Session 3: Social cognition

1. What is Social Cognition?

Definition: cognitive processes and structures that influence and are influenced by social behaviour

 How are we able to reason/to think?

o Controlled thinking: very conscious, takes a long of time
o Automatic thinking: opposite, react fast, experiencing cyclists changing the gear

Scopes of Social Cognition:

1. How cognition is affected by wider and more immediate social contexts
2. How cognition affects our social behaviour

1. Naïve scientist: rational mindset, cause-effect analyses to understand their word (60s)
2. Cognitive miser: limited capacity to process information, takes mental short-cuts
3. Motivated tactician: uses many cognitive strategies, selection depending on personal
needs/motivation

2. Impression formation
How do we form judgements and impressions of people?

 impression formation:
o overall judgement of who you like and who you don’t like
o recruiter
o Social Media: What do people think about me when posing this picture?

Are some types for information that we encounter in our daily lives more important than other?

 Depending on individual priorities

How do we form impression? (2 models)

1. Configural model
2. Algebraic model

2A. Configural model

Changing one trade – how it can change the overall judgement (cold – warm)

 Central trait: disproportionate influence

 Peripheral trait: insignificant influence
How do people decide that a trait is central?
The order in which information about a person is presented can have profound effects on the
subsequent impression

 Primacy effect: traits presented first have more impact

 Recency effect: last bit of information has more impact that the earlier information

 Positivity vs. negativity:

o We assume the best of others
o BUT we are biased towards negativity (if we discover anything that we assume
inappropriate, this will attract our attention – “potential danger”

What people’s impression are strongly influenced by?

 Physical appearance:
o First impression on physical attractiveness (e.g. what is beautiful is good)
 Stereotypes:
o Widely shared assumptions about the personalities, attitudes, and behaviours of
people based on group membership (ethnicity, nationality, sex, race and class)
 Social judgeability:
o Perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target

2B. Algebraic model

Approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attributes that
have valence into an overall positive or negative impression.

1. Summation
A method of forming positive or negative impressions by summing the valence of all the
constituent person attributes.
e.g. Chloe
-sincere (+3)
-intelligent (+2)
-boring (-1)
+3+3-1=5
2. Averaging
A method of forming positive or negative impression by averaging the valence of the
constituent attributes.
e.g. (+2+3-1)/3=+1.33
3. Weighted Averaging
Method of forming positive or negative impressions by first weighting and then averaging the
valence of all the constituent person attributes (giving certain weights to traits depending on
the situation)
e.g. for example, if the target person was being assessed as a potential friend, we might
assign relative weight to intelligent, sincere and boring of 2, 3 and 3 – ((2x2)+(+3x3)+(-
1x3))/3=+3.33
e.g. if the person being assessed was a potential politician, we might assign weight of 3, 2 and
0 -> +4.00
=> this reflects the subjective importance of pieces of information in a particular impression-
formation context
Summary of impression formation

 Asch’s model showed that first information is weighted more heavily

 Anderson’s weighted averaging model is the best match for impression formation
 The models don’t necessarily tell us about the actual cognitive process they use to arrive at
those impressions

3. Social schemas and categories

Schemas are centrally involved in the impression formation process
Definition
a schema is a

 Cognitive structures that represent our knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus
 A set of interrelated cognition (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, attitudes) that allow us to quickly make
sense of a person, situation, event or place on the basis of limited information
e.g. visiting Paris; schema about Paris: coffe, bookshops, restaurants
reality: Paris is much more diverse; schema helps to interpret events and guide choices about
how to behave; restaurant visit (so takes your order, eat-drink-talk, bill etc.) => script

Script (or event schemas): expectations of how to behave in a variety of situations

3A. Types of schemas

1. Person schemas: individualised knowledge structures about specific types and groups of
people, as well as individuals
2. Roles schemas: roles or parts that people are expected to play in a particular setting (doctor
at work and at home)
3. Self-schemas: schemas about ourselves; people’s concept of who they are (self-concept)

3B. Categories and prototypes

To apply schematic knowledge, you first need to categorise a person, event or situation as fitting a
particular schema.

