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COGNITION
PROCESS OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD AROUND
US
COGNITION
Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of
thought."
Cognition as a single word that means a group of
mental processes which include processes like
attention, sensation or awareness, perception,
memory, remembering, reasoning, judgment, etc. for
making decision.
COGNITION
Social cognition is the study of how people process
social information, especially its encoding, storage,
retrieval, and application to social situations. In other
words, it means how people make sense of themselves
and others.
COGNITION
It focuses on how people think about other people and
how they think they think about others and
themselves.
It is higher mental processes that are engaged while
social situations or dealing with social information.
COGNITION and Process of Understanding the
World
The outside world and both physical and social objects
are the result of subjective construction of reality that
involve both the physiological/neurological process as
well as psychological processes.
Social Cognition
Making social judgments is more difficult
• Available information is incomplete,
ambiguous, or downright contradictory.
• The core question of social cognition
research is “How people use all this
information to arrive at a coherent
judgment?
Social Cognition
• Do we see the world, the people, the group,
accurately and form it unbiased?
• Is there error in social cognition”
• Can we logically put the information in
organized way?
There are logical and correct ways to put
information together to make wise decision
but we depart in quite predictable ways.
FACTS on our understanding
People are not always accurate in
understanding people, explain their action
and predict the future behavior. Other times,
there is accuracy. Like Sherlock Holmes,
people, with bit of information, elaborate
and construct the profile of other people.
Many times they are correct and many times
they are not.
Social Cognition
• Social cognition is often marked by apparent errors
and biases
• People's social inferences often depart in quite
predictable ways from logic and accuracy
• The information that is stored in the memory, the
context, the situation and the people one come to
contact helps to organize and make inferences
about the social object
Social Cognition
PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFERENCE
Social inference is composed of several steps
1.
2.
3.
4.
Gathering information
Deciding what information to use (Biases)
Integrating the information
Making judgment of social stimulus
Social Cognition
GATHERING
INFORMATION
Using Prior
expectation
Prior provide structure
and meaning of behavior
but also lead to collect
inaccurate information.
Deciding what
information
to use
Failing to notice biases in
information and usually
the mood guide the
memory
Putting
information
together
Automatic evaluation,
use short-cuts, selfserving process
Making
judgeme
nt of
social
stimulus
or event
Social Cognition
GATHERING
INFORMATION
Using Prior
expectation
Deciding what
information
to use
Putting
information
together
Prior expectation
1. Faulty expectation:
2. Failure to recognize how
prior expectations bias the
collection of information
3. Overrule consideration of
information altogether
4. Rejecting unsupporting
(prior expectation)
information
Suppose: A
college
acquaintance
of yours, a
tense,
serious,
humorless
fellow, works
for the
company you
are
considering
and finds it
very much to
his liking.
1. GATHERING INFORMATION
Prior Expectations
• Everyone in the company are stiff and uptight
• Selective collection of information consistent with
this prior expectation
• Finding prospective coworkers a little rigid or
formal when meeting them
• Formality with stranger is quite normal in the first
meeting however one may conclude with prior
expectation as stiff and rigid
• Prior expectations are very helpful in interpreting
the information, provide structure and meaning
however sometimes it causes to draw inaccurate
inferences.
According to Nisbett & Ross (1980):
Four conditions are especially problematic
1. Faulty expectations: Letting false belief and expectation guide
one’s collection of information will probably lead one to incorrect
answers
2. Second condition under which prior expectations can be
problematic occurs when the social perceiver fails to recognize
how prior expectations bias the collection of information.
3. Overrule consideration of information altogether: Prior
expectations can create problems when they overrule
consideration of information altogether and consequently the
decision.
4. Rejecting unsupporting (prior expectation) information: if
information is inconsistent with what to believe, one will
scrutinize it and collect only those that support the belief (Ditto,
See pansky, Munro, Apanovitch, & Lockhart, 1998).
Social Cognition
Using Prior
expectation
GATHERING
INFORMATION
Deciding what
information
to use (Bias)
Putting
information
together
1. Small sample
2. Statistical Versus
Case History
Information
3. Impact of negative
information
2. BIASES IN THE INFORMATION
• Collection of information for decision is must
• Judgments made on the basis of limited information can
distorted judgement – selected friendly sample and evalution
• (Hamill, Wilson, & Nisbett, 1980), vidiotape viewing of an
interview with a prison guard.
