn, attention is influenced by salience and accessibility.
Social encoding is affected by factors such as stimuli salience. What is ‘salience’? What are the antecedents and consequences of salience?
Salience is the property of a stimulus that makes it stand out relative to other stimuli in a particular context – for example, a single male is salient in a group of women but not a mixed sex group, and someone wearing a bright Tshirt is salient at a funeral but not on the beach. Consider the second focus question. People can be salient because they are novel and stand out against the background, because their appearance or behaviour does not fit your expectations of them, or because they are important to you (e.g. because of their rank) in a particular context. Salient people attract attention and are considered more influential in a group, more personally responsible for their behaviour (e.g. choosing to dress differently from others), and less influenced by the situation. We usually attend closely to them and form coher ent impressions of them. People do not necessarily recall more about salient people; rather, they find it easier to hold a coherent mental picture of them.
Encoding can also be affected by the accessibility of categories or schemas. What does ‘accessibility’ mean?
Attention is often directed not so much by stimulus properties ‘out there’ but
Accessibility Ease of recall of categories or schemas that we already have in mind.
Priming
Activation of accessible categories or
schemas in memory that influence how we process new information.
by the accessibility of categories or schemas that we already have in our heads (Higgins, 1996). Because accessible categories are ones we often use and are con sistent with our goals, needs and expectations, they are very easily activated or primed by things we see or hear – priming takes place. For example, people who are concerned about racial discrimination (i.e. it is an accessible category) may see racism everywhere: it is readily primed and used to interpret the social world.
