SESSION 3

SOCIAL COGNITION

I. What is Social Cognition?

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

2 ways of thinking:

- Controlled (think slowly to reach a decision)

- Automatic thinking (Fast reaction)

Scope:

- How social cognition affected by wider and more immediate social contexts
- How cognition affects our social behaviour

Three types of concepts of “ideal” human (evolved with time):

1. Naïve scientist: rational mindset, cause-effect analysis of world

2. Cognitive miser: limited capacity to process information, takes mental short-cuts
3. Motivate tactician: uses many strategies, selection depending on personal needs/motivation

 Used to think that we were rational machines, then that ever human is lazy with how they
process, to complete view of how humans behave (selective depending on situation using short-
cuts or controlled thinking)

II. Impression formation

A) Configural model (Asch, 1946)

Central trait: disproportionate influence

Peripheral Trait: insignificant influence

 How decide if trait is central?

Order in which information about a person is presented can have profound effects on subsequent
impression

- Primacy effect: traits presented 1st have more impact

- Recency effect: last bit of info has more impact than earlier information

Positivity VS negativity: assume the best for others BUT we are biased towards negativity

Physical appearance: first impression on physical attractiveness (what is beautiful is good)

Other biases: stereotypes, social judgeability…

 First information is weighted more heavily

B) Algebraic model (Anderson, 1960s)

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Impression are formed on the basis of mechanical combination of information that we know about a person

3 principal models:

- Summation
- Averaging
- Weighted Averaging: give coefficient given depending the social context

 Weighted Averaging model is the best match for impression formation

III. Social schemas and categories

A) Types of schemas

Schemas are centrally involved in impression formation process

Schema: cognitive structures that represent our knowledge about concept or type of stimulus. Quickly
makes sense of a person, situation, event or place on basis of limited information.

o Scripts (event schema): expectations of how to behave in variety of situations

o Person schemas: individualized knowledge structures about specific types and groups of people,
as well as individuals
Doctors in the hospital VS in family holidays
o Role schemas: roles or parts that people are expected to play in particular setting
o Self-schemas: schemas about ourselves

B) Categories and prototypes

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

Categories are hierarchical: those with fewer attributes are nested under categories that include more
members and more attitudes

Prototype: cognitive representation of the typical/ideal defining features of a category

 Once person/event/situation categorized, SCHEMA invoked

 Schemas and prototypes are similar and often used interchangeably

Example: when situation where have to present fast, use of the intermediate prototype (British instead of
English)

C) Categorisation and stereotyping

Stereotypes: widely shared generalisations about members of a social group

 Simplified images, often derogatory when applied to outgroups, create clearly visible difference between
groups

 Linssen & Hagendoorn (1994): Northern VS Southern Europeans

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Research has shown that stereotypes:

o Are slow to change

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

Accentuation principle (Tajfel 1957-1959): tendency to over-emphasize the differences between things
belonging to different categories OR amplify similarities between things within the same category

Stereotypes are:

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

Sociohistorical context of relations 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

IV. Schema use and development

A) 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 uninformed but certain
- Need for cognition
People differ in how much hey like to think deeply about things
- Cognitive complexity
People differ in the complexity of their cognitive processes and representations

B) 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)

C) Change in schemas

Change when they keep being inaccurate in certain situations

Different forms:
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- Bookkeeping: slow 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
formation of subcategories

V. Social Interference

People make a lot of errors and have biases when they make their social judgement

Heuristics: mental shortcuts that are less time-consuming strategies to get a quick solution to a problem

3 types of heuristics:

- Representativeness: Likelihood that somebody belongs to a group by comparing the feature of

that person to the prototype for that group
- Availability: Frequency or likelihood of an event based on how quickly associations come to
mind
- Anchoring and Adjustment: mental reference point from which we can make interferences
(and then adjust accordingly)