Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Social Psychology and cognition
o How human thought, feeling and behavior is influenced by and has influences on
other people
o People act on the basis of thought
o Thought = internal language (conscious)
o Cognition = like a computer operating system; operates automatically in the
background, running all the functions of the computer (unconscious)
 people’s subjective experience
o Thought and Cognition is the mediation between the outer world and what people
subsequently do
History of cognition in social psychology
 Wilhelm Wundt (1897): one of the founders of empirical psychology
 introspection to gain an understanding of cognition
 unscientific methodology
 Shift from internal (cognitive) observation to the external observation
 theories should be based on publicly observable and replicable data
 American behaviorism (early 20th century)
 In 1960s increased focus on cognition and the processing of information again
 Gestalt psychology = Lewin (1951) believed that social behavior is function of
people’s perceptions of their world and of their manipulation of such perceptions
 Cognitive consistency = model of social cognition in which people try to reduce
inconsistency among their cognitions, because they find inconsistency unpleasant
 Naive psychologist model = people need to attribute causes to behavior and events
 Attribution = The process of assigning a cause to our own behavior and that of others
 Cognitive miser = least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce
generally adaptive behaviors
 cognitive short-cuts
 Motivated tactician = people have multiple cognitive strategies available, which they
choose among on the basis of personal goals, motives and needs
Forming impressions of other People
What information is important?
 Configural model (Solomon Asch, 1946)
 distinguishes between central traits (have disproportionate influence) and
peripheral traits (much less influence) in the formation of the final impression
 Warmth as fundamental dimension of social perception and impression formation
 Two main dimensions:
o good/bad social (generous, wise, happy, good-natured, reliable)
o good/bad intellectual (intelligent, skillful, industrious, …)
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Biases in forming impressions
Primacy and recency
Primacy = traits presented first have disproportionately influenced final impression
 order matters
Recency = when distracted, traits presented later can have a larger impact on impression
formation
 less common than primacy effect
Positivity and negativity
 without negativity, people tend to assume the best of others
 form positive impression
 negative information has a disproportionate significance in subsequent impression
 people are biased towards negativity
 negative impression much more difficult to change
 sensitive to negativity because of two reasons:
1) information is unusual and distinctive
 attracts attention
2) information indirectly signifies potential danger
 survival value
Personal constructs and implicit personality theories
 personal construct = every individual has a different personal construct system
 people get different impressions of the same person
 resistant to change due to the development over time
 implicit personality theories = general principles what sorts of characteristics go
together to form certain types of personality
Physical appearance counts
 appearance is very influencial
 first information we get from people (primacy effect)
 we tend to think that physically attractive people are ‘good’
 Schiller: ‘interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty’
Stereotypes
 influenced by widely shared assumptions of people in certain groups (ethnicity,
nationality, sex, race and class)
 one of the salient characteristics of people we first meet is their category
membership
Social judgeability
 perception of whether it is socially acceptable to judge a specific target
 influenced by norms, conventions and laws
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Social schemas and categories
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cognitive structure about a concept (attributes and relations)
 in order to make sense of person, situation, event or place
helps to interpret events and guide choices about how to behave
script is an event schema
Types of Schemas
Person schemas: individualized knowledge structures about specific people
Role schemas: knowledge structures about role occupants/schemas about social groups
Scripts: schemas about events  makes the entire event meaningful
Content-free schemas: limited number of rules for processing information
Self-schemas: information about ourselves, part of people’s concept of who they are
 self-concept
Categories and prototypes
 categories are collections of instances that have a family resemblance
 people need to categorize a person, event or situation before putting them into a
particular schema
 no specific combination of attributes to obtain a category membership
 variation in instances
 some instances seem to fit better into a category than others
(they are prototypical)
 no specific instance or member perfectly fits the prototype
 instances vary in prototypicality
 categories can be considered fuzzy sets
 prototypes can represent the average/typical category member but also the extreme
category member when it comes to competition with another category group
 relationship among the categories is hierarchical
 people are more likely to rely on intermediate-level categories
 not to broad nor too narrow
 they are optimally distinctive
 contextual and motivational factors dominate choice of level of categorization
 people sometimes use exemplars rather than prototypes
 as people become more familiar with a category they shift from
prototypical to exemplar representation
 associative networks = affectively, causally or merely associatively linked attributes