– (1) Typical prison guard, (2) Very different from most of the
guard, (3) no information was provided to the sample
– Half the participants saw prison guard appeared a highly
compassionate, concerned individual.
– other half saw a tape that portrayed him as in inhumane,
macho, cruel person.
– Participants asked what kinds of people become prison guards.
participants' inferences about prison guards were unaffected by
whether they had been told that the prison guard was typical.
Small sample (Bias)
• Inferences based on very little information are also
problematic. A small sample of information can actually
produce a very biased picture (Schaller, 1992).
– Collecting informaiton from 2 workers who seem
pleasant enough, and working with 20 coworkers,
there is the possibility that these 2 are not typical of
the larger group.
– Sometimes people forget that they are dealing with
very little information, and they make confident
inferences nonetheless (Nisbett & Kunds, 1985).
Statistical Versus Case History Information (Bias)
• Statistic information represent population while Case study
only represent a few, very specific people
• Statistical information is dull while case history is colorful and it
often has more influence on their judgment (Tylor &
Thompson, 1982).
• Statistical information is objectively more accurate. E.g, a
dynamic employee may reach to high post within short period
– the history (bias) can influence the impress and ignore more
appropriate statistical information
• One generally rely on statistical information for persuasive
argument and strong conclusion
• When more engaging anecdotal case history evidence is
present, people often ignore relevant statistical evidence and
are instead persuaded by case histories (Beckett & Par, 1995).
Impact of negative information
• If encountered one or two negative pieces of information
during data collection – from disgruntled employee one would
attach some significance to this observation, more than it was
worth. This is a common finding in research on judgments and
decisions.
• Negative information attracts more attention than does
positive information (Pratto & John, 1991). Consequently,
negative information is weighted more heavily than are
positive aspects when judgments are made (Coovert & Reeder,
1990).
• In studies like forming impressions of others to evaluating
positive and negative information to reach a
decision/judgment, negative information figures more
prominently (Taylor, 1991).
Social Cognition
Using Prior
expectation
GATHERING
INFORMATION
Deciding what
information
to use (Bias)
Putting
information
together
1.Judgments of
Covariation : All work
and no play makes Jack
a dull boy
2. Illusory correlation
members of minority
groups are often seen
as having attributes
stereotypically
associated with their
group because of their
membership Impact of
negative information
3. INTEGRATING INFORMATION
Process of bringing information together and
combining it into a social judgement
• Standards for combining information into a judgment,
computers typically outperform human decision makers
(Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989). Humans are swayed by
stereotype that influence the information they collect
Judgments of Covariation
Many of our beliefs involve statements about the relationship
between things - "Blonds have more fun" - implies not being
Blond is having less fun. Technically, such idea of association is
called JoC.
3. INTEGRATING INFORMATION
Illusory correlation
According to Klauer & Meiser (2000) several factors
produce illusory correlation.
• Meaning of two item is believed to go
together, thus, a member of minority group is
stereotypically perceived as having attributes
of group.
Social Cognition
Gathering
information
Using Prior
expectation
Deciding what
information to use
Putting
information
together
1. Prior expectation helps to provide structure and meaning of
behavior but also lead to collect inaccurate information.
2. Information gathering will be selective and consistent with the
prior expectation
3. It leads to collect the information what you want to collect
(e.g., rigid, formal coworkers)
4. One believes what one wants to believe
5. It hinders the collection of neutral information
Social Cognition
Gathering
information
Using Prior
expectation
Deciding what
information to use
1. Using mood to guide memory
2. Drawing on prior expectations
and decide what is relevant
3. Failing to notice biases in
information
4. Letting personal goals or
motives influence information
choice
5. Being swayed by case history
information
Putting
information
together
1. Finding out what you
want to find out (i.e.,
motivated inference)
2. Using too little
information
3. Using the wrong
information
4. Combining information
erratically
Social Cognition
Gathering
information
Using Prior
expectation
Deciding what
information to use
1. People tend to be bias in
selecting information despite
warned before.
2. Small sample: Based on few
people’s version which does
not represent the group.
