social psych

Chapter 3

Social Cognition

1

Copyright © Allyn and Bacon 2005

What is Social Cognition?

Social Psychology the study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others

Cognitive Psychology the study of how people process, store, and retrieve information

Social Cognition the scientific study of how individuals attend to, interpret, and remember information about their social worlds

2 Copyright © Allyn and Bacon 2005

Four Core Processes of

Social Cognition

Attention

Interpretation

Judgment

Memory



Social Cognition

Attention – the process of consciously focusing on features of the environment or oneself

Attention is limited, and different people may focus on different features of the same situation.



Social Cognition

Interpretation – the process through which we give meaning to the events we experience

Many social situations can be interpreted in more than one way.


esearch

Is Media Bias in the

Eye of the Beholder?

In one study, students with pro-Israel or pro-Palestine views watched identical news broadcasts of a conflict between Israelis and

Palestinians.


Interpretation

Anti-Israeli 5

4

Perceived bias in media presentations

3

2

1

Anti-Palestinian 0

Pro-

Israeli

Neutral

Pro-

Palestinian

Compared to neutral students, pro-

Israeli students thought the presentations were biased against

Israelis.


Interpretation

Anti-Israeli 5

4

Perceived bias in media presentations

3

2

1

Anti-Palestinian 0

Pro-

Israeli

Neutral

Pro-

Palestinian

But pro-Palestinian students thought the opposite – that the reports were biased against Palestinians.



Social Cognition

Judgment – the process of using information to form impressions and make decisions

Because we often have limited information, many social judgments are “best guesses.”



Social Cognition

Memory – storing and retrieving information for future use

Memory can influence our decisions by affecting what we pay attention to, and how we interpret it.


The Goals of Social Cognition

Conserving Mental Effort

Managing Self-Image

Seeking Accuracy


The Complex,

Information-Rich

Social World

The Limited Human

Attentional Capacity

GOAL: Conserving Mental Effort

Simplification Strategies:

Expectations

Dispositional Inferences

Other Cognitive Shortcuts



We often think in ways that tend to preserve our expectations

We pay attention to behaviors relevant to our expectations.

We interpret ambiguous events/behaviors in ways that support our expectations.

We remember people and events consistent with our expectations.



Self-fulfilling prophecy – when an initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true


esearch

Avoiding a Negative

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Before participating in a mock interview, students were given one of the following instructions:

“Go with the flow”

“Make sure you make the impression you want to make.”


Interviewer holds negative expectation for applicant

6.0

5.0

Interviewer holds positive expectation for applicant

4.0

Go with the flow

Present your desired image

Applicants instructed to “make the impression you want to make” were able to overcome the interviewer’s negative expectations.



Dispositional inferences – judgments that a person’s behavior was caused by his or her personality



Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) – the tendency for observers to overestimate the causal influence of personality factors on behavior and to underestimate the causal role of situational influences



Actor-observer difference – the tendency for individuals to judge their own behaviors as caused by situational forces but the behavior of another as caused by his or her personality



Cognitive heuristics – mental shortcuts used to make judgments



Representativeness heuristic– a mental shortcut – classifying something as belonging to a certain category to the extent that it is similar to a typical case from that category e.g., judging a student to be a fraternity member because he drinks beer, reads sports magazines, and has many friends


Availability heuristic

22


Think of a number from 1 to 9.

23


Subtract five from that number.

24


Multiply the new number by three.

25


Square this number.

26


Add the digits of this new number until you get a one digit number.

(If you had the number 46 you’d add 4

+ 6 to get 10 then add

1 + 0 to get 1.)


If this number is less then five, add five, otherwise subtract four.

28


Multiply by two.

29


Subtract six.

30


Map the digit to a letter in the alphabet.

1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.

31


Pick a name of a country that begins with that letter.

32


Take the second letter of that country’s name and think of a mammal that begins with that letter.

33


Think of the color of that mammal.

34


How many of you have a gray elephant from

Denmark?

35


What’s the trick?

Denmark is an available “D” country – it easily comes to mind.

Elephant is an available “E” mammal

– it easily comes to mind.

And gray elephants are more available than other-colored pachyderms.


Availability Heuristic

Availability heuristic – a mental shortcut – estimating the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind


False Consensus

38


False Consensus

If you had to choose one, would you prefer to die by fire or by drowning?

39


False Consensus

Now estimate what percentage of your classmates would prefer to die by fire and what percentage would prefer to die by drowning.

40


Raise your hand if you preferred death by fire.

For those of you who preferred fire:

What percentage of the class did you estimate would agree with you?


Usually only about twenty percent of people choose fire.

But people who choose fire overestimate what percentage of the class will agree with them

(It doesn't work for the drowning folks because of ceiling effects).


