Social Cognition and Perceptions L3

Question 1

Learning Objectives

Answer 1

Understand key approaches and concepts within the field of social cognition.

Gain insight into the way that we understand the perceptions and behaviour of others.

Observe attributional biases in the world around us and understand why they may occur.

Understand the role of public perceptions research.

To consider Construal Level Theory and use it to understand how perceptions change with context.

Question 2

What is social cognition?

Answer 2

Social Cognition is how…

Attitudes,

Representations (perceptions of ourselves and others),

Judgments and stereotypes,

Expectations,

… influence our beliefs, intentions and behaviour.

Assumes a rational, reasoned decision maker

Information processing perspective.

Question 3

What is social cognition?

Answer 3

Cognitive processes for understanding how people construct own social world.

Comprises a set of cognitive structures and processes that affect and are affected by social context.

Question 4

What are cognitive misers?

Answer 4

Adopt cognitive ‘short-cuts’.

Preserve ‘cognitive economy’.

e.g. stereotypes.

Question 5

What is categorisation?

Answer 5

People devise short-cut strategies to simplify nature of incoming information.

Categorisation - way of simplifying perceptions.

Grouping of objects - treated in similar way.

Promotes cognitive economy.

Question 6

What is hard about making categories with a rule based approach?

Answer 6

Rule based approach Every category represented by a set of features.

However:
It can be hard to define rules sometimes.
Bachelor – unmarried male?

People can disagree as rules.
Camel as vehicle?

Doesn’t account for poor category fit.
Black or white?

Question 7

How can you make categories with the prototypical approach?

Answer 7

Members share something in common - not completely identical for membership.

Prototype often average but sometimes most extreme, e.g. environmentalist.

Categories considered fuzzy sets centring around a prototype.

Question 8

How can you make categories with the exemplar approach?

Answer 8

Quintessential category members.

Question 9

What are associative networks in categorisation?

Answer 9

Network of linked attributes activated through spreading activation.

Question 10

What is a schema?

Answer 10

Once categorised a schema is invoked.

Schema - cognitive representation:

Differs from prototypes in terms of organisation – schemas highly organised and specify features and relationships.

People generalise in time and in space about objects characteristics and properties:

Dependent on individual’s personal experiences.

Question 11

What are some examples of a schema?

Answer 11

Role schema.

Person schema (individualised).

Scripts (schemas about events).

Question 12

What do schemas do?

Answer 12

Once activated schemas influence information processing and inference:

Conceptually driven processing.

Schemas can be implicitly activated and affect judgement and behaviour:

Which schemas activated driven by salience, relevance, personal importance.

Guide how we encode (attend, interpret), remember and respond (judge and interact):

Question 13

What are the 3 dimensions of the Entrepreneurship alertness schemata?

Answer 13

Scanning & search:
Persistent and unconventional in investigating new ideas.

Association & connection:
Processing information in creative ways to make extensions in logic, consider possibilities and make unique connections.

Evaluation & judgement:
Is new information absorbed in a way that is relevant to the individuals own interests.

also
Breadth of cross-cultural experience:
Frequency or diversity of cultures experienced.

Depth of cross-cultural experience:
Extensive knowledge of specific (or a few) cultural contexts.

Question 14

What are cognitive misers?

Answer 14

Social perception as a problem solving task.

Cognitive ‘laziness’ – cognitive miser.

Rely on heuristics for decision making and interpersonal perception.

Process salient information - that which stands out.

Question 15

What are heuristics?

Answer 15

Availability of information:
Judging frequency of event based on number of instances brought to ‘mind’ of that event.

Representativeness:
Whether person is an example of a particular stored schema (e.g., Stereotype).

Anchoring and adjustment:
Using information about initial standards or schemas.

Question 16

What is causal attribution?

Answer 16

The Naive Scientist:

How people think about other people – common-sense theories.

Inferring causes from observable behaviour or other information:

To predict and control our environment.

Dispositions (internal) – stable:

Personality characteristics, beliefs.

Situations (external) – changeable:

Weather, other people.

Question 17

What is the Covariation model?

Answer 17

Most influential of all models of attribution. Treated as the dominant approach:

People use covariation principle to decide whether internal or external cause:

Three key questions in a given situation:

Distinctiveness: Does this person behave this way in other situations?