3. Statistical information
represents the larger view yet
emotional, in-depth
information draws our
attention
1. Impact of negative
information: It attracts
more attention than
positive information and
weighted more heavily.
2. Happy mood leads to
positive inferences. Bad
mood lead to short term
gain but long term lose.
3. Mood-congruency
memory – remember
material that fits with
current mood state
4. Negative mood make
pessimistic estimate
Social Cognition
Gathering
information
Using Prior
expectation
Deciding what
information to use
Putting
information
together
1. Automatic evaluation using shortcut
2. Self serving information –
e..g, divorce rate and
predictability
APPROACHES
TO
STUDY
SOCIAL COGNITION
Social Cognition
Three approaches to study social cognition
1. Person Perception Approaches
2. Attribution Approaches
3. Schema Approaches
Major approaches to Social Cognition
Approach
Major question
addressed by perceiver
_______________
Person Perception
__________________
How traits are combined
to form an overall
impression?
What are the causes of
behavior?
Attribution
Schema
How is the meaning of
behavior and traits
interpreted?
Major guiding
principle used
by perceiver
______________
Rational
combining of
Trait inform..
Naïve
Scientist
model
Cognitive
miser or
Motivated
model
PERSON PERCEPTION
Person Perception
Person perception approaches consider
the ways
we asses and combine the
traits of other persons to form overall
impression
An approach that consider the ways
we assess and combine the traits of
other persons to form overall
impressions.
This perspective assumes:
“People are thoughtful and fairly
rational perceiver of others, they
notice others traits and put them
together to make a consistent
framework by which we can
understand others...”
People assess and integrate others'
traits and characteristics to form
an overall impression.
Person Perception
FACTS
1. People form impressions of others quickly on the basis of
minimal information and go on to impute (assign) general
traits to them
2. People pay special attention to the most salient (prominent)
features of a person, rather than pay attention to everything.
We notice the qualities that make a person distinctive or
unusual
3. We organize our perception by categorizing or grouping
stimuli. Rather than see each person as a separate individual,
we tend to see people as members of groups – the people
wearing white lab coats are doctors, even though each may
have features that make him or her quite different from other
doctors.
Person Perception
1. We tend to look at
1. Roles: role helps to know the traits. Roles are informative,
rich, and well articulated, summarize the information
2. Physical cues: Appearance, behavior, qualities gives detail
impression. Dressing shows characteristics of the person.
3. Salience: cues that opposes with others. Figure and Ground.
4. Traits: behavior is observe to find traits. Based on traits we
develop implicit personality theory.
5. Central traits: a trait associated with person’s many other
characteristics. E.g., warm.
6. Categorize: Social categorization e.g., gender, race, social
class, influences perception and tend to make a part of some
group or category.
Person Perception: How we assess and combine
the traits to form a impression of other people?
Physical
appearance
PERSON
PERCEPTION
Nonverbal
Behavior
Physical
attractiveness,
face
configuration, Judge by clothing,
eyeglasses, jewelry, etc. (large eyes,
small nose is veiwed as powerlessness
Facial expression, basic emotions
(happiness, surprise, sadness, anger,
disgust, fear, etc. no mask and leakage
process), display rules of social
interaction, body language
Cognitive
math
Cognitive data and organization of it –
central trait that serve to organize the
other descriptive pieces of data (Ash,
1950). Negative data is weighted more
heavily than positive data
Order
effect
PRIMARY EFFECT (early information has
a stronger impact than later
information) and RECENCY EFFECT
FIRST IMPRESSION
How we
assess and
combine the
traits to form
a impression
of other
people?
NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR
Appearance, Physical
attributes, facial expression,
etc
COGNITIVE MATH
Central trait approach
Cognitive algebra approach
ORDER EFFECTS
Primacy or Recency effect
FIRST IMPRESSION (use of outward
appearance and behavior to draw
inferences)
1. Physical appearance
2. Non-verbal Behavior
3. Body Language
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Outside
Alley, 1988; Bull &
appearanc Rumsey, 1988;
e/ dressing Berry, 1990;
Workman &
Johnson, 1991;
Marino et. Al.,1991)
Physical
Hartfield &
attributes Sprecher, 1986;
Feingold, 1992)
Use of superficial clues
e.g., clothing,
eyeglasses, and jewelry
to form the judgement
what others like
No evidences
to support
those
judgements
yet people
judge others
Physical attractiveness with
plays significant role in superficial
how much we like
clues.
people
Configurat Zebrowitz, Olson & People with 'Baby face'
ion of face Hoffman, 1993;
characteristics are
Copley &
viewed as signs of
Brownlow, 1995;
powerlessness, suband Zebrowitz &
missiveness, and social
NON-VERBAL
BEHAVIOR
NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR
An action that displays inner feelings. People can
accurately identify the facial expressions of basic
emotions i.e., happiness, surprise, sadness, anger,
disgust, fear (Feldman & Rime, 1991). Display is
universal and can be identify them across culture.
