Lecture 2 -> Social Cognition Flashcards
(34 cards)
Overview
Social cognition
- describes the way people encode, process, remember, and the use of information in social context to make sen of other’s behaviour
- the “why” of social cognition
- the “how” of social cognition
- the “what” of social cognition
The “why” of social cognition
Navigating the social world is mostly making choices
- many houses are made without conscious awareness
- there is a vast quantity of knowledge in every single aspect of life (e.g. watching a show with a friend) and if we always considered everything, we would be so immersed in it that we would neglect basic necessities of life
- so, what is important isn’t necessarily the choice (e.g. choice of choosing a show) but the choice of when to stop thinking and reach a conclusion that feels certain enough
Three motives influence choices as stated in the theory of lay epistemology developed by Area Kruglanski (1989, 2004)
Need for accurate knowledge and to be accurate
We don’t like surprises
Thinking can be guides by a kite to achieve accurate, truthful understanding of a given person, idea or event
We like to believe that the driving motivation behind this is the want to be rational and accurate
But not always the case, and overshadowed by closure
Need for closure quickly
Don’t like having open ended information, just trying to make sense of the world, lack of this can cause anxiety, will give explanations to things we see, even if these are just assumptions
Thinking takes time and energy, and these resources are short in supply
Our motivation to reach closure is sometimes stronger than our motivation to be accurate
We reach closure when we stop the thinking process and grab the first handy judgment or decision, quickly and without extensive effort
When stakes are low, people;e will often choose what others choose (e.g. what to eat at a restaurant)
Need to confirm what we already prefer to believe
Confirmation bias -> want to make sure we are still on the right track, but can lead to stereotypes, don’t want to be wrong because we feel like we will have wastes our finite time on earth
Motive to reach the conclusion that fits well the the specific beliefs and attitudes
Impacts on these influences
The motive that influences how we think partly depends on our situation at the time
- need for accuracy is elevated when there are negative consequences for making a poor decision, e.g. during elections
- want to reach closure quickly in situations when thinking takes a lot of effort or is unpleasant -> under pressure to make a decision, have a lot of things on your mind, exhausted after a long day
- motives to validate what they thunk they already know or prefer the. prior beliefs and values are brought to mind, when these beliefs are central to their sense of meaning in lifer or personal worth, especially when they feel these beliefs are being changed
Confirming what we believe
People are often motivated to believe information that con firms their existing views
23% of American adults shared a political news article that was fake on social media during recent political elections, without critical examining the accuracy of them if the stories aligned with their views
- even if they knew it was fake at the time, they still shared it 14% of the time
- people just want to support the way we think, rather than wasting out time believing in things that are false, even if they are false
The “how” of social cognition
The brain governs social cognition by 2 systems
- Cogntive system -
A conscious, rational and controlled system of thinking
- slow
- effortful
- infrequent
- uses rule based-logic
- conscious
- Experimental system -
An unconscious, intuitive and automatic system of thinking
- fast
- automatic
- frequent
- uses implicit association
- subconscious
Dual process theories: theories that are used to explain a wide range of phenomena (includes attitudes, memories and thought suppression) because they posit two ways of processing information
Dual processes of social cognition
Frontal love mainly controls cognitive system -> our developed frontal lobe is what sets us apart from other animals in our cogntive abilities
Midbrain very primal and instinctual controls the experiential system -> this area of the brain is something we share more heavily with the animals
There are two systems: intuition and logic
- Sytem 1: Intuition -
- emotional
- associative
- automatic
- effortless
- implicit
- intuitive
- quick
- System 2: Logic -
- analytical
- rule-directed
- controlled
- effortful
-explicit
- reasoned
- slow
- Automatic - the x-sytem -
- unintentional
- rapid
- capable of parallel processing
- intuitive
- real time expeirnces
- narrowly defines problems
- implicit memory
- context dependent
- efficient
- non conscious
- Controlled - the c-system -
- intentional
- slow
- serial processing
- logical
- reactions to those expeirnces
- abstract or general problems
- concrete working memory
- can dissociate from context
- effortful
- consciously controlled
The two systems have different way of organising information
Cognitive system uses a system of rules to fit ideas into logical patterns
It can think critically, plan behaviour and make deliberate decisions