Consistency: Does the person regularly behave this way in this situation?

Consensus: Do other people regularly behave this way in this situation?

Question 18

refer to Kelley’s (1967, 1973) covariation model slide 30

Question 19

What are some criticisms iof the covaration model?

Answer 19

BUT: What about the availability of information (lab vs life)?

Multiple observations needed.

Tendency to under use consensus info.

False consensus bias – everyone is like us!

Time and motivation?

People are poor at assessing covariation.

Covariation is not causation!

Question 20

What is correspondence bias?

Answer 20

Fundamental attribution error (aka correspondence bias):

Salience of actor, and differential forgetting over time.

Like to believe we have control – ‘Just world hypothesis’.

W.E.I.R.D phenomenon.

Question 21

What is the Actor-observer effect (Jones & Nisbett, 1971)?

Answer 21

Tendency to make dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for ourselves.

Differences in salience.

Differences in historical information about actor.

Can be reversed by perspective taking.

Question 22

What are the Differences in attribution of victims and transgressors - experiment?

Answer 22

Participants offered a choice of tasks:

Choosing an attractive task means next participant has to complete a boring task.

Information provided on consent form – often not read carefully.

So participant would choose the desirable task not realising consequences.

Subsequent participant knows initial participants choice has resulted in their boring task.

Question 23

What are the Differences in attribution of victims and transgressors - results?

Answer 23

Victims – see transgression as intentional:

Believe transgressors feel less guilty then they actually do.

Underestimate how much transgressors want to be forgiven.

Perspective taking – victims asked to take the perspective of the transgressor reduce effects.

Question 24

What is self serving bias?

Answer 24

Tendency to take credit (make dispositional attributions) for successes but not for failures (make situational attributions).

Protects self esteem.

Also cognitive reasons – focus on own efforts and information.

Question 25

What is Ethnocentrism?

Answer 25

Ethnocentrism – in group serving bias:

Ultimate Attribution Error.

Cognitive reasons – activates schemas, don’t think further.

Motivational reasons – social identity theory.

Question 26

Whar are public perceptions and risk perceptions?

Answer 26

Public perceptions – measure of public feelings that don’t necessarily correspond to reality.

Public deficit model:

Relationships between perceptions and knowledge.

Upstream engagement.

Risk perceptions:

Risks more acceptable if natural and familiar.

Affect heuristic.

Question 27

What is the Public deficit model?

Answer 27

Public deficit model:

Deficit in knowledge about the topic?

People don’t understand and fall back on irrational beliefs.

If people knew more then they’d change their minds.

Examined empirically:

National survey in Britain – N = 2,009.

Examined public understanding of science and public support for scientific research.

Question 28

How useful is the public deficit model?

Answer 28

Knowledge correlates positively with general attitudes moderately (R = 0.30).

However different pattern within specific areas:

Factor analysis on attitudes towards different research areas.

Useful – socially relevant and practical e.g. cancer research.

Non-useful – of intrinsic interest but not necessarily useful, e.g. putting Man on Mars.

Moral issues – e.g. genetic engineering.
Significant correlation between knowledge and attitudes for useful basic research (R = 0.20).

Almost no relation between knowledge and attitudes for non-useful research (R = 0.05) and negative associations for morally contentious research (R = -0.27).

Question 29

How does the public deficit model work?

Answer 29

Scientific understanding scores divided into quartiles (1 highest – 4 lowest)

For highest levels of knowledge most positive attitudes towards useful research but less positive towards morally contentious areas

Scientifically informed are more discriminating in their judgements.

Question 30

IS knowledge linked with support?

Answer 30

Proponents and opponents usually value different domains of knowledge.

Social trust (or lack of) outweighs importance of knowledge.

Methods and processes of science can be questioned.

Scientific institutions, organisation and patronage can be questioned.

Question 31

What is upstream engagement?

Answer 31

Upstream engagement:

“Dialogue and deliberation amongst affected parties about a potentially controversial technological issue at an early stage of the research and development process and in advance of significant applications or social controversy”.

Question 32

How does Data feed into Policy and Industry decisions?

Answer 32

Products and Policies that are more likely to succeed.

Question 33

What is Engagement and empowerment?

