Chapter 3 Social Cognition: How We Think About the Social World Flashcards
Social Cognition
–How people think about themselves and the social
world
–How people select, interpret, remember, and use
social information to make judgments and decisions
The Controlled Thinker
Rodin’s famous sculpture, The Thinker, mimics controlled thinking, where people
sit down and consider something slowly and deliberately. Even when we do not
know it, however, we are engaging in automatic thinking, which is nonconscious,
unintentional, involuntary, and effortless.
Source: Sean Nel/Shutterstock
Two Kinds of Social Cognition
- Automatic thinking
- Controlled thinking
Automatic thinking
-Quick
–No conscious deliberation of thoughts, perceptions,
assumptions
Controlled thinking
–Effortful and deliberate
–Thinking about self and environment
–Carefully selecting the right course of action
We often size up a new situation very
quickly.
*Often these quick conclusions are correct.
–Example: You can tell the difference
between a college classroom and a frat
party without having to think about it.
Automatic Thinking (2 of 3)
*Imagine a different approach: slow and
deliberate thinking.
*Imagine driving down the road and stopping
repeatedly to analyze every twist and turn.
*Imagine meeting a new person and excusing
yourself for 15 minutes to analyze what you
learned from them.
Automatic Thinking (3 of 3)
Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional,
involuntary, and effortless
*How do we do this?
–Relate new situations to past experiences
–Use schemas
▪Mental structures that organize our knowledge of
the social world
▪Influences the information people notice, think
about, and remember
schema
The term schema encompasses our knowledge
and impression of:
–Other people
–Ourselves
–Social roles
▪ E.g., what a librarian or engineer is like
–Specific events
▪ E.g., what usually happens when people eat a meal in a
restaurant
Schemas and Stereotypes
When applied to members of a social
group such as a fraternity, gender, or race,
schemas are commonly referred to as
stereotypes.
–Can be applied rapidly and automatically
when we encounter other people.
Schemas used to
–Organize what we know
–Interpret new situations
Korsakov’s syndrome
–Neurological disorder
▪Can’t form memories
–Each situation is new
Schemas as Memory Guides (cold vs warm person description)
*Two groups of students observe the same exact
lecture, but prior to the lecture students are given
different descriptions of the guest lecturer:
–Condition 1: People who know him consider him a
rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and
determined.
–Condition 2: People who know him consider him a
very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and
determined.
*DV: How did they rate the person’s arrogance
and sense of humor?
Accessibility
The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the
forefront of people’s minds and are therefore likely to
be used when we are making judgments about the
social world
Priming
The process by which recent experiences increase
the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept
Something can become accessible for
three reasons:
Something can become accessible for
three reasons:
–Chronically accessible due to past
experience.
–Accessible because it is related to a current
goal
–Temporarily accessible because of our recent
experience
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson test
–Administered a test to all students
–Teachers led to believe particular students will
“bloom” academically in the upcoming year
–In actuality, students randomly assigned to condition
–At the end of the school year, students given an IQ
test
Why did “bloomers” do better?
– Example of automatic thinking
* Treated “bloomers” differently in four critical ways:
– Created a warmer emotional climate for those students, giving
them more personal attention, encouragement, and support
– Gave them more challenging material
– Gave them more and better feedback
– Gave them more opportunities to respond in class and gave
them longer to respond
Automatic goal pursuit
Prime goals in subtle way to see if it influences behavior
Example:
– Task 1: Primed goals via a sentence unscrambling task
▪ Condition 1: Words related to God (spirit, God, sacred, prophet)
▪ Condition 2: Neutral words
▪ Condition 3: Nonreligious words related to fairness (civic, contract)
– Task 2: Economics game—given $1 coins ($10 total) to divide up
between themselves and partner (thought task unrelated to first)
– Results: Gave more money in the God ($4.56) and fairness
($4.44) than in the neutral ($2.56) condition
Automatic decision making
–Distracting oneself prior to making a decision
Ensuring distraction improves decision
making:
–Have a conscious goal to make a good choice
–Decision requires integration of complex
information
Physical sensations can prime metaphors
Example:
▪Scent of cleanliness
▪Cleanliness associated with morality; dirtiness with
immorality
Metaphors can influence decisions
–Holding hot coffee or iced coffee
–Encounter a stranger
▪Hot coffee: Primes “warm & friendly” metaphor
–Stranger rated as friendly
▪Iced coffee: Primes “unfriendly people are cold”
–Rate stranger as unfriendly
Mental shortcuts
–Efficient
▪Don’t usually have time to fully search all
options
–Usually lead to good decisions quickly
Schemas are a shortcut people use
–But we don’t have a ready-made schema for
every judgment or decision
–Sometimes there are too many schemas
available
