What is Social Cognition?

Social Cognition: How people think about themselves and the social world

Key Points

• All of the information in our environment is too much to process. – Operating on automatic pilot increases efficiency

• Example: driving a car

• Past experience provides a filter to help us interpret and evaluate new people and events.– Advantage = efficiency– Disadvantage = errors (Amadou Diallo, mistook for

serial rapist, reached for wallet, 41 shots)

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Social Cognition

• Do we generally use all of the available information about a person when forming impressions of him/her?

• Why not?– Impractical or impossible; too much information– Time constraints– EX: Political candidates: People often make

judgments based on party affiliation without gathering additional information about the candidate.

What information do we use?

• Categories, schemas

– We are “cognitive misers” who are willing to take shortcuts to understand the social world.

– Use information we already have • Categories: Preppie, political activist, Goth

Schemas

• Mental structures that help organize knowledge about the social world and guide the selection, interpretation, and recall of information.– Makes world more predictable (know what to

expect)– Schemas applied to group = stereotype– Schemas also can be applied to specific

individuals and to ourselves.

What do schemas do?“The human mind must think with the aid of categories…

orderly living depends upon it.” --Allport, 1954

• Help us organize information

• Help us remember certain things

• Help us to fill in details when our information is incomplete

• Can influence behavior

• Help us to interpret ambiguous behavior

• Influence what information we attend to

Examples

• Read story

Silver Creek Example

• Read story

Did the event happen in the story? (Was the event described in the story?) True or False?

Schemas help us fill in details

• Scripts

• This script helps us know what to expect, and we may fill in things that didn’t actually happen.

• Memory is RECONSTRUCTIVE.

*What implications might schemas have for eyewitness accounts of a crime?

Schemas influence attention

• “Graduate Student’s Office” Study• IV: Grad student office included schema

consistent (stapler, filing cabinets, book shelves) and schema inconsistent (exercise equipment) objects.

• DV: Leave room and recall what was in the room.

• Recalled more schema consistent objects than schema inconsistent ones, and recalled more schema consistent objects that were NOT actually in the office.

Schemas help us to interpret ambiguous information

• Imagine you are walking down a street and someone is walking behind you.

• Is that person following you?• Or, is does the person just happen to be

walking in the same direction?• Shady characteractivates criminal

schema• Asks directionsactivates lost person

schema

Ambiguous information

• The Donald Story

Schemas help us to interpret ambiguous information

• Donald example– IV: Priming pos (e.g., brave, confident,

independent) or neg (e.g., reckless, aloof, conceited) - memorized words

– DV: Positivity of impression• Priming = the process by which recent

experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.

• Postive primes: 70% had positive impression.

• Negative primes: 10% had positive impression (Fig. 3.3)

Schemas influence behaviorBargh and colleagues

• IV: Primed polite, rude, or neutral words (scrambled sentence task)

• DV: How long participant waited to interrupt the experimenter

• Results: Interrupted sooner if primed with rude words

Elderly Stereotype Study

• Bargh et al. study:

• IV: Primed elderly stereotype (e.g., retired, Florida, old, wise, bingo, courteous) or neutral words (e.g., thirsty, clean, private) – scrambled sentences

• DV: Assessed walking speed (DV)

How do we decide which schema to use?• Depends on schema accessibility

– Situational cues: If only woman in a group of men, female stereotype may be salient.

– Recency of schema activation (ads that promote feminine stereotype)

• Priming– All of the Bargh studies– The Donald Study– Do not need conscious awareness (Bargh & Pietromonaco,

1982, in text, p. 66) • IV: Hostile or neutral words presented subliminally• DV: Ratings of Donald – ambiguous story where Donald’s

behavior could be interpreted as hostile or not

• Personal chronic constructs - accessibility

Sometimes schemas can get us into trouble

• Confirmation biases: Tendencies to interpret, seek, and create information that verifies our preexisting beliefs or schemas.

• Examples of confirmation biases– Belief perseverance: The tendency to

maintain beliefs, even after they have been discredited.

Perseverance Effect

• Ross et al. (1975)• IV: Success, failure, or average feedback about

ability to detect “real” or “fake” suicide notes• Intervention: E explained feedback was

randomly assigned (discredited belief)• DV: Estimated how well would actually do at task• Results: Beliefs persevered. Estimates closely

matched false feedback Ps had received.• Why? May think of reasons to support…takes

on life of its own.

• Our expectations also can influence how we go about obtaining new information about another person.

• Imagine that you are going to meet a friend of a friend. Your friend tells you that his friend, Dana, is very outgoing and friendly, the life of the party. When you meet Dana and are getting acquainted, will that information influence what you say and do? Some work suggests that it will.

Confirming Prior Expectations

• Snyder & Swann, 1978• IV: Expectations about person to be

interviewed: introverted vs. extraverted• DV: Selection of interview questions.

Slanted toward extraverted (How do you liven

things up at a party?), introverted (Have you ever felt left

out of some social group?), or neutral.• Results: Ps asked loaded questions that

confirmed their prior expectations

On being sane in insane places

• David Rosenhan

• +7 colleagues gained admission to mental hospitals

• “heard voices,” false name, all else true

• Example of confirmation bias

• Stayed in hospital average of 19 days

• Most needed outside help to get out

Conclusions

• Schemas help us make sense of the world

• They increase our efficiency and speed

• They often operate automatically, without conscious awareness

• But, they can sometimes lead to errors in judgment!