Social Cognition

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Social Cognition

• Processes in Social Cognition

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Sandy

• Has long hair.
• Likes classical music.
• Helped a friend move into a new apartment last
  week.
• Pulled the legs off bugs as a child.
• Likes the color blue.

• Seldom calls her grandmother.
• Wears glasses.
• Was unpopular in high school.
• Gives money to Greenpeace.
• Supports the war in Iraq.

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Processes in Social Cognition

• Attention
• Person Memory
• Social Attribution

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Attention Salience of Social Stimuli

• Salience the degree to which a stimulus stands
  out relative to its context.
• Immediate Context
• Novel (race, sex, age, hair/clothing color)
• Figural (bright, complex, moving)
• Prior knowledge or expectations
• Unusual for person, social category, people in
  general
• Other Factors
• Goal-related (boss, date)
• Dominating visual field
• Active process?

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Consequences of Salience

• Salience exaggerates evaluations and judgments in
  whichever direction they initially tend.
• Why?
• Availability Heuristic?

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Organization of Person Memory

• Write down 10 things about your roommate or best
  friend.
• Appearance, Traits, Behaviors
• Appearance Analog Code
• Traits abstract, inferred
• Social desirability
• Competence
• Behaviors Temporal component
• Affective dimension

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• Write down as many of Sandys attributes as you
  can remember.

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Depth of Processing in Person Memory

• Depth of processing of social information depends
  on psychological engagement.
• Memorizing Variable memory, organized by
  whatever is available.
• Impression formation Good memory, organized by
  traits.
• Self-reference Excellent memory, organized by
  traits or goals.

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-2 Definitely does not describe -1 Usually does
not describe 0 Sometimes describes, sometimes
not 1 Usually describes 2 Definitely describes
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Attribution Theory

• How the social perceiver uses information in the
  social environment to yield causal explanations
  for events.
• Why is this important?

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Covariaton Model (Kelley)

• People assess covariation information across
  three dimensions relevant to the entity whose
  behavior they are trying to explain.
• Distinctiveness Does the behavior occur when the
  entity is there, and not when it isnt?
• Consistency over time/modality Does the behavior
  occur each time the entity is present and
  regardless of the form of the interaction?
• Consensus Do other people experience the same
  effect with respect to this entity?

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Why did Liv ignore me?

• Distinctiveness Do other people ignore me at
  parties?
• Consistency over time/modality Does Liv ignore
  me in other contexts?
• Consensus Does Liv ignore other people at
  parties?

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Why Did LivE Ignore meP?
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Biases in Attribution

• Situations
• Dispositions
• Fundamental Attribution Bias Social perceivers
  tend to see others behavior as
• Freely chosen
• Indicative of stable dispositions

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Biases in Attribution

• Actor/Observer Bias
• Our behavioral is situational
• Others behavior is dispositional

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Actor-Observer Bias
-2 Definitely does not describe -1 Usually does
not describe 0 Sometimes describes, sometimes
not 1 Usually describes 2 Definitely describes
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• Consensus
• Social perceivers under-utilize consensus
  information.
• False Consensus SPs tend to see their own
  experiences/beliefs/behaviors as typical.

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Why Did LivE Ignore meP?
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Social Attribution

• What other cognitive processes might help explain
  attribution biases?

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Implicit Social Cognition

• Stereotypes

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Implicit Social Cognition

• Traces of past experience affect some
  performance, even though the influential earlier
  experience is not remembered in the usual sense
  (i.e., unavailable to self-report or
  introspection).
• Greenwald Banaji (1995)

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Stereotypes

• Socially shared set of beliefs about traits that
  are characteristic of members of a social
  category.
• May be positive or negative
• Cheerleader
• Physically attractive
• Unintelligent
• Implicit stereotypes introspectively
  unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces
  of past experience that mediate attributions of
  traits to members of a social category.

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Implicit Race Stereotyping

• Gaertner McLaughlin (1983)
• Subjects presented with pairs of letter strings,
  asked to response YES if both were words,
  otherwise NO.
• Speed of YES response strength of association
  of words in pair.
• White subjects responded faster to white-positive
  pairs than black-positive pairs
• white-smart vs black-smart
• No difference for negative traits
• White-lazy vs black-lazy
• Similar results regardless of score on direct
  measure of racial prejudice.

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Implicit Race Stereotyping

• Dovidio et al (1986)
• Subjects presented with prime (black or white)
  followed by a trait.
• Asked to indicate whether the trait could ever
  be true or was always false of the prime
  category.
• Subjects responded faster to positive traits
  following white vs black
• Subjects responded faster to negative traits
  following black vs white

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Implicit Gender Stereotyping

• Nonfamous names seen before more likely to be
  erroneously judged as famous.
• Banaji Greenwald (1996)
• On Day 1, subjects read a list of names
• Male female
• Famous nonfamous
• George Bush, Liv Tyler, Fred Smith, Janet Lin
• On Day 2, subjects saw old and new names, and had
  to answer Is this person famous? for each.

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Implicit Gender Stereotyping
Is this person famous?
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Implicit Gender Stereotyping
Is this person famous?
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False Alarms ( of nonfamous names said to be
famous)
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Dependence Aggression

• Does priming stereotypical traits differentially
  influence judgments about male vs female targets?
• Dependence female
• Aggressiveness male
• Subjects exposed to primes that described
  dependent, aggressive, or neutral behavior.
• Rated a neutrally described male or female target
  on dependence, aggressiveness.

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Ratings of Dependence
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Ratings of Aggressiveness
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Implicit Gender Stereotypes

• Independent of explicit recall of primes.
• Independent of sex of subjects.
• Stereotype-related information influences
  behavior regardless of awareness.
• Implications?

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Stereotypes as Concepts

• Classical view
• Prototype models
• Exemplar models
• Theory-based models

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Summary

• Attention
• Memory
• Attribution
• Implicit stereotypes