Categories: are collections of instances that have a family resemblance (=similar)

-Categories are hierarchical: categories
that include fewer attributes
(prototypes) are nested under
categories that include more members
and more attributes

Prototypes: cognitive representation of

the typical/ideal defining features of a
category:

 We tend to use intermediate

categories
 Once a person, event or situation is
categorised, a schema is invoked
 Schemas and prototypes are similar
and are often used interchangeably
3C. Categorisation and stereotyping
Stereotypes are widely share generalisation about members of a social group

 Simplified images
 Often derogatory when applied to outgroups
 Create clearly visible difference between groups

Experiment: Linssen & Hagendoorn (1994): northern vs. Southern Europeans (more emotional and
less efficient)

Research has shown that stereotypes

 Are slow to change

 Change in response to wider social, political or economic changes
 Are acquired at an early age
 Become more pronounced and hostile when social tensions and conflict exist between groups

Accentuation principle (Tajfel): a tendency to over-emphasize the differences between things

belonging to different categories or simplify similarities between things within the same categories
(effect occurs when something (be it a person, place or thing) is placed into a category, and aspects of
it which match the stereotypes of that category are emphasized and perceived to be greater than they
are, i.e. the similarities of an individual to the group are accentuated)

Stereotypes are:

 Consensual beliefs held by members of one group about members of another group
 BUT they are also general theories of the attributes of other groups

Sociohistorical context of relation between groups is important

Stereotypes can clarify social roles, power differentials and intergroup conflicts and they can justify
the status quo or contribute to a positive sense of ingroup identity
4. Schema use and development
4A. Schema use

Individual differences can influence the degree and type of schema use:

 Attributional complexity – people vary in the complexity and number of their explanations
of other people
 Uncertainty orientation: - people vary in their interest in gaining information vs remaining
uniformed but certain
 Need for cognition – people differ in how much they like to think deeply about things
 Cognitive complexity – people differ in the complexity of their cognitive processes and
representations

4B. Schema acquisition and development

As more instances/situations are encountered:

 Schemas become more abstract

 Schemas become richer and more complex
 Schemas become more tightly organised
 Schemas become more compact (big mental construct)

4C. Change in schemas

Schemas change when they keep being inaccurate in certain situations.

Changes happen through different forms:

 Bookkeeping – a low process of gradual change in response to new evidence

 Conversion – disconfirming information gradually accrues until something like a critical mass
has been attained
  Subtyping – schemas change their configuration, in response to disconfirming instances, by
the formation of subcategories

5. Social inference
People make a lot of errors and have biases when they make their social judgements

Heuristics: We use a range of mental shortcuts that are less time-consuming strategies to get a quick
solution to a problem (making decisions quickly)

There are three types of heuristics:

1. Representativeness
Likelihood that somebody belongs to a group by comparing the features of that person to the
prototype for that group (people assume an individual case is more representative than it actually is)
e.g. Sarah listens to Enya, believes in aromatherapy and possesses many different essential oils at
home. What is the likelihood that she is a masseuse or a school teacher?

2. Availability
Frequency or likelihood of an event based on how quickly associations come to mind
e.g. you overestimate the populations of big cities
e.g. we think that there is a drastic increase in violence (more present on media) – actually less
people die

3. Anchoring and Adjustment

Mental reference point from which we can make inferences (and then adjust accordingly)
e.g. You see a perfect pair of jeans at your favourite store that cost 200 pounds and you think it’s too
expensive. Later you go online and see that the same pair costs 150 pounds. You buy the jeans and
think you made a great deal.

Summary
 Social cognition refers to cognitive processes and structures that affect and are affected by
social context
 We use mental short-cuts in order to react fast
 First impressions are important when we encounter new people BUT we also weigh different
attributes depending on social situations / social context
 Schemas are cognitive structures that represent knowledge about people, events, roles,
ourselves
 Because we react quickly, we tend to be biased in our judgement (e.g. stereotypes)