Social Cognition - Bright Flashcards
Social Psychology is defined as
“the scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and
behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others
Social processes permeate our daily lives on a moment-to-moment basis.
Neocortex ratio
In his Social Brain
hypothesis Dunbar (1993) has argued that increasingly large social networks produced pressures that
selected for more sophisticated thinking and larger brains. He proposed the neocortex ratio (the
quotient of the neocortex volume divided by the volume of the rest of the brain) as an index of social
intelligence. In particular, Dunbar suggests that once group sizes became too large to maintain personal relationships with all group members, language made it possible to do so, including to
facilitate sharing information about a large number of others.
Social cognition involves the processes by which information about people is processed and stored.
Three goals invovled in social cognition: Heider and Simmel 1944
Indeed, humans think about people more than anything else, and we even attribute human
characteristics to inanimate objects, as Heider and Simmel’s (1944) demonstration shows. There are
three goals involved in social cognition, which can sometimes be contradictory. On the one hand we
want to be accurate about the social world so we can predict future behaviour, but on the other hand
we do not want to expend too much cognitive effort. And finally, we are often motivated to see the
social world in a way that makes us feel better about ourselves.
One example of people’s tendency to simplify the social world is the
What is FAR/CB
One example of people’s tendency to simplify the social world is the fundamental attribution
error (sometimes also called correspondence bias), which refers to a tendency for people to make
dispositional attributions for others’ behaviour, even when there are clear external or environmental
causes. For example, in a study by Jones and Harris (1967), American participants read speeches
about Fidel Castro ostensibly written by fellow students. The speeches were either pro-Castro or
anti-Castro, and the writers had ostensibly either freely chosen to write the speech or been explicitly
instructed to do so. Where there was a choice, participants not surprisingly reasoned that those who
had written a pro-Castro speech were in favour of Castro, and those who had written an anti-Castro
speech were against Castro - an internal, dispositional attribution was made. However, a
dispositional attribution was also made even when the speech writers had been instructed to write the
speech. Although there was overwhelming evidence for an exclusively external cause, participants
seemed largely to overlook this information and to still prefer a dispositional explanation, therefore
demonstrating the fundamental attribution error.
What are the reasons for the fundamental attribution error?
What’s easy what’s hard and previous experience
First, the person being observed is the
most perceptually salient aspect of the situation (i.e., moving, talking, etc.) and so an internal
attribution becomes much more accessible. Indeed, procedures designed to focus attention away
from the actor and on to the situation have been shown to increase the tendency to make a situational
rather than dispositional attribution (e.g. Rholes & Pryor, 1982).
Second, we often go by our
previous expectations when making sense of others behaviours.
Third, it takes effort consider all the
different aspects of the person and the situation, and analyse everything carefully, the fundamental
attribution error is especially likely to occur when people are busy thinking about other things, as
Gilbert, Pelham and Krull (1988) showed. In their study all participants attributed a correspondent
attitude to the target; however, those participants who were preoccupied with the speech they had to
write later were especially likely to do so (i.e., were especially unlikely to use the situational
constraint information). Gilbert and Malone (1995) propose a number of steps that people go through
whenever trying to make sense of other people’s behaviour, and as a final step they can correct their
initial dispositional inference, but this is effortful.
WHAT is an extension of the Fundamental Attribution Error
AOB
The Actor-Observer Bias is an extension of the Fundamental Attribution Error. It refers to the
tendency for people to attribute others’ behaviour internally to dispositional factors and their own
behaviour externally to environmental factors.
We also tend to consider other people’s behaviour to
be more stable and predictable than our own. The reasons for it are a different perceptual focus,
because an actor cannot ‘see’ him/herself behaving, so the background situation assumes the role of
figure against the background of self. The actor and the observer quite literally have different
perspectives on the behaviour and thus explain it in different ways. Another reason is that actors
have a wealth of information to draw on about how they have behaved in other circumstances. They
may actually know that they behave differently in different contexts and thus quite accurately
consider their behaviour to be under situational control while observers are not privy to this
autobiographical information.
People often see their own behaviour as typical and assume that under similar circumstances others
would behave in the same way
FCE
People often see their own behaviour as typical and assume that under similar circumstances others
would behave in the same way. Ross, Greene and House (1977) first demonstrated this false
consensus effect. They asked students if they would agree to walk around campus for 30 minutes
wearing a sandwich board carrying the slogan ‘Eat at Joe’s’. Those who agreed estimated that 62 per
cent of their peers would also have agreed, while those who refused estimated that 67 per cent of
their peers would also have refused. In other words, whatever participants’ own views were, they
assumed that other people must be thinking the same.
