Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
How we perceive the world.
Refers to the way we encode, process, remember and use information in social contexts to make sense of others’ behaviours - the mental processes that underpin social behaviour.
We are driven to make sense of social world by making attributions (often make errors.
Social information
Constantly taking in social information (eg. social media, people around us).
Make social judgements based on what will cause least social stress (eg. looking who to sit next to when the bus is full).
Exposed to very high volume of social information
Kahneman 2011- suggests we have different socio-cognitive systems to help us manage our navigation and comprehension of the social world.
Naive scientist or cognitive miser
Naive scientist = in some situations people attempt to construct explanations about the social world by making careful observations and then putting this together in a rational way.
Cognitive miser = people do not always take this methodological and rational approach to trying to understand their social world.
Cognitive miser
Concept of this approach based on idea that our cognitive resources are valuable and limited.
Tend to commit least amount of cognitive processing we can use to still successfully navigate many social situations.
eg. computer trying to run too many programmes at once.
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts used to reduce complex judgements to simple rules of thumbOne way to reduce cognitive effort.
Representativeness heuristic
Allocating attributions and making conclusions to someone if they appear to match a certain group (Kehneman & Tversky).
- prone to error- may make assumptions on a persons job by what they’re wearing.
Availability heuristic
Tendency to judge frequency/probability on event occurring in terms of how easy it is to think of examples (Tversky & Kahneman).
- we think something that is easy to imagine is more likely to happen.
Schwarz et al 1991 (counterintuitive results): asked ppts to think of either 12 or 6 times they had been assertive, then asked how assertive they were.
Those asked for 12 examples said they were less assertive because they struggled to complete the task- did not have readily available examples.
Responsible for false consensus effect- tendency we have to assume our views are more common than they actually are.
Motivated tactician
May be therefore that we can either be naive scientists or cognitive misers.
Which approach we use may depend on factors such as time and importance of the situation.
Kruglaksi 1996- argues people are flexible social thinkers who base their approach on current goals, motives and needs- so neither CM or NS but instead motivated tacticians.
Social categorisation
Categorisation refers to the act of understanding what something is by what other things it is equivalent or different to.
- some group members may be seen as more typical than others.
Most representative members = prototypes.
- may make others less recognisable.
Category content
Deciding what the prototype is: social learning & exposure may partly explain.
Illusory correlation describes the false belief that two variables are associated with one another.
- Hamilton & Gifford 1976: frequency and distinctiveness (group A and B, negative and positive descriptions).
Category structure
Research suggests we perceive groups i terms of heterogeneity or homogeneity.
- how diverse those within the group are.
- tend to perceive other groups as being more homogenous than our own (outgroup homogeeity effect- Quattrone & Jones, 1980).
eg. a definition of racism- assumption that all members are the same.
Reasons for categorisation
Acts as a form of heuristic- while stereotyping may lead to wrong conclusions, it is quicker.
May also help make sense of our social world by providing meaning.
- Heider: helps predict social behaviour.
- Hogg: provides norms for understanding ourself in relation to others.
Consequences of categorisation
Can lead to us focussing more on stereotype consistent info.
- Cohen: showed a video of woman having a birthday, then either told participants she was a waitress of librarian. Waitress- more likely to say they recall her drinking alcohol. Librarian- recalled wearing glasses.
Howard & Rothbart 1980- also tend to recall more positive info about own group and more negative info about other groups.
However stereotype inconsistent information can be more easily remembered (Hemsley & Marmurek, 1982).
Bargh & Williams, 2006- if people think about categories they can begin to behave in a way which is consistent with stereotypes they hold about that category (behavioural assimilation).
Bias or heuristic?
Heuristics = intended to make up make quicker social decisions.
Cognitive biases = errors we may make because of the tendency we have to perceive our social work in a certain way.