False Consensus

False consensus – the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with us


Anchoring and Adjustment

Heuristic

Anchoring and adjustment heuristic – a mental shortcut – using a rough estimation as a starting point, and then adjusting this estimate to take into account unique characteristics of the current situation


Desire to See Self as

Effective

Desire to See Self as

Having Good

Relationships

GOAL: Managing Self-Image

Self-Enhancement & Protection Strategies:

Social Comparison

Self-Serving Attributions


Cognitive Strategies for

Enhancing and Protecting the Self

Downward social comparison – the process of comparing ourselves with those who are less well off

Example: Breast cancer patients compared themselves to those who had more serious surgery


Cognitive Strategies for Enhancing and Protecting the Self

Upward social comparison – the process of comparing ourselves with those who are better off than ourselves

Example: Comparing yourself to an

“A” student in order to inspire yourself to study more.



If you get a great grade on your next exam, why will that be?

Because you’re smart?

Because you studied hard?

What if you get a lousy grade? Will that be because the exam was too hard? Because I’m a lousy teacher?



Self-serving bias – the tendency to take credit for our successes and to blame external factors for our failures


Self-Serving Bias

In a systematic analysis of newspaper articles describing 33 major baseball and football games in the fall of

1977, quotations from both players and coaches differed considerably depending on whether their teams won or lost.


Self-Serving Bias

Internal explanations were most likely after victories.

External explanations were most likely after defeats.

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

Victory Defeat

Internal

Explanations

Victory Defeat

External

Explanations

Lau and Russell (1980)

Copyright © Allyn and Bacon 2005 51

How Universal is the Need for

Positive Self-Regard?

Research contrasting Japanese with

North Americans suggests that members of collectivistic cultures are less likely to demonstrate biases like the ones we’ve been exploring.


Desire to Avoid

Mistakes

Desire to Control

Outcomes in Life

GOAL: Seeking Accuracy

Accuracy Strategies:

Unbiased Information Gathering

Considering Alternatives

Attributional Logic


Unbiased Information Gathering

Desire for accuracy leads people to pay special attention to new information (that may go against what they previously suspected).


Considering Alternatives

With difficult decisions, it is often helpful to play the Devil’s Advocate

– i.e., to consider the opposite side of the argument.


“Consider the opposite”

120 Stanford students who favored or opposed capital punishment each read two research results –

One result showed the death penalty to be effective.

The other showed it to be ineffective.

Lord, C. G., Lepper, M. R., & Preston, E. (1984)


Mixed info only

Control students simply read the mixed information.



“Be unbiased”

A second group was told:

“Be as objective and unbiased as possible… weigh all of the evidence in a fair and impartial manner.”



“Consider the opposite”

A third group was told:

“Ask yourself at each step whether you would have made the same evaluations had exactly the same study produced results on the other side of the issue.”



More Pro

+2

+1

No change

Changes in opinion

Initial opinions:

Pro Death

Penalty

Anti Death

Penalty

-1

-2

-3

More Anti

Control group

After exposure to mixed info, proponents in the control group became even more pro, opponents even more anti.


Changes in opinion

More Pro

+2

+1

No change

-1

-2

-3

More Anti

Control group

Be Unbiased

Instructions to “Be Unbiased” did not significantly reduce this bias.

61


Pro Death

Penalty

Anti Death

Penalty


More Pro

+2

+1

No change

-1

-2

-3

More Anti

Changes in opinion


Pro Death

Penalty

Anti Death

Penalty

Control group

Be Unbiased

Consider the opposite

Students told to “consider the opposite” became unbiased in their information processing.


Attributional Logic:

Seeking the Causes of Behavior

Attributional theories – theories designed to explain how people determine the causes of behavior


Attributional Logic

Correspondent inference theory – people presume a behavior corresponds to an actor’s internal disposition if

The behavior was intended

The behavior’s consequences were foreseeable

The behavior was freely chosen

The behavior occurred despite countervailing forces


Attributional Processes

Covariation model – people determine the cause of an actor’s behavior by assessing

Consensus – Does everybody do it?

Distinctiveness – Does it occur only in this situation?

Consistency – Does it occur repeatedly?


Why does Jack want to marry Jill?

66


Consensus is Low

(Others aren’t interested in Jill)

Distinctiveness is Low

(Jack will marry anyone)

Consistency is High

(Jack’s proposed every day this week)

67

Internal

Attribution

(Jack is

Desperate)


Consensus is High

(Everyone wants to marry Jill)

Distinctiveness is High

(Jack wants only Jill)



68

External

Attribution

(Jill is desirable)


Consensus is Low

(Others aren’t interested in Jill)

Distinctiveness is High

(Jack wants only Jill)



69

Interaction

Attribution

(Jack and Jill have that special magic)




Discounting principle – as the number of possible causes for an event increases, our confidence that any particular cause is the true one decreases

Example: If a student gives an apple to the professor, we are less likely to attribute the gift to altruistic motives if the gift might improve the student’s grade.




Augmenting principle – if an event occurs despite the presence of strong opposing forces, we give more weight to factors that lead towards the event

Example: If a girl gives a guy flowers, we are more likely to think she really likes him if she had to walk through a rainstorm to get them.


social psych

Related documents

Products

Support

social psych

Related documents

Add this document to collection(s)

Add this document to saved

Suggest us how to improve StudyLib