Chapter 5
Social Cognition
Can you tell who was the silver medalist by only
looking at their facial expressions?
© 2014 Wadsworth Cengage Learning
Overview
 What is Social Cognition?
 Attributions: Why Did That Happen?
 Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
 (So-Called) Errors and Biases
 Are People Really Stupid?
Debate: Faith and Social
Cognition
 Consider Carolyn Briggs, who became involved in, and
then rejected, Christian fundamentalism
 How can someone believe so intensely and then reject those
same beliefs?
 How are our beliefs shaped by those around us?
 Consider some cognitive biases and errors you have made
What is Social Cognition?
 The rise of cognitive psychology in the 1970’s and the
development of attribution theory in the 60’s & 70’s lead
to the scientific study of thinking.
 Social psychologist study how people think about people
and social relationships.
What is unique about thinking about people as opposed to
thinking about something else, like frogs or computers?
Why is it important to study how people think about
people?
Why People Think, and Why They Don’t
Humans have a greater capacity for higher order thinking
than other animals.
But they are cognitive misers.
 Cognitive miser: reluctance to do much extra thinking
 During their free time, why do most people choose to think
about a subject such as baseball, but not about a subject such
as calculus?
Automatic and Deliberate Thinking
 Stroop test – measures effortful control over responses,
requiring participants to identify the color of a word (
which may name a different color).
 Illustrates automatic and deliberate control.
 Stroop effect – occurs in the Stroop test, finding that
people have difficulty overriding the automatic tendency
to read the word rather than name the ink color.
Automatic and Deliberate
Thinking
 How does the Stroop effect illustrate automatic versus
deliberate thought?
 How do we know if a thought is automatic?
 Requires no awareness
 Not guided by intention
 Not subject to deliberate control
 Requires no effort
 Highly efficient
Automatic thinking involves little effort because?
Knowledge Structures
 Are organized packets of information that are stored in
memory.
 Schemas: information about a concept
 Scripts: schemas about certain events
 Priming: activating a concept in the mind
 Framing: presentation as positive or negative
Thought Suppression and Ironic
Processes
 How do automatic and deliberate thought processes work
together to suppress unpleasant thoughts?
 How difficult is it to control thoughts?
Thought Suppression
 For the next 60 seconds, try NOT to think of
a white bear
 whenever the image of a white bear appears
in your thoughts, raise your hand
Thought Suppression
 now raise your hand if you were thinking of
a white bear before this exercise …
 Why was it so hard to keep it out of your
thoughts????
Attributions
 Attributions: inferences people make about events in their
lives
 How do internal and external attributions shape behavior?
How do stable and unstable attributions shape behavior?
 What is the purpose of self-serving bias?
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Actor/Observer Bias
 How do actors and observers make different attributions
for behaviors?
 What factors might lead to a fundamental attribution
error?
 How does culture affect the fundamental attribution error?
 What evidence challenges the pervasiveness of fundamental
attribution error? What other theories might explain
actor/observer bias?
Heuristics
Flawed or Clever Thinking
 How does the standard view that people’s thinking is
flawed fall short?
 In what ways do heuristics offer a better option than
precise mathematical calculations?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases
 How does the automatic mind help guard against
information overload?
 What types of errors do people make when relying on
automatic thought?
 Two types of information
 Statistical information
 Case history
 When is it beneficial to pay closer attention to case histories?
When is it not?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases
(cont’d.)
 Confirmation bias: tendency to notice and search for
information that confirms one’s beliefs and ignore
information that disconfirms it
 How is this helpful for human experience?
 Illusory correlation: tendency to overestimate link
between variables that are related only slightly or not at
all
 How does the media contribute to illusory correlations?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases (cont’d.)
 Base rate fallacy: ignore base rate information and be
influenced by distinctive features of the case
 Hot hand: luck will continue
 Gambler’s fallacy: a chance event is affected by previous
events and will “even out”
 How do the hot hand and gambler’s fallacies tie into the
representative heuristic?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases (cont’d.)
 False consensus effect:
 Overestimate the number of people who share one’s
opinions
 How does the false consensus effect relate to the availability
heuristic? How does it relate to the anchoring & adjustment
heuristic?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases (cont’d.)
 False uniqueness effect
 Underestimate the number of people who share one’s prized
characteristics or abilities
 What effect does this bias have on self-esteem?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases (cont’d.)
 The theory perseverance effect
 Once a conclusion is drawn, it is only changed by
overwhelming evidence
 How does this tie in with the belief that humans are meant to
argue?
 Polarization
 Shifting towards more extreme positions
 Why would people polarize after careful thought and
consideration of a topic?
(So-Called) Errors and Biases (cont’d.)
 Statistical regression
 Statistical tendency for extremes to be followed by less
extremes
 How does statistical regression explain the Sports Illustrated
jinx?
 Illusion of control
 A false belief that one can influence events
 How can the illusion of control be dangerous for gamblers?
Counterfactual Thinking
 Imagining alternatives to past or present factual events or
circumstances
 How do some students apply first instinct fallacy when
taking tests?
 How can upward counterfactuals help people make things
better for the future?
 How can downward counterfactuals bring comfort after
misfortune?
Table 5-2 p182
Are People Really Stupid?
 How do “errors” and “biases” make sense if humans are
argumentative creatures?
 How serious are the “errors” that people make?
 In what ways are they correct decisions?
 In what ways are they corrected by society or by cancelling each
other out?
 How can people reduce cognitive errors?
 What can we do to encourage people to use deliberate
instead of automatic thinking?
What Makes Us Human?
 How does language open up opportunities for exploration
of linkages of meaning?
 In what ways is the conscious mind uniquely human?
 What types of thinking are uniquely human?
 What types of errors and biases are uniquely human?
Discussion: Errors and Biases
 What types of errors and biases do you think are more
beneficial for humans? In what ways?
 Do you believe that humans are designed to argue and
persuade? How does this theory challenge the traditional
view of thinking about errors and biases?
Conclusion
 Social cognition examines how people think about other
people and about relationships
 Much thinking is done by the automatic mind, as opposed
to deliberately thinking through things
 What were traditionally thought of as errors in thinking
may have advantages for human life