such as traits, beliefs or behavior
Categorization and stereotyping
 central aspects of prejudice and discrimination
 steoreotypes are slow to change (have been taught since early life)
 stereotypes are more hostile when there are social tensions and conflicts between
groups
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Perceptual accentuation
 to make judgements about a focal dimension people usually recruit any other
peripheral dimension for assistance
 categorization produces a perceptual accentuation of intra-category similarities and
inter-category differences on dimensions believed to be correlated with the
categorization
 accentuation effect is enhanced where the categorization has importance, relevance
or value to the participant
Beyond accentuation
 stereotypes are not static; respond to features of social context and to people’s
motives
 changes in accessibility or fit will change the stereotype
Purposes of stereotypical thinking
 helping with cognitive parsimony
 reduction of self-uncertainty
 can clarify social roles, power differentials, intergroup conflicts
 justify the status quo
 contribute to a positive sense of ingroup identity
How we use, acquire and change schemas
Using schemas
 too many features to directly figure out the basis of categorization or which schemas
will apply
 people use basic-level categories
 initially access subtypes rather than trait schemas
 people are more likely to use schemas cued by readily detected features (skin color,
dress or physical appearance)
 mood-congruent schemas and primacy effect influenced schemas are commonly
used
 these automatic schema-cueing are functional and accurate enough for immediate
interactive purposes
 circumscribed accuracy
 sometimes people need to use more accurate schemas (data-based)
 shift from theory-driven cognition to data-driven cognition
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Costs of being wrong
- Outcome dependency
- Accountability
Costs of being indecisive
Commonly used schemas
- Anxiety and stress
- Performance pressure
- Communication goals
- Subtypes
- Prototypes
- Roles
-Easily deleted schemas
- Accessible schemas
- Self-referent schemas
- Mood-congruent schemas
Individual differences
- Attributional complexity
- Uncertainty orientation
- Communication goals
- Need for cognition
- Cognition complexity
- Self-schemas
- Chronic accessibility
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performance pressure can increase schema use
distraction and anxiety can increase the subjective cost of indecisiveness
when communicating information to others, organization is important
 more important to rely on schemas
schematic processing is inaccurate
 in terms of social groups undesirable
individual differences
o Attributional complexity
o Uncertainty orientation
o Need for cognition
o Need for cognitive closure
o Cognitive complexity
People also differ in the sorts of schema they have about themselves
Acquiring schemas
 Schemas become more abstract as more instances are encountered
 Become richer and more complex as more instances are encountered
 Increased organization produces compact schema
Changing schemas
 Schemas do not easily change
 People are resistant to information that undermines a schema
 Protect their schemas by relying uncritically on their own earlier judgements
 justify and rationalize by using prior judgements
1) Bookkeeping – gradual schema changes due to accumulating evidence
2) Conversion – sudden schema changes due to critical mass of disconfirming
evidence
3) Subtyping – schema-inconsistent information causes the formation of
subcategories to accommodate disconfirming evidence
 Schema that is logically disconfirmable is more easily changed by counter-evidence
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Social encoding
External social stimuli represented in the mind of the individual
1) Pre-attentive analysis
– non-conscious scanning of environment
2) Focal attention
– conscious identification and categorization of the stimuli
3) Comprehension
– meaning is given
4) Elaborative reasoning
– stimulus linked to knowledge
Salience
 Attention-capturing stimuli are salient stimuli
 Salience = property of stimuli that makes it stand out
 Are novel or figural in immediate context
 Behavior does not fit social group  stand out
 Importance to oneself  dominate visual field
 More influential in groups
 Salient people are personally responsible for their behavior and less influenced by
others
 Are generally evaluated more extremely
 Dominate our thoughts
Vividness
 Vividness is an intrinsic property of the stimulus itself
 emotionally interesting
 concrete and image-provoking
 close to you in time and place
Accessibility
 Ease of recall, categories or schemas that are already in our heads
 Accessible categories are readily and automatically primed by features of the
stimulus domain
 Categories we often use
 Interpretation of behavior different depending on the category primed by the cue
word
 Gender is often an accessible category that is readily primed and used to interpret
behavior
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Memory for people
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High importance in how we store information about other people and what we
remember of others
Associative network = model of memory in which nodes of ideas are connected by
associative links along which cognitive activation can spread
Links are associative
Nodes are associated with other nodes
 some associative links stronger than others
Activation by cognitive rehearsal strengthens links
The more different links there are to a specific idea the more likely it is to be recalled
Nodes become activated and spread to other nodes
Distinction:
o Long-term memory = vast store of information
o Short-term memory = working memory, what we actually have in
consciousness
Inconsistent information attracts more attention
 more cognition and thought
