Social cognition (Selman) Flashcards
What is social cognition?
Social cognition is the way in which people process, remember and use information in social contexts to explain and predict their own behaviour and that of others (interpret behaviour also!).
What did Selman focus on?
- Focused on social understanding (social perspective-taking).
- Proposed that the ability to take the perspective of others develops through 5 levels of perspective taking.
What are the 5 levels of perspective-taking?
- Undifferentiated perspective-taking (egocentric).
- Social-informational perspective-taking.
- Self-reflective perspective- taking.
- Mutual perspective-taking.
- Societal perspective-taking.
- Undifferentiated perspective-taking (more detail).
- 3-6 years.
- Children recognise that the self and others can have different thoughts and feelings but they frequently confuse the two.
- Social-informational perspective-taking (more detail).
- 6-8 years.
- Children understand that different perspectives may result because people have access to different information.
- Self-reflective perspective-taking (more detail).
- 8-10 years.
- Children can step in another persons shoes and view their own thoughts, feelings and behaviour from other persons perspectives.
- They also recognise that others can do the same.
- Mutual perspective-taking (more detail).
- 10-12 years.
- Children can step outside a two-person situation and imagine how the self, and other are viewed from the point of view of a third, impartial party.
- Societal perspective-taking (more detail).
- 12+ years.
- Individuals understand that a third party perspective taking can be influenced by one or more of the systems of larger societal values.
What do these levels show?
- The levels show an age-related shift from an egocentric view to a broader cultural/ moral understanding which recognises other people’s point of view.
What idea did Selman introduce?
- Selman introduced the idea of interpersonal dilemmas- storing requires multiple perspectives and moral understanding.
Is Selman’s concept naturist or nurturist?
- Naturist.
What does Selman’s model suggest?
- As children mature they take more info into account.
- They realise that different people can react differently to the same situation.
- Develop the ability to analyse the perspectives of several people involved in a situation from the viewpoint of an objective bystander.
- They can even imagine how different cultural/ social values would influence the perceptions of the bystander.
What did Selman say is the outcome of perspective taking?
- An outcome of perspective taking is the ability to deceive.
- Deception entails a child being able to plant a false belief in someone else’s mind.
- They can usually do this by the age of 3.
Research into deception (Cole- 1986)
- Cole found that children of this age were able to hide their disappointment when they received the worst present (rather than the best one) if they were being watched by others, but they did show disappointment when filmed secretly on their own.
What are the main claims of Selman’s model?
- Individuals progress gradually to higher stages over time, with little evidence of regression to lower stages.
Research to support Selman’s model (Selman)
Selman himself provided convincing evidence that perspective-taking ability improves with age in line with his theory:
- Selman gave perspective-taking tasks to 60 children (30 boys, 30 girls), aged 4-6.
- Found significant positive correlations between the age and ability to take different perspectives in scenarios like that of Holly and the kitten.
- Longitudinal follow-up studies have shown that perspective taking develops with age in each individual child.
Does the ability to take different perspectives mean that the child has higher levels of social competence?
- Underwood & Moore (1982) found that the ability to perspective take positively correlates with pro-social behaviour, suggesting that perspective taking enhances social relationships.
Perspective taking skills are fundamentally important in all social behaviour (FitzGerald & White).
FitzGerald and White found that maturity of perspective taking skills was:
- Negatively related to aggression.
- Positively related to prosocial behaviour.
Selman- found that children who were poor in their perspective taking skills had more difficulty in forming and maintaining social relationships and were less popular.
Cognitive ability and Atypical development
- The development of the cognitive ability to take a range of perspectives appears to be important in atypical development.
- Research has shown that children with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum have problems with perspective-taking.
Atypical development (Marton et al)
In one study Marton et al compared fifty 8-12 year old children with a diagnosis of ADHD with a control group on performance on perspective taking tasks like those used by Selman. Those with ADHD did worse on:
- Understanding the scenarios.
- Identifying the feelings of each person involved.
- Evaluating the consequences of different actions.