Experiential system, is guided by automatic of implicit associations among stimuli, concepts and behaviours that have been learned from experiences, driven on gut reactions and exposure to external stimuli
Because the experiential system stores a large collection of well-learned associations, it can be used to make rapid decisions, “good enough” judgements and decisions at times when the cognitive system’s logical style would be too low and effortful
Uses heuristics
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts, or rule of thumb, that are used for making judgements and decisions
Influence judgement in certain situations or people
Experiential minds are more readily swayed by thinking about what might be lost than by thinking about what might be gained
- myopia
- self-preservation is prioritised
However, these can influence judgment when the real-world stakes are high
- Types of heuristics -
Availability heuristics: - the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples f that event
- related to the concept of accessibility
- e.g. plane crashes (plane and helicopter crash in America), shark attack -> automatically go towards these events happening because we always hear about them, but they are actually very uncommon and all the cases we hear are the only cases out there
Representativeness heuristic: - the tendency to overestimate the lieklihood that a target is part of a larger category if it has features that represent category
- related to stereotypes -> e.g. the stereotype that Black Americans are violent, which are very untrue
- uses prototypes
- base rate fallacy - a tendency to ignore statistics and relevant information in favour of representativeness information
Prototypicality
Extent features of an object, place, or person match the expectations of the “typical”
Promoting use of heuristics/automaticity
Time constraints
Cogntive overload
Low importance -> if it isn’t important, you aren’t going to want to user lots of mental effort on it, so rely on heuristics to fill in the gaps
Little information regarding issue
Attitudes
the ABCs
- cognitive (knowledge and beliefs)
- affective (feelings and emotions)
- behavioural (overt behaviour)
Impacts on attitudes
Attitudes
- emotional reactions to people, objects, and ideas
- opinions towards objects, people, places, etc
- often have emotional valence
~ good/positive
~ bad/negative
Types of attitudes
Explicit attitudes
- attitudes people are consciously aware of thorough cognitive systems -: have a framework in your mind about why you feel a way like you do
- typically assessed via self-report measures (e.g. questionnaires)
Implicit attitudes
- automatic associations that make up the experimental system
- probably aren’t even aware that these attitudes are being formed
- most learned from culture and media (e.g. stereotypes) but can be learned through evolution and genetics
- assessed via implicit and behavioural measured
~ Implicit Associations Test (IAT)
~ Naturalistic observation
Measuring attitudes
Self-report on attitude scales
Observation of behaviour
Physiological measures (e.g. EEG, heart rate, skin conductance)
Behavioural measures assessing accuracy and reaction times
- the implicit association test
Implicit measure yield different results from self-reports
- social desirability influences self-reports
- are implicit attitudes are accurate?
Probably not
- each measure taps different aspects of evaluation
- based on different kinds of information/context
- affect different kinds of behaviour (automatic vs controlled)
Implicit measures
Implicit association test (IAT)
- Overview -
Measures the degree to who ch people mentally associate to concepts (e.g. “flowers” and “pleasant” comapred to “insect” and “unpleasant”)
It’s the speed that tells us something about our implicit attitudes towards flowers relative to insect, which may be different from what we would explicitly report on a questionnaire
- common assessment of racial bias
- captures associations in memory
- assumptions these are automatic
- More in depth -
Using reaction times -> sometimes we take longer to process thins especially when something isn’t expected to be seen
Measures strength of automatic associations between concepts
- flower vs insect (attitude object)
- pleasant vs unpleasant (evaluation)
Interested as implicit preferences or attitudes
When two concepts are associated it is easy to respond quickly and correctly when categorising
- flower - pleasant
- inset - unpleasant
This leafs to quicker/faster responses to these pairings
When two concepts are not associated it is difficult to respond quickly and correctly when categorising
- flower - unpleasant
- insect - pleasant
This leads to slower responses to these pairings
- therefore, the ease of responding to pairing of two concept measures the association between them
Implicit vs explicit attitudes
Cogntive and experiential systems can both produce attitudes, and she systems operate independently of one another which means the same person can have different attitudes towards the same thing
- e.g. in Noske (2005) volunteers were asked if they preferred cats or dogs
- they, consciously said (their explicit attitudes) that they prefer dogs
- but their reaction time measure (their implicit attitudes) showed they associated cats with good more than dogs with goof