Contents of person memory
 People cluster together information that is positive, separately from negative
information
 Trait information stored in social desirability and competence
 Memory of behavior organized by people’s goals
 Memory for appearance stored directly
 directly observable (primacy effect)
 Superficial encoding undermines memory for faces
Organization of person memory
 Social memory can be organized by person or by group
 Organization by person: person has significance for us
 Organization by group: first encounters with strangers
Using person memory
 People tend to form impressions of people on-line
 rely disproportionately on incoming data assimilated by schemas to produce an
impression
 little correlation between memory and judgement
 Recall of information of people improves when purpose of interaction becomes more
psychologically engaging and less superficial
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Social Inference
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Two distinct ways to process information:
(a) Rely automatically on general schemas or stereotypes in top-down
deductive fashion
(b) Deliberatively rely on specific instances in bottom-up inductive fashion
Normative models = ideal processes for making accurate social inferences
Behavioral decision theory = set of normative models for making accurate social
inferences
Departures from normality
Gathering and sampling social information
 First gathering of data and sampling of information from those data
 Person schemas are quickly and often unconsciously activated
 can produce suboptimal inferences and judgements
 Sometimes:
Inference is based on unrepresentative information that portrays small group
behaving in an extreme manner
Regression
 Individual cases more extreme than average
 regression to the population mean
 To prevent regression effects be conservative and cautious in making inferences from
limited information
 people tend to generally ignore regression
Base-rate information
 General information (factual and statistical) of an entire class of events
 People underuse this information in making inferences
 People often fail to see the relevance of base-rate information
 People are influenced by the vivid and colorful media exposés
 tend to see it as stereotype of a specific group
Covariation and illusory correlation
 Judgments of how strongly two things are related
 basis of schemas
 Influenced by prior assumptions (schemas)
 People tend to only search for or recognize schema-consistent information
 not interested in disconfirming their schemas
 Illusory correlation = cognitive exaggeration of the degree of co-occurrence of two
stimuli or events, or the perception of a co-occurrence where none exists
 Associative meaning = illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging
together because they ‘ought’ to, on the basis of prior expectations
 Paired distinctiveness = illusory correlation in which items are seen as belonging
together because they share some unusual feature
 Negative events are distinctive
 perceived as rarer than positive events
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Chapter 2
Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
 minority groups are distinctive because people have few contacts with them
Heuristics
 We are very bad at making inferences
 possibly due to limited short-memory for on-line processing and more space in
long-term memory
 It’s easier to store information schematically in long-term memory and call up
schemas to aid inference
 Heuristics = cognitive short-cuts that provide adequately accurate inferences for
most of us most of the time
(1) Representativeness
 cognitive short-cut in which instances are assigned to categories or
types on the basis of overall similarity or resemblance to the category
 disregards base-rate information
 fast and efficient; accurate enough for most of our purposes
(2) Availability
 cognitive short-cut in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is
based on how quickly instances or associations come to mind
(3) Anchoring and adjustment
 cognitive short-cut in which inferences are tied to initial standards or
schemas
Improving social inference
 Social inference is not optimal
 we are biased, we misrepresent people and events, we make mistakes
 Inferential errors lead to negative stereotyping of minority groups and suboptimal
group decisions
 Basic principle  we must become less reliant on intuitive inferential strategies
 through formal education and rational thinking
Affect and emotion
Antecedents of affect
 Affective response(emotion) as a mode of action readiness tied to appraisals of harm
and benefit
 Distinction:
o Simple primary appraisals
 generate emotions quickly
o Complex secondary appraisals
 When focused on negative stimulus, brain activity may even be greater
 Challenge and threat act to motivate performance
Consequences of effect
 Emotion and mood influence thought and action
 affects judgment and behavior
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Social cognition and social thinking
Sep 5th 2016
Affect-infusion model = cognition is infused with affect such that social judgments
reflect current mood
Affect-infusion only occurs where there is information processing in an open and
constructive manner
o Direct access: direct access to schemas or judgments in memory
o Motivated processing: goal achievement orientated judgment formation
o Heuristic processing: rely on cognitive short-cuts
o Substantive processing: judgment from informational sources
Current mood stages affect judments involving heuristic processing or substantive
processing
 social judments reflect current mood, either indirectly (affect primes target
judgments) or directly (affect acts as information about the target)
Affect influences social memory and judgment
 people tend to recall current mood-congruent information
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