Variation of display is found to exist:
NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR
Facts
Reasons
In Asian countries people restrain Members of various cultural,
in their facial display of emotion racial, and ethnic groups hold
than people of Western culture
different display rules, guidelines
that governs the appropriateness
of nonverbal show of emotions
Caucasians show more restrain
than African American in their
facial display
Social learning from significant
people, peers, media of display
People living in Southern climate found rules may minimize, exaggerate
facially more expressive than Northern or mask emotional expression
climate
(Feldman, 1982; 1992;
(Hanna, 1984; Manstead, 1991;
Halberstadt, 1991)
Pennebaker, Rime, & Blankenship,
1996)
NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR
Display rules greatly facilitates social interaction
though various factors may reduce the accuracy of
interpretation of others non-verbal behavior
Despite a tendency to mask the true feeling, some
indication is given called LEEKAGE. The voice, eye
movement, smile, leave some marks of true
feelings.
BODY LANGUAGE
BODY LANGUAGE
Gesture and accompanying speech provides data
that helps to build inferences about others (Rime
& Schiaratura, 1991; Ricci, Bitti, & Poggi, 1991).
Unlike facial expression gesture cannot be
identified accurately. A – OK means everything's
great in North America, in many cultures it
represents female sexual anatomy.In Greece, it is
an indication of sexual proposition, if to male, it is
insult to recipant's masculinality.
COMBINING INFORMATION
COGNITIVE MATH (One and one does
not always equal two)
Appearance and non-verbal behaviors provides
clues
How do we form an overall impression of others
baed on the bits and pieces of cognitive data that
we are able to collect?
Solomon Asch
Certain personal attributes (central traits) play an
unusual role in determining a general impression
(Asch, 1946; Asch & Zukier, 1984; Watkins &
Peynircioglu, 1984)
Central traits are characteristics that serve to
organize an impression of another person and
provide a framework for other interpreting other
information about that person.
A PERSON WHO IS:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Warm,
Industrious,
Critical,
Practical,
Determined
A PERSON WHO IS :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Cold,
industrious,
critical,
practical,
determined
Central trait altered the meaning of additional
descriptive traits. Manu words took different
meaning when it is preceded by 'warm' or 'cold'.
Challenge
COGNITIVE ALGEBRA approach disagreed with
this notion.
Cognitive algebra approach is an explanation for
impression formation that suggests that
perceivers consider each individual trait; evaluate
each trait individually, in isolation form the others;
and then combine the evaluations into an overall
judgment.
A person who appears adventurous and bold, but
unintelligent. Positive traits adventurous and bold
add final impression and the negative trait
unintelligent subtracts from it. The value does not
change as a result of the presence or absence of
the others.
According to Kaplan (1975) impression of others
are more accurate when we consider the
importance of each piece of information.
Negative information is usually weighted more
heavily than positive information. If equal
percent of + and – information is provided more
negative impression tend to exist.
Neither approach provided a complete account of
information formation. Yet considerable amount
of researches has been generated.
ORDER EFFECTS IN PERSON PERCEPTION: THE
FIRST SHALL BE LAST?
PRIMACY EFFECTS (first impression)
Does Order effect?
Logically it should not matter but reality is different.
Asch (1946) found primacy effect
Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and
envious
McKelvie (1990), Titus 1991 and so on also found that
primacy effect in the influence that information has on
the recipient.
Primacy effect occurs when early information has a stronger
impact than latter information.
PRIMACY EFFECTS
Jones & Goethals (1972) found primacy effect was
also found that early information play dominant
role in determining the ultimate evaluation.
School information – doing better initially in the class
and declining or reverse?