- people’s explicit attitudes towards cats and dogs correlated positively with their implicit attitudes, but only moderately so
This can c=also be seen in a study on judging political parties
The correlation of about 0.75 suggests that people’;s reported party preferences in a questionnaire correlate quite strongly with their automatic evaluations of Republicans and Democrats, however they aligned less well on other topics such as family vs career (only 0.30)
- people’s implicit and explicit attitudes are more likely to align when they feel strongly about the issue in question and feel comfortable expressing their attitudes
- however, when people are explicitly undecided about an issue their implicit attitudes predict their explicit preferences and behaviour better than their explicit attitudes
Mapping these systems
For cognitive system to kick in over automatic system, three things must be present
- we are aware that controlled processes are necessary to counteract automatic processes
- we are motivated to exert control over our thought and behaviours
- we have the ability to consider out thoughts and actions at a more conscious level, because controlled processes require more mental effort -> sometimes we don’t have enough cogntive resources to engage controlled ways of thinking, so in these cases, the need for colours kicks in, usually leading us to think and act in ways that are familiar and automatic
Unconscious system is often seen to be the primitive one, ad the cogntive to be the driving force behind smart, informed decisions, but this isn’t always the case
Unconscious thought is often the smart one
1. the motives that guide thinking often operate unconsciously
2. memory consolidation occurs during sleep
3. unconscious mind wandering can help generate creative ideas
4. intuition can facilitate sound decisions
5. unconscious emotional associations can promote beneficial decisions
Automatic processes:
- performing behaviour without much conscious attention
- experiential processing
- implicit attitudes
Controlled processes:
- overrides experiential system/automatic processes when appropriate
- cognrive processing
- explicit attitudes
Does control always kick in?
No
- we often act impulsively or engage in “bad: behaviours
- despite best intentions, automatic behaviours slip through
Conditions necessary for experiential system override
- awareness
- motivation
- ability
Is automaticity bad?
Not always
- the motives that guide thinking often operate unconsciously
- unconscious mind wandering can help generate creative ideas
- intuition can facilitate sound decisions without much effort
- unconscious associations can promote beneficial decisions
What are cognrive misers
- heuristics are a good thing, usually
When controlled process fail
During a gambling game with high and low-risk deck of cards, most learn to avoid these risky choices
Patients with damage to the PFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) do not learn to avoid the risk
- rely on automatic processing
- high risk = high reward
- do not elaborate on benefits off choosing low-risk decls
- don’t show any fear that their ppts’ skin conductance as a measure of arousal just before they decided which deck to choose from -> normal ppts showed elevated aroual prior to each pick as they were anticipating their choice could be a bad one, and they were therefore more likely tolerant from their mistakes -> however, ventromedial patients didn’t show evidence of this increased arodual, and without that somatic marker to warn them agasint the riskier decks, they chose from them over and over again as their money decreased
The “what” of social cognition
Categories:
- mental ‘containers’ in which we place things that are similar
- even if two things are quite different from one another, when people place them in the same category, they think about those twi items as thought they were the same
- allows us to process the complex world around us into broad groups so we can process it -> e.g. books van be very different from each other, but we still group them as one
Schema:
- mental structure, stored in memory, that is based on prior knowledge; patterned of learned associations
- using schemas, people can interpret ambiguous things they encounter by using prior knowledge to “go beyond the information given”
- scripts:
~ schemas that represent knowledge about events
~ involve a temporal sequence, meaning they describe how events unfold over time
~ make coordinated action possible
~ allow you to full in missing information
~ our reliance on scripts becomes apparent when we are in a new situation and we are unsure on how to act
- impressions:
~ schemas represent knowledge about people/things
~ we can have impressions about individuals or groups of people (stereotypes)
~ have schema about ourselves (self-schema)
Schemas can change
Regardless of type of schema, they consist of a pattern of learned association which can change and expand our time
Important to realise that schemas aren’t passively filled up with information from the outside
Because of our need to validate and maintain particular beliefs and attitudes, we tailor our schemes to highlight certain bits of knowledge while pushing the others out of thought
