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http://psychologybasics.blogspot.co.uk

Social Psychology Basics Part 1

Social psychology is the science of social cognition which can be defined as the way in which

we perceive,interpret, and judge the behaviour of others in everyday interactions and the

required representations which are stored in our memory to facilitate these procedures.This

is achieved by first looking at the structure and mechanisms we employ in order to acquire

information about other people and understanding the ways in which we use this

information.The following will provide the basic concepts of that structure. 'Schema Theory'

is a cognitive structure which represents a person's general knowledge about a given

stimulus domain.

We approach situations with prior beliefs and expectations which determines what aspects

of that event we attend to,what we categorise for further use and what we declare as

unimportant.The Schema is constituted of schemata such as role/self/person/scriptschemata.Script relating to events and can be thought of by as a mental program of how we

and others are likely to behave in particular situations.Self schemata relates to the

representations we have of ourselves,which may differ according to situation.Person

schemata relates to certain people such as each of your parents,friends etc,and role

schemata relates to the representations we hold of the likes of firemen,police

officers,nurses,doctors.

We also are predisposed to 'assign identical characteristics to any person in a

group,regardless of the actual variation among members of that group' and this is known as

stereotype processing. 'Heuristics' are described as "problem solving strategies which

involve taking the most probable or likely option... providing a way of reducing a complex

task to manageable sets of tasks."

Schematas contain our knowledge and heuristics help us apply hat knowledge.There are two

types of heuristics,representativeness and availability.The former we use to compare a given

stimulus to a possibly existing schemata helping us identify persons as belonging to a group

or category by their features matching a 'prototype' mentally assigned to represent that

group.The latter is what comes to mind when we think of a certain stimulus eg imagine now

a police officer,what comes to mind?(I'll not put what comes to my mind for want of

decency!!)

Heuristics allow us to evaluate and determine the likelihood of a possible occurrence within

a given situation.It is clear then that 'social categorisation' plays a crucial part in our public

lives!We categorise people with a prototype image for each category which we relate other

people to.This is because we are 'cognitive misers' taking in only a small percentage of

information from the stimulus allowing us to focus more thoroughly on tasks at

hand.Categorisation is then an effective tool though the generalisations do lead to

distortions and error.

These errors manifest as biases and errors and two of these errors are known as

'confirmatory bias' and the 'false consensus bias'.The former has us seek information which

is consistent with existing categories.If we believe the person belongs to one of our negative

categories then we may look for confirmation of these negative attributes possibly ignoringother information and drawing wrong conclusions.The latter is that we tend to believe that

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other people think and act as we do.(On a side note,I believe that when we meet a person

who shares one or more of our strongly held beliefs we take it that they must share the

connecting belief system as well.Furthermore, if that person is able to explicate those beliefs

more thoroughly,we may hold them in even higher regard.)

Now we will look,via 'Social Identity Theory' at ways in which others and their groups affect

our perceptions and how membership of a group forms a significant part of the 'self

concept' affecting how we behave.(Please note that although we are social animals we are

also individuals with a need for individuality,and that there is a 'person identity theory'

though this posting is strictly an intro to social psychology).As earlier stated,we categorise

people for effectiveness in order to cut down on the amount of info that requires

processing.

Social categories include universal,national,regional,friends/family to name a few.We belong

to the 'in-group' or the 'we group' and the others,the 'out-group'.We feel a strong sense of

identity with our group.This also leads to biases such as the 'in-group favouritism bias' which

has us look more favourably to the members of our group,finding more in common andoverlooking disparities.'Negative out-group bias' has us look less favourably on the out-

groups as we perceive greater differences.

'Out-group homogeneity effect' is where we assume "that members of an out-group are no

more than undifferentiated items in a unified social category".'Self Esteem' is the term used

to describe the degree to which we value ourselves largely through comparing ourselves

with other people and groups.We require a positive social identity to enhance this

esteem.The 'peer group' are those that we perceive as being like ourselves where as the

'reference group' are those that we emulate.Comparisons are made that are apt to lead to a

positive contribution where as we tend to avoid comparisons that will lead to the contrary.

Another approach to the schemata/categorisation/identity paradigm(which have proved

valuable and confirming scientifically carried out results) is 'Social Representations' which

posits that as cognitive misers rather than striving for a full and accurate explanation of the

world,we settle for a representation instead. Moscovici[1981] defines social representations

as "shared beliefs held by groups of people to explain their social experience."One way to

explain this is to imagine partially witnessing a crime.Others also see part and by the time

emergency services have arrived a narrative,or representation,is constructed to explain

what occurred.Different groups of differing proportion and composition may provide

radically different explanations for an event.This theory has been used to explain what

Kruglanski[1980] calls 'lay epistemology'.This is what is used to explain knowledge of the

world(especially abstract conceptual knowledge)by means such as 'personification' so that

the theories of relativity become 'the Einstein theory',or by 'figuration' in which images and

metaphors represent the concept in question.