Pluralistic ignorance!
Pluralistic ignorance is a psychological state characterized by the belief that one’s private attitudes
and judgments are different from those of others, even though one’s public behaviour is identical.
It develops most commonly under circumstances in which there is widespread misrepresentation of
private views. In these cases, people’s tendency to rely on the public behaviour of others to identify
the norm leads them astray, for the social norm that is communicated misrepresents the prevailing
sentiments of the group. If participants understood this state of affairs, the situation would be selfcorrecting. However, they typically make the mistake of assuming that even though others are acting
similarly, they are feeling differently. Their own behaviour may be driven by social pressure, but
they assume that other people’s identical behaviour is an accurate reflection of their true feelings.
Prentice and Miller (1993) showed the pluristic ignorance empirically
Prentice and Miller (1993) showed this empirically because it was known that there were abnormally
high levels of student alcohol consumption at Princeton that had led to a number of deaths and
injuries. When they questioned students, they found many who assumed that others wanted to
partake whilst they did not. In other words, although they were worried about possible consequences
they still joined in the celebrations for fear of rejection. Their studies found that when asked
everybody thought that others were more comfortable with drinking a lot than they themselves were.
This bias was somewhat reduced when judging a friend’s attitude, however, it was still present.
Therefore if there is a social norm that people think other subscribe to, they are less likely to voice
their own opinion if they fear that it conflicts with that norm.
One of the most influential theories of attitude and behaviour change is the Theory of Cognitive
Dissonance (Festinger, 1957).
One dollar and twenty, drawing with a reward/ not
One of the most influential theories of attitude and behaviour change is the Theory of Cognitive
Dissonance (Festinger, 1957).
The key idea is that people experience an unpleasant state of
psychological arousal and discomfort when they perceive an inconsistency between their attitudes or
belief, and their behaviors.
The theory predicts that this dissonance between attitudes held and
behaviours expressed will change a person’s attitude to bring it in line with their behaviour. This is
because you cannot undo the behavior that already happened in the past so the only way to resolve
the unpleasant dissonance is to change your attitude.
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)carried out a seminal experiment in which students who had
volunteered to participate in a psychology experiment were asked to perform an extremely boring
task for an hour, but then half of the participants were asked to tell another prospective participant
that the experiment is a lot of fun. Some participants were paid $1 to engage in this behaviour,
whereas others were paid $20. The other half of participants were the control condition. According to
this induced compliance paradigm, dissonance follows from the fact that you have agreed to say
things about what you have experienced when you know that the opposite is true. You have been
induced to behave in a counter-attitudinal way. Overall there is a dilemma: ‘I have done a really
boring task, but then I told another unsuspecting person that it is actually interesting. I did this for a
measly $1!’ Herein lies the dissonance. One way of reducing the continuing arousal is to convince
yourself that the experiment was really quite fun after all.
4
Indeed, when they were later asked how much they enjoyed the experiment, participants who had
been asked to lie to another person about how much fun it was actually said they enjoyed it quite a
bit (more so than the control condition). Importantly, however, this effect was absent for participants
who had been paid $20 to engage in the counter-attitudinal behaviour. Why? Because they had a
good reason to lie (being paid a nice sum) whereas this was not the case for the condition that only
received $1. Overall the conclusion is that when people have no good reason for doing something
unpleasant or absurd they will try to come up with reasons for their behaviour.
The findings may be seen to be somewhat surprising because it means that paying money to change
people’s attitudes can be counterproductive.
Indeed, so-called ** overjustification effects **have been
observed such that people lose interest in activities that they previously were intrinsically motivated
to do. For example, Lepper, Greene and Nisbett (1973) provided an attractive drawing activity to
nursery children. In the expected reward condition they were promised (and subsequently given) a
reward to engage in the activity. In the unexpected reward condition they were given a reward out of
the blue. In contrast, in the no reward condition they did not receive anything. Two weeks later the
activity was again offered to the children and they were watched how much they engaged in it.
Children who expected a reward showed less interest in the activity, presumably because they
attributed their enjoyment to the reward rather than their intrinsic motivation.
