What is Social Cognition

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What is Social Cognition?

• How people think about themselves and the social
  world

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Key Points

• All of the information in our environment is too
  much to process. Need filter.
• Past experience provides a filter to help us
  interpret and evaluate new people and events.

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Social Cognition

• Do we generally use all of the available
  information about a person when forming
  impressions of him/her?
• Why not?
• Impractical or impossible too much information
• Time constraints

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What information do we use?

• Categories, schemas

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Schemas

• Mental structures that help organize knowledge
  about the social world and guide the selection,
  interpretation, and recall of information.

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What do schemas do?The human mind must think
with the aid of categoriesorderly living depends
upon it. --Allport, 1954

• Help us organize information
• Help us remember certain things
• Help us to fill in details when our information
  is incomplete
• Can influence behavior
• Help us to interpret ambiguous behavior
• Influence what information we attend to

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Examples

• Read story
• Demonstration

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Schemas influence attention

• Study
• IV Grad student office included schema
  consistent (stapler, filing cabinets, book
  shelves) and schema inconsistent (exercise
  equipment) objects.
• DV Leave room and recall what was in the room.
• What were the findings?

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Schemas help us to interpret ambiguous information

• Donald example
• IV Priming pos or neg
• DV Positivity of impression
• Priming the process by which recent experiences
  increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or
  concept.
• What were the findings?

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Schemas influence behavior

• Bargh and colleagues
• IV Primed polite or rude words
• DV How long participant waited to interrupt the
  experimenter
• What were the findings?

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How do we decide which schema to use?

• Depends on schema accessibility
• Situational cues
• Recency of schema activation
• Priming
• Bargh studies
• The Donald Study
• Do not need conscious awareness (Bargh
  Pietromonaco, 1982, in text)
• Personal chronic constructs

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Sometimes schemas can get us into trouble

• Confirmation biases Tendencies to interpret,
  seek, and create information that verifies our
  preexisting beliefs or schemas.
• Examples of confirmation biases
• Belief perseverance The tendency to maintain
  beliefs, even after they have been discredited.

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Perseverance Effect

• Ross et al. (1975)
• IV Success, failure, or average feedback about
  ability to detect real or fake suicide notes
• Intervention E explained feedback was randomly
  assigned (discredited belief)
• DV Estimated how well would actually do at task
• Results?

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Confirming Prior Expectations

• Snyder Swann, 1978
• IV Expectations about person to be interviewed
  introverted vs. extraverted
• DV Selection of interview questions. Slanted
  toward extraverted, introverted, or neutral.
• Results?