Answer 33

Public dialogue includes people in the decision – subsequently more likely to support and engage with activity.

Question 34

What is our risk perception?

Answer 34

Experts risk perception – annual mortalities.

Public risk perception – includes other factors, e.g.

Natural vs manmade – more acceptable if natural.

Controllability – more acceptable if controllable.

Voluntariness – voluntary risks perceived as more acceptable.

Familiarity – more acceptable if familiar.

Psychometric paradigm in order to create cognitive maps of risk perceptions.

Question 35

How is risk perception organised?

Answer 35

Organised into two main dimensions:

Dread: Uncontrollable, Severe consequences, Involuntary.

Unknown: Unobservable, Unfamiliar, Delayed effects

Question 36

Is there a third factor of risk perception?

Answer 36

Some studies identified 3rd Factor – no of people exposed to the risk.

Dread risk correlated with overall perceived risk.

Risks that are both unknown and dreaded have high ‘signal potential’.

Signal potential – the idea that a risk occurring would have further impacts beyond immediate shocks.

Question 37

How do we balance risks and benefits of an activity?

Answer 37

benefits of bmxing (keeping fit, having fun) different from the risks (crashing and injuring yourself).

If related at all, Risk and Benefits often positively correlated.

However Perceived Risks and Benefits often negatively correlated.

Question 38

Risk vs reward?

Answer 38

The affect heuristic:

Judgements of risk and benefit theorised to stem from an overall affective feeling about the behaviour.

Question 39

How do you write for a public audience?

Answer 39

Do not use jargon / scientific terminology:

Would a non-specialist understand all the words you have used?

Are the processes theorized understandable in clear simple terms?

Simple examples are often useful.

Do not assume previous knowledge.

Do not use colloquialisms / turns of phrase, these can be misunderstood and are often difficult to understand for people from different cultures.

Question 40

What is constural level theory?

Answer 40

Psychologicallyclose - low level constural - concrete unstructures and contextualised

Psychologically distant - high level constural - -abstract schematic decontextualised

Question 41

How do we Process psychological distance?

Answer 41

Evolution – development of human capacity for abstract mental representation

Commonality in way psychological distance is traversed

Guide predictions, evaluations and planning for near and distant situations.

Considering distance (e.g. thinking about the future, taking another persons perspective) activates the same neural substrates (prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe)

Question 42

How would we study the processing psychological distance?

Answer 42

Picture – Word Stroop Task

Classify spatial distance of words presented

Irrelevant stimuli can slow or speed responses.

Words either:

Close or Distant Spatially

Low or High Uncertainty (e.g. Sure / Maybe)

Close or Distant Socially (e.g. Friend/ Enemy)

Close or Distant Temporally (e.g. Tomorrow or Year).

Question 43

What are the core concept of Psychological Distance:

Answer 43

Temporal, Spatial, Social Distance and Uncertainty are related.

One gets activated, all get activated (automatically).

Words were irrelevant to the task but still interfered with task performance.

Manipulating one aspect of distance can influence other aspects of distance.

e.g. Imagine meeting new roommate tomorrow or in 6 months? (Stephan et al., 2006)

More familiar if tomorrow.

Question 44

How does Climate change (CC) have some characteristics of psychological distance?

Answer 44

National survey of public perceptions:

Geographical distance – actually seen as affecting both local and distant áreas.

Social distance – perceived that disproportionate effects on developing countries.

Temporally – primarily seen as happening now.

Some uncertainty around CC, primarily over extent of effects.

Lower psychological distance related to greater concerns about CC.

Lower psychological distance and higher concerns related to greater intentions to reduce energy use.

Question 45

What are the implications of psychological distance?

Answer 45

Objects considered at a distance will be considered in more abstract terms and will be formed into fewer groups.

Psychological distance promotes more abstract thinking.

We will be more confident about events in the distant future.

High level construals allow the transcendence of the here and now.

Desirability concerns should be valued more with distance (e.g. in the future).

Desirability concerns are a high level construal whereas feasibility concerns are a low level construal.

Question 46

Conclusions

Answer 46

Attribution is how we assign cause to events in the world.

Cognitive theories of attribution focus on processes by which we make sense of the world.

Can manipulate attributions by influencing:

Situation or dispisitional factors.

Psychological distance.