Asch explanation: information received earlier
influences our perception of the meaning of
additional information.
Also conform that Cognitive algebra does not provide
a complete account of social cognition.
ATTRIBUTION
Social Cognition: Attribution
Attribution is the process by which people
attempt to identify the causes of others’ and their
own behavior
Attribution theory is the principles that determine
how causal attributions are made and what
effects they have on our judgment of others.
Social Cognition: Attribution
Over the course of semester, Kate has come to
have great respect for her history professor
(Dilton). Though Kate was not doing well in class
she liked his outgoing, frank, and effective
teaching style and thought it as provocative. At
the end of the semester she met Prof. Dilton and
told him she liked his class. Contrary to her
expectation Prof. Dilton was cool and indifferent.
She felt confused and wondered why she reacted
the way he did.
Social Cognition
In seeking the explanation of one’s behavior
people rely on two general categories of causes:
Situational causes: Reasons for behavior that rest
on the demands or constraints of a given social
setting. Most situation calls for certain kinds of
behavior
Dispositional causes: Reasons for behavior that
rest on the personality traits and characteristics
of the individual carrying out the behavior.
Social Cognition
Example:
Situational causes: Social setting and classroom
behavior – certain circumstances produces
particular behavior.
Dispositional causes: Reasons of behavior rest on
personality traits and characteristics individual
carries – habitually friendly or hostile or energetic
regardless of situation and circumstances.
Is Kate’s behavior a dispositional – no informatio
or situational (poor in study) – does not say
negatives of Prof.
Social Cognition
Causes of behavior are attributed:
Situational: when external reasons are more likely or
plausible than dispositional cause
Dispositional: When external causes are unlikely
dispositional causes are attributed.
Example
Politics: Voting according to whip is situational.
Voting against is described as dispositional
attribution. S/He is behaving contrary to external
pressures.
Biases in Attribution
Accurate account of a person behavior is very
difficult to describe. Naive scientist is prone to
biases.
Fundamental Attribution error: A tendency to
overattribute others’ behavior to dispositional
causes and the corresponding failure to recognize
the importance of situational cause.
•Because behavior is dynamic and environment
is static
• Tendency to rapidly evaluate others in terms of
disposition.
Two step model of attribution
Behavior --- Analysis of dispositional causes --Distraction/No distraction (lead to dispositional
attribution) --- Analysis of situational causes --Situational or Dispositional attribution.
Lead to
dispositional
attribution
No distraction
Behavior
Analysis of
dispositional
causes
Distraction
or no
distraction
Analysis of
situational
causes
Situational
or
Dispositiona
l Attribution
Attribution Biases
Person positivity biases: Blind optimism about
others can lead to PPB. A friendly person just
made is susceptible to be PPB from us. Prominent
historical political figure are positively evaluated.
Motivational bias: Sources of error that stem
form a need to present oneslef well, either to
impress others or to maintain one’s self-esteem
(e.g., student’s good marks in exam – failure?)
SCHEMA perspective
Organizing impressions
Schemas are the organized bodies of information
stored in memory. It is a organized system or
structure of cognitions about a person, group,
place, or things.
Schema include knowledge about the concept or
stimulus, relations among the various cognitions
about it, and specific examples (Fiske and Taylor,
1991). It includes, roles, script, stereotype pics of
a group, etc.
Schema
The primary way we simplify and organize
impressions of others is through schemas. The
information in a schema provides us with a
representation of the way the social world
operates, and it enables us to categorize and
interpret new information related to the schema
(Fiske and Taylor, 1991); Smith, 1998).
It helps to organize behavior into a meaningful
whole.
Schema
All new information are perceived and organized
into schema known as PROTOTYPE. Prototype is
general not specific. It represents the typical or
average example of a category.
e.g. what is the prototype of committed people?
Prototype has several level of specificity –
prototype – subordinate level – middle level
(general class) etc.
PROTOTYPE example
Maoist
Congress
UML
1. Prototype
2. Subordinate level (Leaders)
3. Middle level (Activists)
4. Others (Sympathizers?)
SCRIPT and ROLE of prototype and different
level.
Exercise
analysis of
1. Process of social inferences between/among
group/individual in relation to political parties
2. Role of Cognitive/attribution biases in conflict
between any two political group/leader