Chapter 5 - Social Cognition
• What is Social Cognition?
• Attributions: Why Did That Happen?
• Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
• Errors and Biases
• Are People Really Idiots?
Social Cognition
• Carolyn Briggs - Christian Fundamentalism
• How can someone believe so intensely and
•
•
then reject those same beliefs?
How are our beliefs shaped by those around
us?
What are some cognitive biases and errors
we make?
What is Social Cognition?
• Thinking about people
– People first
– Inner processes serve interpersonal
functions
• Social acceptance, relationship
formation and maintenance
• Competing against others for our goals
Thinking
• Three goals of thinking
•
– Discover the right answer
– Confirm the desired answer
– Reach the answer quickly
Cognitive miser
– Reluctance to do much extra thinking
Elements of Automatic Thinking
• Intention – not guided by intention
• Control – not subject to deliberate control
• Effort – no effort required
• Efficiency – highly efficient
Knowledge Structures
• Schemas
•
– Substantial information about a concept, its
attributes, and its relationships to other
concepts
Scripts
– Schemas about certain events
Priming and Framing
• Priming - activating a concept in the mind
•
– Influences subsequent thinking
– May trigger automatic processes
Framing – presentation as positive or
negative
Thought Suppression and Ironic Processes
• Two processes to suppress thought
•
– Automatic – checks for incoming
information related to unwanted thought
– Controlled – redirects attention away from
unwanted thought
Relax conscious control and mind is flooded
with cues from the automatic system
Food for Thought - It’s the Thought That
Counts (or Doesn’t Count!) the Calories
• Dieters and nondieters will eat different
amounts of food based on eating pattern
– Milkshakes and ice cream (Herman &
Mack, 1975)
– Counterregulation
• Driven by cognition not bodily need
Attributions
• Causal explanations
– Internal factors
– External factors
Attributions: Explaining Success and Failure
• Two dimensions
•
– Internal Stable - Ability
– Internal Unstable – Effort
– External Stable – Difficulty of task
– External Unstable – Luck
Self-serving bias
Actor/Observer Bias
• External – Internal Attribution
•
•
– Actor (situation – external)
– Observer (actor – internal)
Fundamental Attribution Error
Ultimate Attribution Error
– Behavior freely chosen is more informative
about a person (Jones & Harris, 1967)
Fundamental Attribution Error
• Four possible explanations
– Behavior is more noticeable than
situational factors
– Insignificant weight is assigned to
situational factors
– People are cognitive misers
– Richer trait-like language to explain
behavior
Attribution Cube
• Covariation Principle
– Consensus
– Consistency
– Distinctiveness
Attribution Cube and Excuses
• Excuses
– Raise consensus – it happens to everyone
– Lower consistency – it doesn’t usually
happen to me
– Raise distinctiveness – it doesn’t usually
happen in other situations
Heuristics
• Representativeness Heuristic
•
– Judge likelihood by the extent it resembles
the typical case
Availability Heuristic
– Judge likelihood by ease with which
relevant instances come to mind
• ESP beliefs
Heuristics
• Simulation Heuristic
•
– Judge likelihood by ease with which you
can imagine it
Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic
– Judge likelihood by using a starting point
and adjusting from that point
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Information Overload
•
•
– Too much information, contradictions in
information, irrelevant information
Generally access two types of information
– Statistical information
– Case History
Generally pay closer attention to case history
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Confirmation Bias
•
– Tendency to notice and search for
information that confirms one’s beliefs and
ignore information that disconfirms it
Conjunction Fallacy
– Tendency to see an event as more likely as
it becomes more specific
The Social Side of Sex
Counting Sex Partners
• Men always report more previous sex
•
partners than women
Processes that account for biased answers
– How people count
• Mental list (underestimate) or estimate
(inflated numbers)
– Shifting criteria
• What constitutes sex?
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Illusory Correlation
– Tendency to overestimate link between
variables that are related only slightly or
not at all
– Hamilton & Gifford (1976)
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Base Rate Fallacy
•
– Tendency to ignore base rate information
and be influenced by distinctive features of
the case
Gambler’s Fallacy
– Tendency to believe that a chance event is
affected by previous events and will “even
out”
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• False Consensus Effect
•
– Tendency to overestimate the number of
other people who share one’s opinions
False Uniqueness Effect
– Tendency to underestimate the number of
other people who share one’s prized
characteristics or abilities
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Statistical Regression
•
– Statistical tendency for extremes to be
followed by less extreme or those closer to
average
Illusion of Control
– A false belief that one can influence events
Is Bad Stronger Than Good?
Good News and Bad News
• People think more about bad things than
•
good ones
– Thinking is guided by search for
explanations
• More concerned with explaining bad
events than good events
Bad news attracts more attention
Cognitive Errors and Biases
• Magical Thinking
– Assumptions that don’t hold up to logical
scrutiny
• Touching objects pass on properties to
each other (contamination)
• Resemblance to something shares basic
properties (contamination)
• Thoughts can influence physical world
Counterfactual Thinking
• Imagining alternatives to past or present
•
•
factual events or circumstances
– First instinct fallacy
Upward counterfactuals – positive outcome
– Help make future situations better
Downward counterfactuals – negative
outcome
– Comfort it could have been worse
Are People Really Idiots?
• We make predictable errors
•
– Cognitive misers
– Heuristics are short cuts
How serious are the errors
– On trivial events – use heuristics and
automatic processing
– On important events – use conscious
processing and make better decisions
Reducing Cognitive Errors
• Debiasing
– Consider multiple alternative
– Rely less on memory
– Use explicit decision rules
– Search for disconfirmatory information
– Use meta-cognition
What Makes Us Human?
• Human thought uses and combines symbols
• Language allows for exploration of linkages of
•
meaning
Conscious mind is uniquely human
– Complex patterns of thought
What Makes Us Human?
• Only humans engage in counterfactual
•
thinking
Human thought creates unique errors and
unique capabilities to find the truth